And part of the answer arrived in my mailbox.....
Letter from Fred Baughman, MD, author THE ADHD FRAUD--How Psychiatry Makes Patients of Normal Children (
www.Trafford.com) to
Bob Whitaker, author: MAD IN AMERICA--Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (Basic Books)
Dear Bob, June 18, 2007
Think of it, the neuroleptic/antipsychotic drugs, new and old, atypical and typical, cause a form of Parkinson's disease indistinguishable from the idiopathic PD of middle and late age. They also cause face-tongue-mouth, head and neck spasms we refer to as dyskinesias and dystonias--also dysphagia (trouble swallowing), oculogyric crises (forced up-turning or other-directed movement of the eyes), torticollis, retrocollis (involutnatry neck movements), akathisia, and the oft-fatal neuroleptic malignant syndrome). They also cause toxic psychoses and toxic dementias--just as in the case of Angel T. which I am reviewing now, the story of a normal child becoming, between October of 2005 and August, 2006 incapable of talking, walking, continence of bowel or bladder or any activity of daily lifing--just prior to her death, in bed, 8/8/06.
The dysphagia--trouble swallowing--deserves special mention. Almost 20 years ago I saw a young Hispanic male in my practice with a nasal voice and trouble swallowing. He was on the antipsychotic Prolixin. On neurological examination he had totally paralyzed palate. EMG studies showed no evidence of motor neuron disease, leading me to suspect the problems was one primarily of muscle. Since discovering the growing mention of dysphagia, bulbar paralysis and of aspiration and aspirations deaths with the antipsychotics, I have sought to find the record of this young man so as to submit a case report and also to get some follow up on him. I seem to remember that having taken him off of all antipsychotics, palatal function was returning. I will keep searching for this record. But as for the cause of death from antipsychotics, just look at the Georgia psych hospital experience (see attached) :
The Atlanta (GA) Journal-Constitution has documented 364 deaths in Georgia's state mental hospitals in the five years, January, 2002 through mid-December 2006. Two-thirds were said to have died of natural causes, 115 were deemed suspicious. The greatest number of these--36 -died from choking on food, vomit or foreign objects, or by aspirating those substances into their lungs. A like number died from questionable care; 12 committed suicide, and two died under physical restraint (a strikingly low number).
Regarding the 36 who appear to have choked to death, were the Georgia psychiatrists not aware of the long-established causal role of antipsychotic drugs in causing bulbar palsy, choking and death? Seventy people studied who had choked to death were over 20 times more likely to have been treated previously for schizophrenia (and, therefore to have been on antipsychotic medication)[1]
Sarah Crider, 14, was one of the 115 patients from Georgia's state psychiatric hospitals who have died under suspicious circumstances during the past five years. Sarah was never sick said her grandmother, Joyce Dobson. She was a healthy, normal, child until 2003, when her first, wholly subjective, psychological/psychiatric/mental symptoms commenced- seeing spots on a wall.
This article, like the literature on the subject of aspiration deaths in schizophrenics strongly suggests that this is the most common cause of deaths due to antipsychotic medication. Dysphagia, by the way is among the most common causes of death in aged and dementia populations on antipsychotic drugs. Go to Pub Med and look up "choking" also "bulbar palsy" and "aspiration."
We should all be outraged that antipsychotic drug prescriptions are increasing so for children--normal children [NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jun 05 2006]. The prescription of
antipsychotic medications for children and adolescents in the US increased nearly 6-fold between 1993 and 2002, according to survey results. [Also, Arch Gen Psychiatry 2006;63:679-685]. Eighteen percent (think of it--18.0 %) of visits to psychiatrists by young people resulted in their being prescribed an antipsychotic medication/poison.
This is largely due to the efforts of
Joseph Biederman and colleagues at Harvard. Approximately 90% of antipsychotics prescribed were for the second-generation, atypical, drugs -- clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine, and quetiapine. What's more,
none of these drugs are approved for treating adolescents or children. They were prescribed primarily for disruptive behavior disorders (37.8%)-- ADHD, conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder-none actual diseases; mood disorders (31.8%)-none actual diseases; 14.2% for psychotic disorders-none actual diseases, and pervasive developmental disorders or mental retardation (17.3%). Angel T. had a dreaded DBD--disruptive behavior disorder...her first non-diseased--that which got her court-order to psychiatry. The "bipolar" diagnosis came later as did the usual handful of psychiatric diagnoses--none of them an actual disease.
In a survey of antipsychotic drug use in youth (Science News, February 24, 2004, Vol. 140)
33%, developed a PD-like syndrome, while an eighth (12.5 %), treated for three months or more, developed tardive dyskinesias. In general, the psychiatric drugging of millions of medically-, neurologically- normal children in this country, for unfounded, unscientific, claims of psychiatric "disorders"/"diseases"/ "chemical imbalances" is a monumental fraud, a national disgrace and is criminal. The criminals must be identified, charged and tried. They are wholly aware that psychiatric "diseases" are contrivances of their own making. Steven Hyman, also of Harvard, is no less aware.
No doubt there are increasing numbers of pregnant women on these drugs today. I can imagine their embyos/fetuses will be damaged resulting in retarded, globally brain damaged children with tell-tale, ever-after tardive dyskinesias (extra-pyramidal signs--EPS). I can imagine some developing just from the drinking of anti-psychotic tainted breast milk.
I am sure their is an epidemic of Parkinsons diseases developing as we speak among the children of all ages of the nation, and of tardive dyskinesias as well. We all know the fate of Rebecca Riley. As much as these "perps" try to deflect blame, all of them, including Rebecca's psychiatrist from Tufts who went to medical school just as did I and Dr. Biederman did and learned just as we all did what normal is and what abnormality-disease is and how to tell the difference. She knows she had adduced no physical signs or abnormalities in Rebecca before really inducing such with her psychiatric poisons, she knows and should not be allowed to skate free, no matter how heinous the cheerleading roll of the good Dr. Biederman and his "team"at Harvard and the vaunted MGH.
As much as Dr. Biederman may have been the # one cheerleader for diagnoses of bipolar--a position he holds, as well for ADHD--all in academic "biological" psychiatry are at fault--he has not done this on his own. Look at any article from their sham scientific literature, it all speaks of this and that or the other "chemical imbalance" or disease. Even Larry Diller (Running on Ritalin) who sits astride the fence whenever asked, got to writing 400 or more prescriptions per year for the fictional disease--ADHD. Whats more as he wrote these prescriptions he know very well their was no disease before the "treatment." He knew the children were normal, the prescriptions--poisoning--their first and only disease.
We can only hope the totality of these crimes will be recognized and that all of the perpetrators and those who have commissioned these crimes will be charged, tried, convicted and sentenced.
Sincerely,
Fred
cc: Michael J. Fox
cc: Drew Gilpin Faust, President, Harvard U.
----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Whitaker
To: Fred Baughman
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 11:43 AM
Subject: Re: antipsychotic poisoning of children in the name of psychiatric treatment 6 16 07
Thanks Fred--the harm done by the antipsychotics is truly astounding. I think that's why the rampant use of these drugs in children is so blatantly--as you say--criminal.
There is a long, long record of harm done, no doctor can possibly say that he is unaware of this record, and so every doctor who prescribes these drugs to children is basically saying, from a moral point of view, that it is *okay to cause neurological damage in children if it will modify their behavior (make them easier to control, etc.) that at least a few adults find preferable. I have to confess that I truly don't understand what the doctors like Biederman and others who prescribe these drugs must be thinking. But they clearly place more importance on their own well-being (in the sense of getting to play doctor, because of course that's what they are doing, they are puffing themselves up and pretending to be doctors)
Bob
*Sound like program? Seems as if anything goes when it comes to modifying unwanted behavior. Psych drugs, aversive 'therapy', incarceration.......