OK I started reading the article linked to above and have made a few comments below. I'd gotten 3 pages in of 9 (I copied over to Word) before I got bored with typing the same thing over and over again so I apologise for not typing more:
?To say that you have been 'insulted' is to refuse to accept that there may be some truth in what I say, possibly because you have some doubts about the matter yourself.?
What gibberish! Because you don't accept what I say to be fact you must doubt your own beliefs? First sentence and he has made no sense.
?In fact I often find that angry, personal vehemence in an argument is a sign that the person involved has serious doubts about his or her position.?
Or have just had an unqualified oik insult them, their child and their doctor?
?a complaint for which there is no established, objective test.?
Much like M.E. Dyspraxia and many others then? No big horror show here it is normal practice from professionals with years of experience... they wouldn't expect an unqualified columnist to be able to do it.
?Anything else is speculation, not fact or knowledge. If someone wants to say that there is something called 'ADHD', and prescribe actual drugs for it, the burden is on him to prove it by experiment, and to present a proof which could be exploded by new discoveries.?
Oh! You mean like the basic, simple fact that whether you like the idea of Ritalin or not there is the inescapable truth that it is a stimulant akin to speed for those who don't have ADHD yet it acts as a chemical depressant on those with it?
?'ADHD', which is generally done by a subjective assessment.?
Yawn... change the record. Lots of conditions are diagnosed the same way.
?I must also stress that, if you have been told that your child is suffering from a 'disorder', that does not actually mean that this must be so. Sceptics and doubters may be right.?
Not denying that this could be the case but this is a weak argument and it is the same one used by flat Earthers, Intelligent design believers and Global Warming deny-ists.
?Doctors, regrettably, are often mistaken. Medical practice, even in physical medicine, undergoes fashions and fads just like every other field of human activity. Some examples: To my own knowledge, 23 years ago parents were told that the best way to avoid cot death was to lie babies face down. Five years later, the advice was the exact opposite. Putting them face down was likely to be fatal, and they must be laid on their backs. In the mid-20th century many psychiatrists believed that pre-frontal lobotomy was a miracle treatment. It is now universally decried as a barbaric and destructive operation.?
23 years ago, 60 years ago... Doctors still make mistakes, doctors still improve. To say that you should disbelieve your doctor because doctors have made mistakes is idiotic. Questioning your doctor is one thing but this is stupidity. This, in fact, is the same form of stupidity that caused people to stop getting vaccinations done endangering the lives of children.
?But neurologists are often extremely vague about how they operate and why they have the effects that they do have.?
Which is actually true of a huge amount of the drugs we use and is hardly news. Yawn... scare mongering...
?In my childhood, operations for tonsillectomy were routinely given to children with nothing seriously wrong with them. Shoe shops provided machines in which you could X-ray your own feet, machines which were believed to be wholly safe and advertised as such. Most first-aid textbooks recommended treating burns by putting greasy creams on them, now acknowledged to be one of the worst things you can possibly do. When I first became a blood donor, in the 1970s, I was given iron pills by the nurse and told to take them without fail. This is now considered unnecessary, and possibly harmful. And so on.?
Please scare us some more Mr Scary Columnist! All utterly irrelevant.
?It is perfectly reasonable for informed laymen to question the wisdom of doctors, and often wise to do so.?
On a case by case basis not to deny the existence of an entire condition! For him to do that is utterly irresponsible especially when medical opinion in general is against him.
?I did once respond to such an offer, asking the writer to name a date. I warned that I spent rather a long time in the bathroom in the morning, but promised to bring my own wine and do my own laundry and ironing. But I heard nothing more, perhaps because I added . "I can assure you that, even if I spent a year in your home, I should still not be persuaded that 'ADHD' exists." How can I be so sure? Why wouldn't I be influenced by daily contact with a badly-behaved or uncontrollable child??
So he has a closed mind, is rude and sarcastic.
?Many modern British and American children, especially young boys, cause their parents and their teachers great difficulty. They defy authority, they run wild, they break things, they yell and shout and are horrible to their brothers and sisters.?
Because this has never happened in the past has it? Oh wait things may even have been worse but, of course, everyone has a rose-tinted view of the past. There were no wild riots, football hooliganism, criminal gangs or anything like that was there? There was no open defiance of teachers... You know what I love? When a parent tells me that things were much better in their day and that kids wouldn't dare misbehave... and then another time quite forgetting that they defend their child being caught smoking by saying 'at least he wasn't actually smoking in class like I used to'
?It just proves that in modern Western societies there are a lot of ill-behaved boys. The question is not "do children behave badly in increasing numbers, especially at school?" Everyone knows this is the case.?
Do they? Really? Where is your study? Where is your evidence? There were riots in schools, violent beatings, attacks on teachers, outright defiance. Schools were not all flowers and butterflies in the past.
?One of the problems with the diagnosis of 'ADHD' is that it covers such an extraordinarily broad range of behaviours including -in my experience - children who may actually suffer from birth trauma or brain damage, and children who are merely wilful and obstinate, or are driven to distraction by dull schools and bad teachers.?
'In my experience' is a weasel phrase isn't it? No evidence again. I like the change of subject to something nice and horrific like brain damage and birth trauma. This is a great bit of muddying the water. No evidence, no proof just scare mongering.
?Worse, it closes the subject.?
Actually the subject is open and being actively researched his argument closes the subject.
?If they are all suffering from a treatable physical disorder, then we need not worry about our debased family life and our useless schools.?
Relevance? Evidence? Our schools have been improving dramatically and have a tremendous standing in the world. How dare he openly insult them without any proof or evidence being presented. What exactly is meant by 'debased family life'? What evidence is there of it? How general is this sweeping statement?
?And the small minority of children who do actually have something physically wrong with them are dosed with drugs that pacify them, and their real problems are ignored and go uninvestigated This means firstly they are not treated, and secondly that medical knowledge ceases to advance. The 'diagnosis' of 'ADHD' helps none of those to whom it is applied. But it gets a lot of adults off the hook of responsibility and closes off scientific inquiry.?
Proof? Evidence? Again nice rabble-rousing but no real details.
?Even if some of these children do actually have a physical defect curable by drugs, they cannot conceivably all be the same - six or seven million children now in the USA, hundreds of thousands in Britain.?
Why not?
?Among the 'ADHD' children are those who have been exposed to an enormous amount of TV from early infancy, or to violent computer games. There are those who suffer from an almost total absence of physical exercise, and those who have never been introduced to a routine of mealtimes and bedtimes, and so are unwilling to adapt to any environment in which there are routines and timetables.?
'Amongst the' Love it! This is exactly the same argument folks use to link computer games and crime. 'He played a car theft game and stole a car.' Which, of course ignores the millions who play the games and don't steal cars and all those who steal cars and don't play the game.