Big Pharma Bribes Doctors to Hook Your Kids on Drugs

By Bruce E. Levine, AlterNet. Posted July 17, 2009.

It is common for cocaine addicts to experience depression, anxiety and cognitive problems, and mental health authorities have long reported that ADHD as a "risk factor" for other mental health problems but have neglected to take seriously the possibility that it is the ADHD-drug treatment itself that contributes to higher rates of other emotional and cognitive difficulties. The current Scientific American Mind article reports: "At least three studies using animals hint that exposure to methylphenidate during childhood may alter mood in the long run, perhaps raising the risk of depression and anxiety in adulthood."

"Amphetamines such as Adderall could alter the mind in other ways," continues the Scientific American Mind piece. A team at the Yale University School of Medicine documented long-lasting behavioral oddities such as hallucinations and cognitive impairment in rhesus monkeys that received injected doses of amphetamines. Compared with controls, the drug-treated monkeys also displayed deficits in working memory that persisted for at least three years after exposure to the drug.

A research team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine trained baboons and squirrel monkeys to orally self-administer an Adderall-like drug for two to four weeks, and the team found evidence of amphetamine-induced brain damage, specifically, lower levels of dopamine and fewer dopamine transporters on nerve endings in amphetamine-treated primates than in untreated animals. "One possible consequence of a loss of dopamine and its associated molecules is Parkinson’s disease, a movement disorder that can also lead to cognitive deficits," notes Scientific American Mind. A study in humans published in 2006 hints at a link between Parkinson’s and a prolonged exposure to amphetamine in any form.

It has also now been scientifically established -- in contradiction to Biederman’s findings -- that ADHD drugs stunt growth in humans. In a 2007 National Institute of Mental Health study of ADHD treatments involving 579 seven- to ten-year-olds over three years time, the growth rates of unmedicated children were compared to the growth rates of children who took ADHD stimulants throughout that period. Compared to the unmedicated children, the ADHD drug-treated children showed a decrease in growth rate (on average, two fewer centimeters in height and 2.7 kilograms less in weight). This growth-stunting effect stopped by the third year, but the children on ADHD drugs never caught up to their counterparts.

In my clinical experience, there are many children whose only problem in life is not doing their homework but who are medicated with ADHD drugs; and the majority of their parents had no idea that they were giving their children amphetamines or amphetamine-like substances. Unfortunately, too many Americans are willing to surrender their own authority to damn near every pompous authoritarian rather than question the legitimacy of exploitive industrial complexes and the predatory people at the top of them.

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).His Web site is www.brucelevine.net

See more stories tagged with: drugs, big pharma, adhd, amphetamines, joseph biederman

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author of Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green, 2007).

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