baughman1

Address to the Texas State Board of Education
Austin, Texas
November 3, 2000

by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD
Neurologist, Pediatric Neurologist

(revised from my testimony to the Committee on Education and the
Workforce, hearing entitled "Behavioral Drugs in Schools: Questions and
Concerns," held September 29, 2000, 9:00 a.m., in Room 2175, Rayburn
House Office Building, Washington, DC, 20515-6100)

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Texas State Board of Education,

Saying that the clarification of attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder--ADHD belongs in "laboratories of science, not the halls of
justice" the editors of the Los Angeles Times [1], like the rest of the
country, fail to understand that psychiatry is not a science and that
what 'biological psychiatry' represents to be it's science has no
purpose but to weave illusions of science and disease and to deceive the
public--for profit. Science refers to any branch of knowledge based on
objective observation, experimentation, and reproducible, verifiable,
results. Not a single psychiatric 'disease' has been validated by
finding a confirmatory physical or chemical abnormality, such as
elevated blood sugar in diabetes, or malignant cells from cancers.

[figure. Disease vs. no disease]

Psychiatrists do not do physical or neurological examinations and do
not seek to demonstrate objective abnormalities, as do neurologists and
all other types of physicians, using diagnostic laboratory, imaging and
pathological technologies.

[figure. Laboratory, imaging and pathologic testing].

Psychiatry's rightful place is the mind, not the brain. However they
have deserted the mind for their fanciful, profit-directed, pretense to
the brain. Doing so, they desert the patient as well. They deal-or at
least, they should deal--not with diseases, i.e., physical
abnormalities, but with emotional and behavioral problems and dilemmas,
in normal human beings-patients in whom other physicians have ruled out
an organic basis for the patient's symptoms.

Consider ADHD, their prototypical, invented disease; their multi-billion
dollar, marketplace bonanza.

In 1948, The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology divided (by
mutual agreement) 'neuro-psychiatry' into 'neurology,' dealing with
organic diseases of the brain, and 'psychiatry,' dealing with
psychological conditions in normal human beings [2].

[figure . Neurological patient with (a) diffuse, and (b) focal
abnormality of the brain.
(c ) Psychiatric patient with symptoms (subjective) but no signs
(objective) of abnormality]

However, psychiatric drugs made their appearance in the fifties, and in
the sixties psychiatry, in league with the pharmaceutical industry,
authored a joint market strategy: they would call all emotional problems
"brain diseases," due to "chemical imbalances" needing "chemical
balancers"-pills!

In October, 1970, Congressman, Cornelius Gallagher [3] wrote HEW
Secretary, Elliott Richardson:

"I have received letters highly critical of the focus of the medical
side of minimal brain dysfunction (the reigning designation at the
time), which is, incidentally, one of at least thirty-eight names
attached to this condition.Such a high incidence in the population--as
high as thirty percent in ghetto areas.may not be pathological at all."