| Monday
January 15, 2001 I have a long and not well written letter from a psychology student (level
not specified) saying that Dr. Breggin is an idiot and his
pop article a work of folly. That's a free translation: the letter is
more polite. Here is some of it:
I was very disappointed to see the space that you
recently gave to a letter which made many powerful statements about ADHD.
I know you personally don't believe in the disease. However, as you are a
respected scientist, I'm finding it hard to see how you could believe the
letter in question.
A critical review of the letter shows it to be
emotionally charged, short on facts, disingenious, and sometimes utterly
impossible to believe.
As a psychology major, and a person with Adult ADHD,
this letter incensed me, because people might believe you were endorsing
this viewpoint. I hope that's not the case -- and if it is, I hope you'll
take the time to read my comments, and reconsider.
I tried to read his comments, but
frankly the length made that difficult, and it has been a very difficult
week anyway. It is full of things like (a long quote from Dr. Breggin's
article)
Notice that the author does not provide specific
cases. The mythical "they" is used, suggesting a conspiracy.
Do things like what is described occur? Probably.
Is it a rampant problem? It's hard to tell without
hard numbers, which aren't provided.
Since Breggin was writing an article
for popular consumption, not a peer-reviewed journal article, and used
anecdotes from his own practice, I am not sure that the same standards
need to be applied. Awhat appeared to me to be an anecdotal letter, I
never thought it claimed to be "science". As to numbers, when a
significant percentage of the boys in schools are given drugs, and we got
along all right without doing that until recently, I would think it a
matter of concern.
Here is another example:
> Stimulant drugs, including methylphenidate and amphetamine, were
first > approved for the control of behavior in children during the
mid-1950s.
Notice the loaded wording: "control of behavior
in children."
One could also say "approved for treatment of
hyperactive disorders in children," which has a much different
emotional connotation. It's also more accurate from a scientific point of
view.
There is considerable more, and much
on a par with this. If there is a significant point other than "I
disagree" I didn't have the patience to find it.
I invited this correspondent to send
me something shorter and to the point, but what I got in reply was
> This isn't lengthy it is unreadably long. What is your point?
My point, sir, is that you posted this letter to
your site without comment, apparently in agreement. Further, that the
letter was written by someone who was at best a misinformed paranoid, and
at worst a rabble-rousing agent provocateur.
I have had great respect for you. I cannot say that
your apparent support of pseudo-scientific tripe such as Dr. Breggin's
message continues that respect.
The letter simply does not stand up to reasonable
inspection.
And on that score I will simply have
to leave matters as an exercise for the reader. I am prepared to believe
Dr. Breggin is wrong. I am not prepared to believe that something about
15% (my wife says it's much higher than that) of the boys in schools
suffer from some disorder that wasn't even dreamed of when I took my
graduate work in psychology in the 50's. Now admittedly my field was more
engineering psychology than clinical, but I had a heck of a lot of study
in personality theory, and like everyone else I had to have a year of
abnormal psychology and clinical studies. My textbook was the standard
medical school psychiatric text "A TEXTBOOK OF PSYCHIATRY" and I
still have it, and I can't find ADD listed either as a diagnosis OR AS A
SET OF SYMPTOMS needing treatment.
This is significant: either some
really severe problem has developed since the 1950's, or -- well or
what? That prior to 1950 we managed to educate boys sufficiently that
conscripts were nearly all able to read, which was not true by the time
conscription was ended; but we did that without realizing that a very
large percentage of those boys should be drugged to get them properly
through school? This could be true but it seems unreasonable.
I make no doubt that something like
ADD exists, just as true dyslexia exists. But true dyslexia is very rare,
down under 1%, yet 10% and more of children are diagnosed as
"having" dyslexia. Most cases of "dyslexia" are
maestragenic: they kid didn't learn to read because the kid wasn't taught
to read. I do not know what the corresponding numbers for ADD are, but I
would be astonished if "true ADD" amounted to more than 10% of
the boys in schools. I truly would.
I give one more example of the
complaints raised against Dr. Breggin:
> Stimulant medications are far more dangerous than most
practitioners and > published experts seem to realize. Animals and
humans cross-addict to > methylphenidate, amphetamine and cocaine.
Dr. Breggin appears to be saying that almost
everyone other than him is an idiot and hasn't seen some danger in
Ritalin. I find that hard to believe.
I am willing, indeed eager, to see
some proper debate on the use of Ritalin in the US; but I do not think the
above contributes much to understanding. And I continue to wonder why, if
10% and more of the boys in US schools need drugs today, we managed when I
went to school in the 30's and 40's to drug none of my classmates; and to
wonder if, given my restlessness and boredom -- when you are in 8th grade
having been in the 7th grade in two grades/classroom school so you have
heard every word that is going to be taught in 8th grade, and you could
pass the 8th grade tests the day you came to the 8th grade, you are going
to be bored and restless -- I wonder if I would not have been drugged if
drugs were available.
Instead I was disciplined but also
allowed to read books, books that were not assigned to others, and I could
even get away with reading them during lessons so long as it wasn't a
lesson requiring recitation. Incidentally, being required to recite on a
regular basis was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I
gather they don't do that much in schools now. Pity.
I have run on enough on this. I am
not endorsing Dr. Breggin, but I can't denounce him either. I think we
drug far too many of our children. I am glad I and mine escaped this
trend. It may be appropriate for some but I cannot believe it is the
proper treatment of 10% and more of American boys. More
below.
I have much mail about DSL and my
plan to get a T1 line. Typical:
Jerry,
"Chaos Manor is 18,000 feet from the nearest telephone-switching
station, and thus too far for DSL".
I believe that I've read that you have an ISDN line
at Chaos Manor. In all of your searching for DSL, have you, at all,
discussed (or been offered) IDSL ?
IDSL is DSL over ISDN. It uses both 64K channels AND
the 16K control channel to provide a 144K DSL connection to the subscriber
and, technically, will work anywhere ISDN works. It was iniitially
developed to be able to provide DSL in locations that were fed by digital
concentrators, that had ISDN capability.
I have an associate who, currently, is receiving
IDSL from Earthlink, who I believe is one of your ISPs.
While I understand that IDSL is not available
everywhere, If you haven't explored this option, I might suggest it. It
won't be as fast as a T1 but it will be alot less expensive.
One of the down sides - if you are able to get it
from Earthlink... They don't currently provide Static IP, on IDSL. This
shouldn't be a problem if you don't want to run any of your own servers.
Just a thought.
John
rice@vx5.com Webmaster, Network Admin, Janitor
I believe IDSL charges by the packet
and that would be terribly expensive. Also a fixed Static IP is important
to me.
As to satellites we are looking into
it but I am on the south slopes of the Hollywood Hills and we may not be
able to see the proper satellite.
Jerry:
I, too, love this program, and their "Info
Select", which resides on my old Win3x box, is the most used program
on that box besides lotus and quicken. I would love to upgrade to the
latest version for my Win98SE box except for one, for me extremely
distasteful, thing. Tech support is done by e-mail only.
Have you ever tried to talk to a live human at Micro
Logic? I've tried, off &; on, since 1995, and the phone number which
used to (occasionally) get a live human now gets you a recorded voice
saying "I'm busy reading my e-mail." THERE IS NO TELEPHONE
SUPPORT unless you want to pay seventy dollars per hour. It's a goddam
conspiracy.
I've been boycotting them for that reason alone. If
you have some way of getting the message through to these peckerheads,
please inform me.
-- C.A. Kerschner Los Angeles
Footnotes: (1) My mail is sent formatted as Plain
Text, to avoid passing on viruses and worms which spread through e-mail by
html. (2) When pricing software, consider the cost of tech support too,
and do you get to talk with a live human or will you be required to read
"FAQ"s for hours? (3) "I'm a uniter, not a divider!"
Notice how well THAT's working? (4) 60% of Americans believe they are in
the top 1% in Income. (Fuzzy Math) More realistic (approximate) annual
income levels: Top 1% - $200,000 &; over Top 5% - $125,000 &; over
Median Income Level - $40,000
Well, I do believe I have spoken
with humans there, but a couple of years ago at least a female voice
answered, and I presumed she was a receptionist. Now I suppose they have a
robot. I hate phone trees. I hate phone trees. I detest not getting a
human when I call anywhere. And a lot of good that does me...
TOP
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
