Dr. Joseph Biederman Plays God With ADHD Meds

World-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs in children, has been caught up in controversy since a Congressional inquiry by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) in 2008.

Biederman has been criticized for being an advocate of diagnosing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder in even the youngest of children, and using antipsychotic medicines to treat them. Pharmaceutical companies are continuing to profit from the sale of these powerful and sometimes unnecessary drugs. The problem was that much of Biederman's work was underwritten by drug makers for whom he was a private consultant. He was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The Congressional inquiry revealed last year that Biederman earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007, but failed to report all but $200,000 to Harvard officials. This constituted a major conflict of interest.

Biederman appeared at a deposition on February 26, 2009, and was questioned by several lawyers for the states, who were claiming that makers of antipsychotic drugs defrauded state Medicaid programs by marketing their medicines improperly.

At the deposition, Biederman was asked what rank he held at Harvard.

"Full professor," he answered.

"What's after that?" asked Fletch Trammell, one of the attorneys.

"God," Biederman responded.

"Did you say God?" Trammell asked.

"Yeah," said Biederman, after which there was a moment of stunned silence.

The transcripts of this deposition call into question the mental state of the psychiatrist himself. It seems the good doctor is showing symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which, according to the Mayo Clinic, is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance. They believe they are superior to others, but in reality, they are masking their own fragile self-esteem, and are vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

For decades, according to Bruce Levine in an article Friday in the Web site AlterNet.org, "the majority of American doctors, mental health professionals, the media, and the general public have yielded to the dissemination's of Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman who successfully evangelized for more children - and younger children - to be medicated with powerful psychiatric drugs."

The "blowback," according to Levine, can be found in the July 2009 Scientific Mind article "Do ADHD Drugs Take a Toll on the Brain?" The article, by Edmund S. Higgins, clinical associate professor of family medicine and psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina, is a sobering report of the long-term dangers associated with ADHD drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta, Vyvanse, and Adderall.

In his article, Higgins cites the Centers for Disease Control. In a recent survey, the CDC found that ADHD afflicts about 5 percent of children in the U.S. - twice as many boys as girls - age 6 to 17. In 2005, according to the CDC, an estimated 9 percent of boys and 4 percent of girls were taking stimulant medications as part of their ADHD therapy. The majority of patients take Ritalin and Concerta, a methylphenidate, and the most of the rest are prescribed Adderall, an amphetamine.

In his article, Higgins writes "although it sounds counterintuitive to give stimulants to a person who is hyperactive, these drugs are thought to boost activity in the parts of the brain responsible for attention and self-control".

Higgins acknowledges that the ADHD medication can indeed improve attention, concentration and productivity and also suppress impulsive behavior. Significant improvements have been found in some people's lives.

Severe inattention and impulsive behavior can indeed put individuals at risk for crime and substance abuse, and adults can face unemployment and be susceptible to car accidents. In these instances, appropriate medication might keep a person out of prison, away from addictive drugs, or in a job. But over the last 15 years, doctors have been prescribing stimulants for people with moderate to mild inattention, and even some with a normal ability to focus.

Patients are no longer just taking medications in childhood, but are encouraged to stay on them when they become adults. Vyvanse, an amphetamine, and Concerta were introduced in 2008 by the FDA for treating adults, and pharmaceutical companies are pushing awareness of adult forms of ADHD. Students are taking the drugs to increase academic performance, and professionals such as doctors and lawyers are taking stimulants in hopes of boosting their productivity. These drugs have therefore become increasingly popular. According to a 2007 study, prescriptions for ADHD drugs in the methalphenidate and amphetamine categories rose by almost 12 percent per year between 2000 and 2005.

The increased usage of stimulants is causing questions to be raised about their long-term use. There is a growing concern that the drugs might take a toll on the brain in the long run. Methylphenidates such as Ritalin and Concerta have a chemical structure "similar to cocaine," according to Higgins, and they act on the brain in a similar way as cocaine.

According to Higgins: "Indeed, a smattering of recent studies, most of them involving animals, hint that stimulants would alter the structure and function of the brain in ways that may depress mood, boost anxiety, and, contrary to their short-term effects, lead to cognitive deficits. Human studies already indicate the medications can adversely affect areas of the brain that govern growth in children." He goes on to speculate as to what additional harmful side-effects have yet to be found.

In February 2007, the FDA did indeed issue warnings about the side-effects of ADHD drugs, such as stunted growth and psychosis, among other mental disorders. The possibility exists that stimulant treatment during childhood might contribute to high rates of accompanying diagnoses for other mental health problems, according to Higgins. But having ADHD is itself a risk factor for other mental health problems.

The evidence that ADHD drugs cause adverse reactions such as stunted growth in children are in direct contradiction to Biederman's findings. Alternet.org's Levine, himself a clinical psychologist, reports on a 2007 National Institute of Mental Health study of ADHD treatments involving 579 children. Over a three year period, the children, between seven and ten years old, were involved in a growth rate study. In the study, the growth rates of unmedicated children were compared to the growth rates of children who took ADHD stimulants throughout that period. Compared to the children who were unmedicated, the ADHD drug-treated children showed a decrease in growth rate of, on average, two fewer centimeters in height, and 2.7 kilograms less in weight. By the third year, there was no noticeable stunting of growth, but the damage had been done. The ADHD children never caught up to their counterparts.

According to Levine, "there are many children whose only problem in life is not doing their homework but 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."

The pharmaceutical-industrial complex, according to Levine, is part of a "wave of evil" that "washes not only the financial-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the energy-industrial complex, and predatory executives at AIG, Citibank, Halliburton, Blackwater/Xe, Enron, and Exxon."

Levine was quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote: "The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike."

According to Levine, the pharmaceutical-industrial complex has "virtually annexed the mental health profession, whose all-star opportunist team is captained by Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman."

Biederman, as I pointed out earlier, may be suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. He has a "God complex" not unlike another well-known person associated with Harvard University, Theodore Kaczynski.

According to Wikipedia, Kaczynski, also known as the Unibomber, "is an American murderer, mathematician, and neo-Luddite social critic who carried out a campaign of mail bombings. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as an intellectual child prodigy, he excelled academically from an early age. Kaczynski received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley at age 25 but resigned two years later." His occupation is listed as "prisoner, former assistant professor of mathematics." They left out "bomber".

While Wikipedia can sometimes be comical in its descriptions and anecdotes, the esteemed Psychology Today has referred to Kaczynski's acts of terror as being "narcissistic." It should be noted that Kaczynski suffers from a variety of other mental illnesses.

Joseph Biederman cannot be compared to Theodore Kaczynski, other than that they are both associated with Harvard, and both have a background in academics. Oh, and they both are suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The problem with Biederman is that he has been held in such high regard for so long. His theories on mental illness have been disputed and shown to be dangerous. How many Ted Kaczynskis could have been stopped as children?

The June 22, 2009 issue of Time Magazine includes an article titled "Staying Sane," by John Cloud. He takes a look at the work of Dr. William McFarlane, who is one of the world's top authorities on preventing mental illness. He has long felt that forms of mental illness such as schizophrenia, from which Ted Kaszynski suffered, were preventable.

A team of UCLA researchers in the late 1970's began to publish the results of a long-term study called the UCLA Family Project. The study found that you could predict, with remarkable accuracy, which 16-year-old children would develop schizophrenia later in life.

The UCLA study found, after studying the kids for more than a decade, that those who became schizophrenic were most often from families that displayed "communication deviance," described as "unclear, unintelligible or fragmented speech." They also found the parenting to be "critical and intrusive."

Dr. McFarlane and others began working with some of the families to teach them to communicate better, with "less anger and intrusion". McFarlane was working on the assumption that schizophrenia could be prevented in asymptomatic kids who were at risk for the disease.

"Once a patient's perception of reality has cracked the first time, it becomes very hard to walk back to normality," Time Magazine's Cloud says of McFarlane's theory. Early detection is crucial, according to McFarlane.

McFarlane's schizophrenia-prevention ideas have given other researchers hope in more routine conditions, such as ADHD. Mental illness has long been linked to genes, over which we simply have no control. But according to many mental health experts like McFarlane, your environment and experiences have powerful effects on the way those genes are expressed. This is exactly the opposite of Harvard's Joseph Biederman.

If McFarlane is to be believed, and he has a large following, people like Ted Kaczynski are as much a product of their environment as they are their genes. Could Kaczynski have been stopped before he became ill? Probably not. But what about the millions of children who are having trouble focusing on their homework? Are drugs the answer? According to Biederman, yes. But after the February 2009 deposition when he compared himself to God (to be fair, he didn't say he was God, only that he was next in line), Biederman has lost all credibility. The fact that he failed to report $1.6 million in pharmaceutical consulting fees has been the subject of an ongoing Congressional investigation. His Harvard credentials are about as meaningful as the Unibomber's.

And one more thing: If you got through this article, you don't have ADHD.

Father's Day News

The protests in Iran over the recent election results are taking over the airwaves on cable news. Although no foreign reporters are allowed in the Iran, social networking sites are allowing citizens to send information via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Images are being shown on the TV news from the cell phone cameras of ordinary citizens. It's disturbing and hard to watch, as Iranian anti-riot police use clubs, tear gas, water cannons and in some reports, guns, to combat protesters. In America, in order to balance the violent images coming out of Iran, we look for the lighter news that can give us something to laugh about as we celebrate Father's Day. The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" story became old news when a man in Oklahoma was mugged for his bologna sandwich, with a street value of 76 cents. Now we find out that a city in Florida has a new dress code that requires city workers to wear underwear and use deodorant. The city council in Brooksville north of Tampa recently approved the "personal hygiene" code. Last week's report about a man who set off fireworks in a bathroom in an Arby's restaurant, blowing up a toilet, was upstaged by a story on Friday about two wayward cows in Massachusetts who went AWOL from their farm and walked over five miles into New Hampshire. Nashua authorities tracked down the cows with the help of concerned citizens, who called 911 with reports of the stray cows. Thursday's story about a Washington man who drove over three miles on I-5 in reverse is still being talked about around the water cooler. But the story last week about an Indiana lawyer who was found asleep headfirst in a neighbor's trash can after a night of drinking has been largely forgotten. Then there's the story of the New York woman who has been dead for six years who showed up at the DMV to get her driver's license. Actually, it was her son, Thomas Parkin, who dressed up in drag, reminiscent of the movie "Psycho". The incident happened in April, but the Associated Press has picked up the story and is running with it. It's spreading through all the major Internet news sites. As new information comes in, we're finding out that Parkin impersonated his mother for over six years and has collected over $100,000 in Social Security and housing benefits using her identity. Although he's been caught on the DMV security cameras dressed in drag, Parkin still professes his innocence. He is awaiting trial at Riker's Island on larceny and fraud charges, and he is giving interviews from prison. Parkin has reportedly hired a publicist, and this is one story that won't go away. That's OK. We need a little levity on Father's Day.

Theft Of Bologna Sandwich Is Major News

A man waiting for a bus in Oklahoma City claimed he was punched in the face by a man who stole his bologna sandwich. According to the Associated Press yesterday, 24-year-old Roger Hamilton told police he was sitting on the bus bench ready to eat his sandwich when a man began staring at him. Before he knew it, Hamilton had a swollen, bloody lip, and the attacker had made off with the sandwich. The attacker has not been found, and the police report listed the value of the sandwich at 76 cents. What is interesting about this story is not the story itself, but the fact that the AP report was picked up by so many news sources, including AOL, Yahoo, and television and news stations. There are literally thousands of Internet news sources and this has made the news accessible to just about everyone, and the news comes out instantly. But is the theft of a 76 cent bologna really worth the news coverage that it got? The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" story earlier in the week about a Mexican drug smuggling operation was national news because not only was it about the seizure of over a ton of cocaine, but it dealt with a major problem affecting both Mexico and the border states in the U.S. The oddness of the story just made it more newsworthy. It's no doubt that the theft of a bologna sandwich is weird, but does it warrant the media attention? Framed in the context of the economic recession we are now facing, the story does deserve mention. But does Roger Hamilton deserve the requisite media attention, the talk show appearances and the million dollar book deal? And what about the other top stories flying through cyberspace at breakneck speed. The Delaware State Fire Marshal's Office yesterday said a man damaged a toilet by setting off fireworks in an Arby's restroom. The AP story was quickly picked up by all the major news outlets. As Delaware State Police investigate the damaged toilet, the Arby's is being besieged by the media looking for more on the story, and money is being offered for any surveillance video. So far the man hasn't been arrested, but he would be wise to turn himself in. The publicity would give him his 15 minutes of fame and maybe more. It was just a toilet, after all. How about the story released earlier in the week about Jacob Skipworth, a Berrien Springs, Michigan man facing felony charges after allegedly spitting on a police officer's McDonald's Egg McMuffin. Originally reported by the AP, the story immediately caught the media's attention. According to the report, the unidentified officer bit into his sandwich and immediately realized something was wrong. The sandwich contained a "stringy with mucus" substance, according to the McDonald's assistant manager. Skipworth, who turned out to be a parolee who spent 14 years in an Indiana prison, said he has nothing against the police. A witness, however, overheard him saying, "I got that cop good." Skipworth is being held in the Berrien County Jail on $10,000 bond, charged with a "felony adulterated food count," according to The Smoking Gun website. A June 23 preliminary hearing has been set, but in the meantime, Skipworth reportedly has retained a public relations firm to handle media requests. The Internet has changed the way we get our news. Newspapers and magazines are going bankrupt, but there's no shortage of news. The Internet news sources are exploiting the advent of free or very cheap news content, and the overhead is next to nothing. The news comes out as it happens, instantly, and with little or no editorial oversight. And the weirder the better. While we are all stressed out about the current economic recession, we are comforted by news that makes us forget about our stock portfolio and our home mortgage. In this economy, the theft of a 76 cent bologna sandwich is major news, and thanks to the Internet, we hear about it as it happens. The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" drug deal is already old news.

Cocaine Hidden In Frozen Sharks

Mexican drug smugglers get extra-credit bonus points for creativity after attempting to smuggle over a ton of cocaine inside 20 frozen shark carcasses. "Those in charge of the shipment said it was a conserving agent, but after checks, we confirmed it was cocaine," Mexican Navy Commander Eduardo Villa told reporters Tuesday. Navy officers at a port in the southern Mexican state of Yucatan searched a container ship yesterday after becoming suspicious of its contents. Drug gangs are coming up with creative ideas in order to get drugs into the United States. They've used sealed beer cans, religious statues and furniture, as Mexico's military cracks down on the cartels tapping the lucrative market north of the border. Details have not yet been released as to where the sharks were being delivered and to whom, but an unidentified spokesman said there is no truth to the rumor that the sharks were en route to an after-party for Lindsay Lohan.

Twitter Suspended My Account

My Twitter account has been suspended. It seems I violated the Terms of Service and Rules policy, specifically, "You may not use our service for any unlawful purposes or for promotion of illegal activity." In my defense, I was referring to a news story that was reported on most Internet news services, including time.com. Red Bull Cola was pulled from store shelves in Germany because trace amounts of cocaine were found in the drink. Yesterday, in my blog, I estimated that it would take at least 400 cans of the popular energy drink to get high on the cocaine. In my Twitter comment, I wrote: "Red Bull Cola is pulled from the stores in Germany; 0.13 micrograms of cocaine found in drink. I just bought 400 cans." Then I sent out another message with a link to my web page: "I'm getting high on Red Bull." Within a half hour I was informed on my Twitter page that my account had been suspended due to "strange activity." If you would have read my blog yesterday, you would have learned that although the amount of cocaine found in the drinks was insignificant, because of the high sugar and caffeine content, anything close to 25 cans would have caused cardiac arrest. Now, because of an innocent and obviously satirical comment, I'm being investigated by the FBI, NSA, IRS, INS, CBI, and the ASPCA. On the bright side, however, I've hired a publicist and I'm selling my life story to the highest bidder. So far, ABC has contacted me about doing a reality show based on my triumph over adversity; how I overcame my criminal past. I don't want to seem like I'm capitalizing on my criminal exploits, so I plan on doing only one interview - "The Rachel Maddow Show." All I need is a little publicity so that I can start up a criminal defense fund. And the best way to get the word out is, you guessed it; Twitter.

Cocaine Found In Red Bull Cola

Stores in Germany are pulling Red Bull Cola drinks off the shelf after tests found trace amounts of cocaine in the product. However, Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said Monday that the level, 0.13 micrograms per liter, was too low to pose a health risk. A Red Bull spokesman said that the drink is sold in the U.S. and Europe and is both "harmless and marketable." Coca leaf extracts are used in the product worldwide, and the levels are so low that you would have to drink at least 400 cans of the drink to get a a cocaine high. Even if it were possible to drink that much Red Bull Cola, it would be much cheaper just to buy cocaine. And the sugar and caffeine content of the drink would probably send you into cardiac arrest before you reach 25 cans. Fritz Soergel, the head of the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Neuremberg, Bavaria, told Time magazine: "If you start examining lots of other drinks and food so carefully, you'd find a lot of surprising things." Jelly, for instance, is allowed to have insect parts, as long as they don't exceed arbitrary amounts set by the Food and Drug Administration. And bottled water has been found to have high levels of arsenic and other contaminants such as lead and aluminum, but nobody's pulling it off store shelves. Experts tell us the levels of contaminants in bottled water are too low to cause a problem. Cocaine, sugar and caffeine vs. arsenic, lead and aluminum. I'm switching to Red Bull Cola.