Diagnosing children with hyperactivity symptoms has become a lucrative practice for the pharmaceutical industry.
Shire Pharmaceuticals is one such company with big plans for our children. Spokesmen for this multi-billion dollar industry propose that a child’s natural energy and fidgeting is due to attention deficit disorder, their hyperactivity symptoms treatable only by a drug.
This “mental disorder” mindset made popular by psychiatrists has in fact been created out of whole cloth. As an example, psychiatrist Leon Eisenberg (who invented ADHD) admitted on his deathbed that it was a fictitious disease.
Yet a slew of drugs with disturbing side effects have been developed to cure this “illness” invented by a man who became rich on his faulty theory.
Shire leads in their production of ADHD pharmaceuticals. American doctors, mothers and fathers have been marketed to and convinced that they need a drug to cure their child of a natural desire to play, run, daydream and fidget.
In 2012, Shire CEO Angus Russell made this nebulous and damaging statement:
“There is a tremendous lack of knowledge about these diseases from a societal attitude. We are really bothered by these diseases of a psychiatric nature. We really don’t understand them and that is part of the problem. And even when we do, we get nervous about them…”
What parents are really getting nervous about is the effect these disastrous drugs are having on their children.
Shire’s popular ADHD drug Vyvanse has some disturbing side effects, freely admitted on the home page of their website:
- Heart related problems, such as sudden death in those with heart problems or defects, sudden death, stroke or heart attacks in adult users
- Psychiatric problems, including new or worse behavior and thought problems, new or worse bipolar disease
- In adults and kids, new psychotic symptoms like auditory or visual hallucinations, believing untrue things and suspicion and new manic symptoms
Why would psychiatrists and other medical professionals convince parents to put their child on a dangerous drug to cure a questionable disease invented by a psychiatrist?
The answer can be found in the billions of dollars the drug companies invest in advertising their drugs. Smiling children, cute cartoons and soothing background music combine to make the ugly side effects seem as inconsequential as a faded footnote.
How low can Shire go? The company now contributes money to ADHD advocacy groups, holding seminars to help parents cope with their “mentally ill” children. Of course, researchers paid by Shire are often guest speakers at these events.
Refreshingly, parents and doctors in Europe have a healthy suspicion that something is wrong with this accepted picture. Although Shire is a Dublin based company, children in the US are diagnosed with a psychiatric illness 25 times more often than European kids.
Shire knows which side of the Atlantic their bread is buttered on. It must be incredibly frustrating to find their authority questioned in their own backyard.
Parents and grandparents in the USA can stand up to the twin psychiatric dangers of diagnosing their children with hyperactivity symptoms and the recommending of dangerous treatments. Personal research can be done to find a drug-free healthy alternative to psychiatric drugs.
Our children deserve a chance to have a future. And our nation needs citizens with all of their faculties intact.
http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-03-27-NEWS-inventor-of-adhd-says-adhd-is-a-fictitious-disease.html
My son was a happy, very active kid until he started school. Never did he lie to me or defy me or his dad in the time we raised him. Yes, he was a very busy kid, and thankfully we lived in an area where he had plenty of playmates and room to run off his energy. We put him on Ritalin for awhile to help him in school, and yes, it helped that, but his appetite went kaput and he had trouble sleeping. He was wiry in build, so I took him off the drug after a few months because of the side effects like lack of appetite. He is an intelligent, considerate, and honest adult now, and a good parent. He does still have trouble with details and organization. I think home schooling would have been a good choice, but in the seventies I don’t think it was an option.