Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness

[Deborah]

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/ ... /7454/1458

Jeanne Lenzer
New York

A sweeping mental health initiative will be unveiled by President George W Bush in July. The plan promises to integrate mentally ill patients fully into the community by providing "services in the community, rather than institutions," according to a March 2004 progress report entitled New Freedom Initiative (www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/newfreedom/toc-2004.html). While some praise the plan's goals, others say it protects the profits of drug companies at the expense of the public.

Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in April 2002 to conduct a "comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system." The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003. Bush instructed more than 25 federal agencies to develop an implementation plan based on those recommendations.

The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children. According to the commission, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.

The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."

Dr Darrel Regier, director of research at the American Psychiatric Association (APA), lauded the president's initiative and the Texas project model saying, "What's nice about TMAP is that this is a logical plan based on efficacy data from clinical trials."

He said the association has called for increased funding for implementation of the overall plan.

But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed that key officials with influence over the medication plan in his state received money and perks from drug companies with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153). He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the New York Times.

The Texas project started in 1995 as an alliance of individuals from the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. The project was funded by a Robert Wood Johnson grant?and by several drug companies.

Mr Jones told the BMJ that the same "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that generated the Texas project was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which, according to his whistleblower report, were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab" (http://psychrights.org/Drugs/AllenJones ... uary20.pdf).

Larry D Sasich, research associate with Public Citizen in Washington, DC, told the BMJ that studies in both the United States and Great Britain suggest that "using the older drugs first makes sense. There's nothing in the labeling of the newer atypical antipsychotic drugs that suggests they are superior in efficacy to haloperidol [an older "typical" antipsychotic]. There has to be an enormous amount of unnecessary expenditures for the newer drugs."
 
Drug companies have contributed three times more to the campaign of George Bush, seen here campaigning in Florida, than to that of his rival John Kerry  Credit: GERALD HERBERT/AP

Olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), one of the atypical antipsychotic drugs recommended as a first line drug in the Texas algorithm, grossed $4.28bn (£2.35bn; 3.56bn) worldwide in 2003 and is Eli Lilly's top selling drug. A 2003 New York Times article by Gardiner Harris reported that 70% of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Eli Lilly, manufacturer of olanzapine, has multiple ties to the Bush administration. George Bush Sr was a member of Lilly's board of directors and Bush Jr appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security Council. Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000?82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party.

Jones points out that the companies that helped to start up the Texas project have been, and still are, big contributors to the election funds of George W Bush. In addition, some members of the New Freedom Commission have served on advisory boards for these same companies, while others have direct ties to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project.

Bush was the governor of Texas during the development of the Texas project, and, during his 2000 presidential campaign, he boasted of his support for the project and the fact that the legislation he passed expanded Medicaid coverage of psychotropic drugs.

Bush is the clear front runner when it comes to drug company contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), manufacturers of drugs and health products have contributed $764 274 to the 2004 Bush campaign through their political action committees and employees?far outstripping the $149 400 given to his chief rival, John Kerry, by 26 April.

Drug companies have fared exceedingly well under the Bush administration, according to the centre's spokesperson, Steven Weiss.

The commission's recommendation for increased screening has also been questioned. Robert Whitaker, journalist and author of Mad in America, says that while increased screening "may seem defensible," it could also be seen as "fishing for customers," and that exorbitant spending on new drugs "robs from other forms of care such as job training and shelter programmes."

But Dr Graham Emslie, who helped develop the Texas project, defends screening: "There are good data showing that if you identify kids at an earlier age who are aggressive, you can intervene... and change their trajectory."

 
Rapid Responses:
Read all Rapid Responses

After this mass screening they are planning to use the lie-detector
Dr. Herbert H. Nehrlich
bmj.com, 17 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Welcome.
Jim Sane
bmj.com, 18 Jun 2004 [Full text]
A public health project worthy of massive public funding provided the aim is not to screen for "mental illnesses".
Richard G Fiddian-Green
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Any other sources of information for the article?
Richard M Diamond
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
We must be crazy...
Michael Ellner
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Paved with good intentions?
Woody Caan
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Instruments for Screening and Treatment Modalities
Eileen McGinn
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Ambitious yet commendable
Prem K Kunjukrishnan, et al.
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Bush plans to screen whole US population for mental illness
Raymond Gallup
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Bush's Sanity Test Revealed
Dr. Archie W. Julien
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
WATCH OUT for Bush push of psychiatric drugs
David W. Oaks
bmj.com, 19 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Brave new world?
Blue Pilgrim
bmj.com, 20 Jun 2004 [Full text]
WE NEED A FORUM ?
D.Michael VAN DE VEER, et al.
bmj.com, 20 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Implications of Government Sponsored Mental Health Screenings: Some Important Questions
Barbara Rubin
bmj.com, 20 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Psychotic in Texas
Mark Struthers
bmj.com, 20 Jun 2004 [Full text]
Other related articles in BMJ:
News
Whistleblower removed from job for talking to the press.
Jeanne Lenzer
BMJ 2004 328: 1153. [Full text]

[Anonymous]

Nice alarmism.

They screened all girls for scoliosis in my junior high school, too.

Which meant that volunteers who'd been taught very limited information of what to look for watched us take off our shirts in the girls' locker room of the gym, one by one, and then handed us a popsickle stick with a 1, 2, or 3 written on it.

They told the ones with a 2 or 3 popsickle stick to tell their parents that the school suggested they follow up with a doctor to see if the doctor thought there was a problem or not.

I got a 2 popsickle stick.  My parents took me to the family doctor, he looked at my back and said I was fine, we went on with our lives.

And that's fairly typical of the level of intervention that "screening" means---it's much less intrusive than "examining."

"Screening" means they perform a very rudimentary test to identify most people as obviously perfectly healthy, and a few as probably perfectly healthy but worth recommending a check-up, and a very few as really needing a check-up---but still easily reasonably likely to be perfectly healthy.

And, like the scoliosis screening, mental health screening just results in the case of a few folks in an entirely optional recommendation to see your doctor and get checked out in case there's a problem.

As someone with a major mental illness that showed up when I was five but didn't land me in a doctor's office until I was seventeen (and didn't get correctly diagnosed until I was in my late twenties), I would have welcomed screening.

Screening would have been perfectly harmless for the vast majority of people, the few recommended for a doctor visit would decide for themselves whether they needed to see a doctor or not, and out of the 180 million people in the US, the few million of us with real major mental illnesses could be saved a lot of pain by having those illnesses caught and treated early.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/n ... aishi.html
http://www.patientcenters.com/bipolar/news/causes.html

Is filling out a short questionnaire really such an intrusion into the lives of people who turn out not to be sick to outweigh helping find and treat those of us who are?

Keep in mind that people with some mental illnesses can be violently aggressive.

Those of you who are perfectly healthy *also* benefit from that short questionnaire that helps channel those of us who may not be into a more careful examination (with our consent and of our own free will only, of course).

You mentally healthy and normal folks benefit when those of us who are mentally ill get treatment.

Sure, *we* benefit more than you do in having the disruption in our lives and pain from mental illness treated.  But the rest of you *do* receive a substantial payoff in increased personal safety from the rest of us getting proper diagnosis and treatment.

*You* may not think the benefits you receive are worth the inconvenience of filling out a short questionnaire---and you and others who share your opinion should be free to decline to fill out the questionnaire.

However, a whole lot of *other people* who aren't as fearful as you are about medication, for those of us who need it, will decide that the minor inconvenience of filling out a short questionnaire is worth it for the benefits they receive.

They should be free *not* to decline to fill out the questionnaire----they shouldn't have to cater to your paranoia (and I use that in the strictly non-clinical everyday layman's sense of the word).

Also, lest anyone think I'm an advocate of medication exclusively for major mental illnesses, I have had therapy and it helped.  It helped a lot.  I use what I learned in therapy on an ongoing basis.  It's just that for some of us, after we've learned what therapy can teach us, and learned all those coping strategies which are very good, very useful, and vitally important---it's still not enough, and it does take medication to control our serious illnesses.

Screening everyone with a simple questionnaire has tremendous benefits for everyone.

But those of you who are uncomfortable with it should be entirely free to decline to participate.

You just shouldn't get to choose that a screening program not be implemented and offered to everyone else.

Mental health screening is not some big, dark, boogie-man conspiracy by the drug companies to push their product on unsuspecting perfectly healthy people and turn them into bad horror-flick zombies.

Sure, drug companies' marketing departments, like the marketing departments of every company making every product in the economy, are obnoxiously overzealous.  That's the marketing dweeb personality.  Oh, well.

Just like I don't need a new car as often as car marketing dweebs would like me to buy one, I don't need every damned purple pill in stupid, excessive TV ads that pour into my living room.

Just like I *do* need to own a car to get around my daily life and I'm glad as hell that I have one, people *do* need the specific modern drugs that help them with their specific medical problems.

Almost everyone gets by *without* succumbing to the blandishments of every used car or new car ad on the TV or radio, and almost everyone gets by without buying or taking every medication they don't need pushed at them in ads by annoying marketers.  Almost everyone who can afford one does get *one* car and does get the medications they need for their own specific health problems.

Almost everyone could use more common sense than they have, but almost everyone has at least some common sense.

Have a little more faith in people's common sense.

Timoclea

[Anonymous]

hope he plans on starting with himself and his dad

[Antigen]

On 2004-06-21 10:22:00, Anonymous wrote:

And, like the scoliosis screening, mental health screening just results in the case of a few folks in an entirely optional recommendation to see your doctor and get checked out in case there's a problem.

Unlike mental illness, a scoliosis dx is entirely objective and evidence based. Also dissimilar is that people who have scoliosis usually have pain and voluntarily seek treatment for it. Most people accused of mental illness (i.e. opposition and defiance) don't consider themselves to be mentally ill and do not want their opposition and defiance drugged away.

Consider that, w/ the current state of mental health dx, over half of our children are mentally "abnormal". It doesn't have to make sense when they have the power to force their views w/ legal coercion.

It is wrong to leave a stumbling stone in the road after it has tripped you.
http://fornits.com/wwf/bb_profile.php?mode=view&user=1005' target='_new'>Hands Out Light

[Anonymous]

Okay, but would you feel better if the screening was limited to screening for Major Depression, Bipolar Disorder, and Schizophrenia?

I agree that the personality disorders have much more fuzzy diagnoses that can be manipulated more easily by the unethical.

On the other hand, if parents are bound and determined to subcontract their annoyingly teenage kids out because they're tired of trying to cope, do you really think *lack* of national screening for the major mental illnesses will stop them?  It's not stopping them *now*?

Timoclea

[Antigen]

On 2004-06-21 19:54:00, Anonymous wrote:

"Okay, but would you feel better if the screening was limited to screening for Major Depression, Bipolar Disorder, and Schizophrenia?


Timoclea"

Having been 'screened' for severe drug addiction by Straight, Inc. (i.e. an organization founded by the then future Büsh finance chairman and drug policy maker), I wouldn't take that bet on a bet!

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-- Aristotle

[Deborah]

Is it really the role of government to screen for drug addiction or so-called mental illness?

I'd be ALL for it if they were screening in order to improve people's nutritional deficiencies. I haven't read this book yet, but it sounds like it has some good advice. Probably would be better if one works with a nutritionist who understand biochemistry and correcting deficiencies.

http://www.mikeogara.net/bookreviews/nutrmental/
Nutrition and Mental Illness
by Carl C. Pfeiffer, Ph.D., M.D.
Subtitle:   An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry

What it's about:   In   Nutrition and Mental Illness: An Orthomolecular Approach to Balancing Body Chemistry  Dr. Pfeiffer discusses the critical role vitamins (especially the B-vitamins) and some minerals (copper, zinc) play in helping our complex brains operate properly.

He discusses various types of schizophrenia and relates nutritional supplements that seem to be highly effective in returning patients to proper functioning again.

He gives many case histories to support his conclusions. He and his staff have developed broad general guidelines regarding which vitamins and minerals are likely to cure various mental functioning problems. His examples are quite convincing -- and often very moving when a very troubled patient is brought back to a normal existence again.

Something I found quite interesting is his approach of giving patients increasing doses of Vitamin B6 until they can remember their dreams. When asked, he tells his patients: "Dream recall is normal. We want you to be normal."

Main facts or viewpoints I got from this book:   Powerful psychotropic medicines are, AT BEST, short-term "fixes" for mental problems.

And they frequently make a patient much worse in the long term. Giving the brain the vitamins and minerals it needs -- even it that sometimes means much larger doses than the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) doses -- improves brain functioning much more safely. Without the long-term damage that powerful mind-affecting drugs can and often do cause.

My evaluation of Nutrition and Mental Illness:   It really opened my eyes to the critical importance of getting adequate levels (very different for different people) of certain vitamins for proper mental functioning, particularly the B-vitamins. As soon as I read the book I immediately started taking a strong (multi-RDA levels) full-spectrum B-vitamin supplement every day. In addition to the lower levels I was getting from a standard daily multivitamin tablet.

Why read this book:   Many reasons! To learn what to do to be able to think more clearly; to help improve sleep problems and insomnia; to be emotionally more stable and happier; to understand possible causes for mental limitations that bother you; and to give yourself the knowledge to help yourself feel and think better.

It seems to me if large doses of the vitamins discussed in the book can cure severe mental function problems, somewhat smaller doses can help a great many of us just plain think and function better. And vitamins are MUCH cheaper, available, and safer than powerful psychotropic drugs. Cheaper and safer -- I like that.

Read the book, see the case histories. Decide for yourself.

To give you a better feel for its contents, here are the book's chapter titles:


Mental Illness -- Not All in the Mind
Understanding Mental Illness
Anxiety and Phobias -- The Copper Connection
High Histamine Can Cause Depression
B6 and Zinc -- the Missing Link
Brain Allergies
The Dangers of Daily Bread
Hypoglycemia -- the Sugar Blues
Minerals, Mood Swings, and Manic Depressive Disorders
Diet, Crime, and Delinquency
How to Age Without Senility
Drugs -- The Treatment That Leads Nowhere
Why Nutrition is the Way forward
There is an Alternative to Hospitalization
Optimum Nutrition for Mental Health
Nutrition Programs for Specific Diseases
Conclusion -- Have Faith in Tomorrow's Medicine
Summary of the Schizophrenias
References and Further Reading
Useful Addresses
Index
We all want our emotions to be more stable and our thinking to be clearer.
When you've read this book I think you'll want
to lend it to your family and friends.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the resorce Deb.
I will check it out.
The premise makes sense and I feel in some  (and maybe even most; but not all) cases nutrition could be the answer. I can see were the anxiety related disorders could respond very well to good nutrition. I know B vitamins help me a lot and I take my "stress tab" every night.
And I also know that they use copper to treat Obsessive Compulsive Bull terriers; But the Bullies have a specific disorder not akin to a persons OCD.


As for this across the board testing - bad idea. For lots of reasons. I do wish tho that part of getting a teaching certificate included learning about how various problems may present themselves in a class room; so perfectly intelligent kids didn't end up in LD classes; mistreated, misunderstood and grossly undereducated.

[Antigen]

On 2004-06-21 21:41:00, Deborah wrote:

Is it really the role of government to screen for drug addiction or so-called mental illness?

I'd be ALL for it if they were screening in order to improve people's nutritional deficiencies. I haven't read this book yet, but it sounds like it has some good advice. Probably would be better if one works with a nutritionist who understand biochemistry and correcting deficiencies.

No, I don't think government has any place practicing medicine or dictating nutrition or any other areas of our personal lives.

I hate to be so cleche, but "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." --George Washington

I think he nailed it. According to our government, a packet of ketchup is a vegatable serving and a healthy diet constitutes primarily carbs. This, of course, is madness from the pov of anyone who knows even a little about nutrition.

But the people making these calls are not nutritionalists; they're politicians. Their stock in trade is coercive power over others. Somebody made some money from those and other politically motivated policies. That's why those policies were made, not because they make sense or will accomplish whatever good purpose the politicians promised in order to get the rest of us to go along with it.

So no, I wouldn't be real comfortable w/ the government screening for deviant dieters either.

for it is a truth, which the experience of all ages has attested, that the people are commonly most in danger when the means of insuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.    
--Alexander Hamilton

[Deborah]

To clarify, I don't think it's governments role to dictate dietary guidelines either, but if they are going to screen for 'mental illness', my preference would be that those who are identified not be ushered toward ONE 'solution'. It would be nice if people had access to all options available to them. Gov't should not support one method of treatment over another.

Re: the government dietary guidelines- they have way too much control and their guidelines appear to be more in the direct of supporting particular industries than toward the welfare of children.

For example: A child in a home daycare situation MUST be given milk. The parent can not request that their child be given an alternative, they must acquire a note from a dr. If the child doesn't like milk, the provider must still 'purchase' and serve it to that child.

A provider must serve a child 2/3 of their daily RDA, which the STATE has identified for a 1 yr old to be:  1 cup milk, 1 oz meat, 1/2 cup grain, 1/2 cup total veggies and fruit.

If the provider participates in the FEDERAL Food Program the requirements are different: 1 cup milk, 1/2 oz meat, 3/4 cup grain, 1 cup total veggies and fruit. Why different guidelines??

FYI, the federal program will reimburse the provider $1.68 per day, per child if they follow THEIR guidelines. While catsup is considered  a veggie for school aged children, that is NOT the case for home daycare.

That's all fine, BUT, if a child consumes his/her RDA of milk at breakfast, the provider must serve the child more milk at lunch- which must contain all 5 components. The same is true for grain- if they consume their RDA at breakfast and snack it must still be served at lunch.

Any provider will tell you that if you serve a bread with lunch, kids will eat that first and skip the fruit and veggies. For that reason, many would prefer to meet the daily RDA for grain at breakfast and snack. They will not be reimbursed for lunch if bread/grain is not served. Again, possibly in excess of what's 'needed'. What many do is serve it at the end of the meal in order to be in compliance.

Call me skeptical, but that appears to be benefiting the food industry more than children. I perceive it to be conditioning the child to drink milk at every meal, possibly in excess of what's 'needed' and a way to funnel more tax dollars to the industries.  

Any grain product MUST be enriched (chemical vitamins added). A provider is reimbursed for cookies, cake, brownies, doughnuts, toaster pastries; but hominy and unenriched whole grains are not acceptable. Go figure. State allows dried milk, federal requires fluid.

The state allows tofu as a meat alternative, providers on the federal program can serve tofu, but will not be reimbursed for that meal.

Infant cereal must be iron fortified. Their formula is also iron fortified and costs $13+ per gallon!!!! The end result in a lot of constipated babies. Where parents used to know the importance of daily BMs, parents are now being conditioned to think that a blow-out every 3-4 days is 'normal'.

All those constipated babies are sickly as a result. Colds, chronic 'allergies', chronic viruses, ear infections. And all those conditions of course, must be 'treated' with drugs and antibiotics, and in the case of chronic ear infections- surgery for tubes.

It's quit a money making arrangement for the food industries, formula companies, doctors, and drug companies. Good for the economy, not so good for the children.

[Antigen]

I agree w/ what you're saying. I knew a little about a lot of this already. But I have to except the doctors.

I've almost always had fringe contact w/ the medical industry. If not through a family member's illness or death then through working for answering services. So I have a fairly good idea how they operate (pardon the pun) and I get a bit of industry commentary from various people.

Used to be, the local doctor was one of the wealthiest people in any small town. City doctors did alright too. Even so, if you had to live one year as a doctor w/ needy patients, you'd probably turn down $200k/yr to do it for the rest of your life. It's just an extremely demanding profession that tends to burn out or drive off anyone who thought it would be an easy way to become wealthy.

But, these days, insurance executives and their lawyers make about twice as much as an accomplished surgeon. There's a big clue to where our problems lie. Just figure out who's frellin' who and where the money went.

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.

--Thomas Hodgskin

[Anonymous]

Actually, those scoliosis screens were pretty subjective as well.

But what I find really curious here is that the research on antipsychotics finds that the newer, more expensive ones are actually better for the patient.  They are more pleasant to take, have fewer side effects and treat the symptoms that most bother patients-- ie, feeling apathetic and pleasureless.

The older meds make those things worse, which is part of why schizophrenics turn to illicit drugs (about 50% are estimated to have drug problems), which make the symptoms that *other people* care about most (ie, hallucinations and weird behavior) worse but the pleasurelessness and apathy better, at least at first.

So while the old meds are as effective as the new ones on paper, in real life, they are far worse because they cause horrible, permanent movement disorders in many pts (thorazine shuffle, uncontrollable tongue movements, shaking, etc) so no one will take them and there are more relapses and greater need for hospitalization.

So, old meds = pennywise but poundfoolish and new meds better for both pt and system and well, oh dear, sometimes the drug companies are actually right about something.  The Texas Algorithm project is actually quite well supported by pt advocates as a result.

And while Bush can screen all he likes, until we have a national health care system, it's not going to make things much worse because so many people can't afford treatment any way and won't seek it till there's an acute problem as a result.

I think objective screening could actually move many people *away* from Straight-like programs because the goal of screeners is not to find the maximum amount of patients and feed people into programs but to find actual problems and to treat them with the cheapest methods first.

Ie, you don't start with medications for high blood pressure, you first try diet and exercise and you don't start with heart transplant, you start with the least invasive procedure.

similarly, inpt treatment for addictions (and this is one thing HMO's actually get right) is a last resort, not a first.

[Anonymous]

Deborah, are you in the childcare business? you seem to know quite a bit about issues that impact both adolescents and young children.

[Antigen]

On 2004-06-23 16:34:00, Anonymous wrote:

I think objective screening could actually move many people *away* from Straight-like programs because the goal of screeners is not to find the maximum amount of patients and feed people into programs but to find actual problems and to treat them with the cheapest methods first

That's like saying if frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their butts when they hopped. If there were such a thing as objective psyche evaluation and if it could be done w/o a huge amount of funding, it would be a wonderful thing and no one would have an incentive to skew the findings or recomendations for treatment. But, in the more commonly accepted reality, there's no such thing as objective psyche evaluation and the kind of psyche evaluation we use is quite expensive. Whoever foots the bill for it (or, more likely, whoever foots the bill to pass the regulations and legislation to get it publicly funded) will do so only if it's going to pay them.

Right now, those people are making a mint on the newer drugs w/o any reported long term side effects. It's a trick question, though. They're new drugs. We have NO clue what the long term effects might be because not enough people have taken them for a long enough time for us to see the results.

But Eli Lilly will make a mint. Mark that. And so will the Neocon's other big donors; the troubled parent industry. If a kid is diagnosed w/, say, ODD or ADD, the parent has a choice in how they go about treating them. Already we see a lot of these troubled parents pointing to an ADD dx and the kids' refusal to go along w/ treatment as a reson to send them off to boot camps. I don't see how an increase in the number of these dx could possibly translate to a reduction in the market for teen gulags.

I just wish the public sector would quit helping so much. I think we've had just about all the help we can stand.

Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves

--Ronald Reagan

[Deborah]

I don't except the Dr's, except to the extent that they are trained by the AMA as priests are trained by the pope. Some are totally ignorant, but as Dr. Mendelson pointed out, many pediatritians don't immunize their own children. But, do immunize other's children. According to Mendelson it's the bread and butter of their practice.
More on Mendelson in this great article:
http://www.chirotips.com/immunization.htm

Could all of the unnecessary medical interventions/preventions be contributing to the 'behaviors' that land a kid on drugs or in a RTC? Consumers should demand the study mentioned in this article, which would compare the overall health of immunized and unimmmunized children.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?news ... 2089&rfi=6

Locals learn the dangers of vaccinations
By KAYNE CRISON, Editor June 30, 2004

Around 20 locals attended the June 24 seminar about the dangers of vaccines by Dr. Brad Burke of Arizona City Family Chiropractic. Most were startled by information they learned.

By the time a child is six months old, they are to be injected with 45 vaccines; at 18-months, 64; and at four to six years old, at least 74 vaccines.

Yet, there is no proof that vaccinated children are healthier than non-vaccinated children. No major study has ever compared groups of vaccinated and non-vaccinated children to determine which is healthier. While millions of dollars are spent each year testing shampoos and cosmetics for carginogenicity (before they are allowed to be sold to the public), vaccines are not tested for their ability to cause cancer, mutations or developmental malformations.

Startling evidence continues to pile up each year which indicates that vaccines do more harm than good. According to the US government's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, outbreaks have occurred in populations that were 100 percent vaccinated. Furthermore, no less than 80 percent of cases of measles are contracted in vaccinated people.

But what is in a vaccine? In addition to living and killed bacteria, viri and their toxins, children are injected with some of the most lethal poisons known. This includes formaldehyde, mercury, aluminum, phenol (carbolic acid), borax
(ant killer), ethylene glycol (antifreeze), dye, acetone, latex, MSG, glycerol, polysorbate and sorbitol to name just a few.

Mercury, which is still in use today, is one of the most poisonous substances known to exist in nature. In recent years, children have received up to 125 times the safe limit of mercury set by the EPA, and the symptoms of mercury toxicity resemble those of autism. Data from the CDC's (Centers for Disease Control) own records indicates that the risk of autism is 27 times greater if a child has been immunized with thimerisol-containing vaccines.

A 2003 study from the International Journal of Toxicology showed that hair samples among a group 94 autistic children had mercury levels 1/8 that of a group of 45 normal children. The lower the level of mercury, the worse the autism. Autistic children cannot get rid of the mercury so it may accumulate in their brains 18-month-old children.

More and more links are being made between vaccinations and increased cases of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome), ADD, ADHD, autism, infantile seizures and others. According to Doctor Harris L. Coulter, "'Crb death' was so infrequent in the pre-vaccination era that it was not even mentioned in the statistics, but it started to climb in the 1950s with the spread of mass vaccination."

Furthermore, the number of 2 to 4-year-olds taking psychiatric drugs like ritalin and prozac soared 50 percent between 1991 and 1995. These results are troubling since the long-term safety and effects of these drugs on a child's developing brain are largely unknown.

Nearly 90 percent of the total decline in mortality rates (from scarlet fever, diptheria, whooping cough and measles) between 1860 and 1965 occurred before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunization.

What are the Real Numbers?

By December 2002, VAERS received 244,424 reports of possible reactions to vaccines. This number includes 99,145 emergency room visits, 5149 life-
threatening reactions, 27, 925 hospitalizations, 5775 disabilities and 5309 deaths.

More parents are rejecting vaccinations for their children, for a number of reasons. For increasingly more logical reasons, many parents are beginning to consider the vaccines more dangerous than the disease. Additionally, they
prefer natural rather than artificial immunity. A growing number of parents have a vaccine-injured child. Furthermore, many parents have religious or philosophical objections to vaccinations.

Arizona statutes allow a parent to avoid vaccinating their child simply by signing a personal belief exemption. (This absolutely allows children to attend all public schools, etc.) A school nurse is required by law to provide the exemption form at the parent's request. Forms are also available at Arizona
City Family Chiropractic.

©Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. 2004