Inventor of ADHD says ADHD is a fictitious disease

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tall-p
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19 May 2013, 1:06 am

INVENTOR OF ADHD'S DEATHBED CONFESSION: "ADHD IS A FICTITIOUS DISEASE"

Wednesday, March 27th 2013
By Moritz Nestor, Current Concerns
Source

http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-03 ... sease.html

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Fortunately, the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics (NEK, President: Otfried Höffe) critically commented on the use of the ADHD drug Ritalin in its opinion of 22 November 2011 titled Human enhancement by means of pharmacological agents: The consumption of pharmacological agents altered the child’s behavior without any contribution on his or her part.

That amounted to interference in the child’s freedom and personal rights, because pharmacological agents induced behavioral changes but failed to educate the child on how to achieve these behavioral changes independently. The child was thus deprived of an essential learning experience to act autonomously and emphatically which “considerably curtails children’s freedom and impairs their personality development”, the NEK criticized.

The alarmed critics of the Ritalin disaster are now getting support from an entirely different side. The German weekly Der Spiegel quoted in its cover story on 2 February 2012 the US American psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, born in 1922 as the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, who was the “scientific father of ADHD” and who said at the age of 87, seven months before his death in his last interview: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease”

Since 1968, however, some 40 years, Leon Eisenberg’s “disease” haunted the diagnostic and statistical manuals, first as “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood”, now called “ADHD”. The use of ADHD medications in Germany rose in only eighteen years from 34 kg (in 1993) to a record of no less than 1760 kg (in 2011) – which is a 51-fold increase in sales! In the United States every tenth boy among ten year-olds already swallows an ADHD medication on a daily basis. With an increasing tendency.

When it comes to the proven repertoire of Edward Bernays, the father of propaganda, to sell the First World War to his people with the help of his uncle’s psychoanalysis and to distort science and the faith in science to increase profits of the industry – what about investigating on whose behalf the “scientific father of ADHD” conducted science? His career was remarkably steep, and his “fictitious disease” led to the best sales increases. And after all, he served in the “Committee for DSM V and ICD XII, American Psychiatric Association” from 2006 to 2009. After all, Leon Eisenberg received “the Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research. He has been a leader in child psychiatry for more than 40 years through his work in pharmacological trials, research, teaching, and social policy and for his theories of autism and social medicine”.

And after all, Eisenberg was a member of the “Organizing Committee for Women and Medicine Conference, Bahamas, November 29 – December 3, 2006, Josiah Macy Foundation (2006)”. The Josiah Macy Foundation organized conferences with intelligence agents of the OSS, later CIA, such as Gregory Bateson and Heinz von Foerster during and long after World War II. Have such groups marketed the diagnosis of ADHD in the service of the pharmaceutical market and tailor-made for him with a lot of propaganda and public relations? It is this issue that the American psychologist Lisa Cosgrove and others investigated in their study Financial Ties between DSM-IV Panel Members and the Pharmaceutical Industry7. They found that “Of the 170 DSM panel members 95 (56%) had one or more financial associations with companies in the pharmaceutical industry. One hundred percent of the members of the panels on ‘Mood Disorders’ and ‘Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders’ had financial ties to drug companies. The connections are especially strong in those diagnostic areas where drugs are the first line of treatment for mental disorders.” In the next edition of the manual, the situation is unchanged. “Of the 137 DSM-V panel members who have posted disclosure statements, 56% have reported industry ties – no improvement over the percent of DSM-IV members.” “The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry,” said Dr Irwin Savodnik, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles.

This is well paid. Just one example: The Assistant Director of the Pediatric Psychopharmacology Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School received “$1 million in earnings from drug companies between 2000 and 2007”. In any case, no one can easily get around the testimony of the father of ADHD: “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease.”

The task of psychologists, educators and doctors is not to put children on the “chemical lead” because the entire society cannot handle the products of its misguided theories of man and raising children, and instead hands over our children to the free pharmaceutical market. Let us return to the basic matter of personal psychology and education: The child is to acquire personal responsibility and emphatic behavior under expert guidance – and that takes the family and the school: In these fields, the child should be able to lead off mentally. This constitutes the core of the human person.


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Wandering_Stranger
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19 May 2013, 4:22 am

I don't think it exists either. Funny how it never existed when I was at school. 2 cousins of mine supposedly have it - they can both sit still and watch a film - something I wish I could do. (my hyperacusis makes this a bit difficult)



Verdandi
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19 May 2013, 4:29 am

Wandering_Stranger wrote:
I don't think it exists either. Funny how it never existed when I was at school. 2 cousins of mine supposedly have it - they can both sit still and watch a film - something I wish I could do. (my hyperacusis makes this a bit difficult)


It exists.

It doesn't mean you can't watch a film or read a book or whatever. It can meant that for some, but not all. It doesn't mean that your attention is constantly shifting and you're not able to pay attention to anything ever. It simply means you have deficits in self-regulation.

Here's a necessary anodyne to the tripe in the article tall-p linked:

http://www.russellbarkley.org/factsheet ... us2002.pdf

Quote:
We, the undersigned consortium of international scientists, are deeply concerned about the periodic inaccurate portrayal of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in media reports. This is a disorder with which we are all very familiar and toward which many of us have dedicated scientific studies if not entire careers. We fear that inaccurate stories rendering ADHD as myth, fraud, or benign condition may cause thousands of sufferers not to seek treatment for their disorder. It also leaves the public with a general sense that this disorder is not valid or real or consists of a rather trivial affliction.



Verdandi
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19 May 2013, 4:39 am

Also, Snopes:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/adhd.asp

I can't copy paste from Snopes for some reason, but read it. It appears that Dr. Leon Eisenberg did not say ADHD is fictitious. He said it is overdiagnosed. Der Spiegel also published an interview Dr. Jerome Kagan, who referred to ADHD as an "invention."



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19 May 2013, 8:27 am

Wandering_Stranger wrote:
I don't think it exists either. Funny how it never existed when I was at school. 2 cousins of mine supposedly have it - they can both sit still and watch a film - something I wish I could do. (my hyperacusis makes this a bit difficult)


Believe me, it's a very real thing.

Of course, diagnosis methods, definitions, boundaries, can be more or less accurate (or unaccurate). The same way that nobody agrees what exactly is autism and asperger and HFA and so. Perhaps disorders that today are supposed to be different ones end up being just two sides of the same coin. Right now there's too many unknown things.

But as a problem, it's a very real one.


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19 May 2013, 9:22 am

adhd does exist. my own husband is adhd and he does not have asd but you can still see he is a little diferent to his friends (the friends he has got).

he is very disorganised, extremly absent-minded and i have to do all the remembering for him because hes not always with it.

he has learning dificulties.

he is socially awkward in some ways but isnt enough to be able to get a diagnosis for asd, just socially awkward in other ways and sometimes chase people away with his unique behaveour.

he is immature, like he messes about inappropiately for his age. he is in his early 50s but sometimes acts like a 10 year old in his behaveour.

he can have obsessions, which switch from one thing to another sometimes within a few days. im autistic but dont have any obsessions with anything.

he sometimes can be very calm, but most of the time he is hyper, cant sit still, and sometimes gets mad moments where he wants to squeeze something to get his hyperactive urges out (sometime he will squeeze me, other times he will really tease me and thinks its hilarous when i react, and i do react because i don't take nonesense very well).

he cant focus on a book very well at all, and gets bored easily and then starts messing about because i think reading a book unsettles him because of his short attention span. he doesnt focus well on tv either but likes his films and can focus on them, though sometimes he get fidgety.

he definietly have adhd. and it does exist.



SG78
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19 May 2013, 9:46 am

The name may have been made up, but the common symptoms are very real, because I was not only diagnosed with it, I lived it. The question for me has always been is Ritalin an effective treatment for it? I took it for a few months when I was 10 or so, and all it did was make me zombie-like. Yeah, I didn't bounce off the walls as much, but I don't think it made me a better student.



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19 May 2013, 9:54 am

Verdandi wrote:
Also, Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/adhd.asp

I can't copy paste from Snopes for some reason, but read it. It appears that Dr. Leon Eisenberg did not say ADHD is fictitious. He said it is overdiagnosed. Der Spiegel also published an interview Dr. Jerome Kagan, who referred to ADHD as an "invention."

Snopes has some kind of "Copy-Lock" in effect. No one can C&P their copyrighted articles.

Dr. Eisenberg did not say that ADHD is fictitious. He said that it is overdiagnosed.

World Public Union has distorted the facts, again.

:roll:



scarp
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19 May 2013, 10:37 am

I think it's hilarious that he is called the "inventor" of ADHD. I picture a funny little man tinkering around in his basement with a human brain or something. Then I think of a long line of his colleagues doing similar work, e.g. the "inventors" of cancer, AIDs, schizophrenia, etc.



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19 May 2013, 10:55 am

He said ADHD is a lie, just like Darwin "converted to Christianity" in his deathbed.

Now I understand why the Norse people valued death in battle: deathbeds tend to distort people's beliefs.


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19 May 2013, 10:57 am

Quote:
"ADHS ist ein Paradebeispiel für eine fabrizierte Erkrankung", sagte Eisenberg.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-83865282.html
Translation:
"ADHD is a textbook example of a fabricated disease," Eisenberg said.


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19 May 2013, 11:31 am

He should have called it ''Eisenberg's Syndrome/Disorder'', just like Hans Aspoerger named whatever Asperger's Syndrome would be abbreviated as if it wasn't named after it's discoverer.

I often wish AS didn't have a name like that because it's always felt like I had another second name. I think I would be happier if AS was originally named ''Social and Emotional Deficit Disorder'' (SEDD) or something like that, sorry it's just an example, no need to get offended or argumentative if you do. I just think that fits me better because my social awkwardness and the way I think and feel about things affect my life the most, along with the rest of the symptoms. But ADHD has other symptoms too, it's not just about being hyper and that's it.


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19 May 2013, 11:37 am

Joe90 wrote:
I think I would be happier if AS was originally named ''Social and Emotional Deficit Disorder'' (SEDD) or something like that, sorry it's just an example, no need to get offended or argumentative if you do. I just think that fits me better because my social awkwardness and the way I think and feel about things affect my life the most,


I guess you would be much happier with the new diagnosis in the DSM then - "Social communication disorder". That's where all the aspies who aren't as autistic get put in the future.



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19 May 2013, 11:43 am

The name of the website "world public opinion" says it all really. Public opinion is an ass. "The public" is largely comprised of f***wits. I have no desire to know 95% of their opinions because they are likely to be ill considered, selfish and stupid. World public opinion my ass.



Verdandi
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19 May 2013, 11:49 am

Eloa wrote:
Quote:
"ADHS ist ein Paradebeispiel für eine fabrizierte Erkrankung", sagte Eisenberg.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-83865282.html
Translation:
"ADHD is a textbook example of a fabricated disease," Eisenberg said.


Read the Snopes article, as it provides perspective as to Eisenberg's words. I don't think Snopes tends to take positions, just offers the available facts.

Looking at the surrounding paragraphs, he does not literally mean that it is "fabricated" in English, and the German word used doesn't seem to mean what the English word means. I mean, what he is quoted as saying is still wrong, and many researchers and psychiatrists and psychologists have come along after him and developed greater, more in-depth understanding of ADHD. Just being a guy who developed an earlier understanding of it does not mean that he was either more up to date or better informed than others who have put significantly more work into it.

As always there are many people invested in tearing down the idea that ADHD is a legitimate disorder and many more willing to believe that it's not real. The story circulating about Eisenberg's statement feeds both of those attitudes, but does absolutely nothing to help the people who actually have ADHD.



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19 May 2013, 11:55 am

Transliteration of the paragraphs about ADHD:

Quote:
In the sixties it was the U.S. psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg, who, under a new name, helped the disease to break through. In the evening the doctor played at home with his own children, during the day he took care of difficult students - and tried psychotropic drugs from them. Initially he experimented with dextroamphetamine, methylphenidate later he prescribed to break bread. And lo and behold: The means changing the behavior; spirited children were docile.

At a seminar of the World Health Organization fought Leonberg and his colleague Mike Rutter 1967 about the alleged record brain disorder as a disease in the list of psychiatric disorders. The more marked psychosomatic physicians in the round went too far, but Eisenberg and Rutter did not relent - and prevailed.

In the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual," the "hyperkinetic reaction of childhood" is anno 1968 and has appeared in their place today, under the now common names ADHD.

So that was a condition in the world, which made it quite many. The idea that ADHD have genetic causes is innate and thus relieved the parents. In the education it could not be, if your child is not working as desired. And so it is in Germany in every primary school now statistically a child diagnosed with ADHD. Thus Tobe Marie and hyperactivity are quiet, they receive funds as methylphenidate and Ritalin. That makes the industry: the consumption of the narcotic contained methylphenidate reached new records each year. 1993 were still 34 kg folded in pharmacies, there were 1760 kg in the previous year.

A look at the U.S. shows that is definitely still room for improvement. Of the ten year-old boy now swallows every tenth already an ADHD medication - every day. But of all the scientific father of ADHD has followed the explosion of prescriptions with growing horror. Leon Eisenberg later took over the management of psychiatry at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and became one of the most famous neurologists in the world. In his last interview, seven months before his death from prostate cancer at the age of 87, he distanced himself from his youthful indiscretion.

A tall, thin man with glasses and braces 2009 opened the door to his apartment in Harvard Square, invited at the kitchen table and poured coffee. He would never have thought he said that his invention would be so popular once. "ADHD is a prime example of a fabricated disease," Eisenberg said. "The genetic predisposition to ADHD is completely overrated."

Instead, child psychiatrist should more thoroughly determine the psychosocial reasons that can lead to behavioral problems, Eisenberg said. Are there fights with parents, mother and father live together, there are problems in the family? Such questions are important, but they are taking a lot of time, Eisenberg said, adding with a sigh: ". Prescribe a pill against it very quickly,"

The ADHD mind, he had called Eisenberg was not let go.

In fact, already the next alleged childhood disease spreading. Bipolar disorder or manic-depressive illness was not until the nineties into virtually unknown in children, since it is in the U.S. the most common diagnoses in child psychiatry. The number of visits to the doctor because this disorder has increased in almost ten years to 40 times, many of the patients are just two or three years old.