 In 1971, George Lucas produced his first
feature film, an anti-utopian masterpiece entitled THX-1138. One particularly
arresting feature of THX (which was the "name of the film's main character)
was that in the society envisioned by Lucas, "drug evasion was a crime."
-
- The placid "mood of this society " essential
to its functioning " is drug-induced." Refuse to take your daily
dosage, and you will be visited by robot policemen who give new meaning
to the term "Drug Enforcement Agency."
-
- I remember being particularly struck by a line of dopey-eyed
children in white smocks, being led through a hallway by a chrome-faced
policeman, in whom they appeared to place implicit trust. All had tiny
intravenous pumps strapped to their arms.
-
- Warnings about the dangers of using science to shoehorn
mankind into some form of behavioral orthodoxy are not new. They appear
also in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984 and Ira Levin's
This Perfect Day. What's new is that the future is here " and the
warnings appear to have gone unheeded.
-
- Between 4 million and 6 million American children line
up to receive doses of a powerful drug called Ritalin every school day
morning. These youngsters, mostly boys, have been diagnosed with "attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD), a multiple-choice checklist of symptoms that is coming
under increasing scientific attack for its vagueness and vulnerability
to abuse as a tool for control."
-
- The drug does not enable learning. Dr. Rosemary Tannock,
of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, reported last year that Ritalin
has no effect on children's short-term memory or the "phonological
processing required for reading." This year, both the Archives of
General Psychiatry and the National Institutes of Health have conducted
studies that cast extreme doubt on the idea that Ritalin is effective for
anything except making children stay in their chairs and keep quiet. Numerous
other studies confirm that Ritalin is remarkably effective in achieving
what old Mrs. McGillicutty in the one-room schoolhouse of a less credulous
age could accomplish with a look.
-
 "The effect is, the child moves
less and is less aware of competing stimuli," says Steven Ingersoll,
president of Smart Schools Inc. in Brighton, which runs four charter schools.
-
- Ingersoll says 22 percent of the students were on Ritalin
when one charter school began in 1996. That same year, fourth-grade students
scored last in their district on the state achievement test. Three years
later, less than 1 percent of the kids are on Ritalin, and 100 percent
of the now seventh graders scored in the top category on state tests for
reading and math.
-
- Ingersoll argues that television has played an important
role in attention deficit-type behavior, but that "drugging is not
what the child needs. Ritalin is a powerful stimulant that "shares
many of the pharmacological effects of amphetamine, methamphetamine and
cocaine, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. As one would expect,
Ritalin is being stolen from nurses, stations at schools and sold on the
street for its effects.
-
- Most disturbing of all are recent reports from New York
and elsewhere where parents who question whether their child should be
placed on Ritalin are turned in to the authorities. In recent testimony
before Congress, Dr. Peter Breggin, author of Talking Back to Ritalin:
What Doctors Aren't Telling You About Stimulants for Children, put the
matter bluntly: "Parents ... are being pressured and coerced by schools
to give psychiatric drugs to their children. Teachers, school psychologists
and administrators commonly make dire threats about their inability to
teach children without medicating them. ... They even call child protective
services to investigate parents for child neglect. ...
-
- This is no movie. All over Michigan, Ingersoll says,
parents face opposition for refusing to give Ritalin to their children.
But few are willing to come forward for fear of reprisal. As of 1998, Michigan
was No. 3 in the nation in Ritalin use.
-
- In fact, Ritalin use is at an all-time high. The financial
windfall from Ritalin sales surpasses that of Valium, Viagra or Prozac.
-
- The company that manufactures the drug, Novartis, a multinational
pharmaceutical company, is facing a class-action lawsuit that claims the
company "colluded to create, develop and promote the diagnosis of
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD) in a highly successful effort to increase the market for its product
Ritalin. The company denies the charge.
-
- If this sounds to you less like the progress of a disease
and cure and more like a sinister marketing plan aimed at children, you're
not alone. For more information, just do a Web search on "Ritalin.
And get ready to be outraged.
-
- Samuel Walker is a communications specialist for the
Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Midland-based public policy education
and research institute. Write letters to 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI
48226, or fax them to (313) 222-6417 or send e-mail to letters@detnews.com.
-
- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
-
-
-
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|