Dope for Dopes
Yesterday’s post on the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal at the BBC unleashed a flood of memory of what it used to be like to grow up largely on your own. Some commenters told of roaming miles away on their bikes, of playing “Army” in the woods with bits of World War 2 uniform. It is in marked contrast to today’s childhood, supervised as it is by child protection authorities at every turn.
But times have changed and so must children. The New York Times describes how “social justice” thinkers believe that kids must now be medicated for their own good. Faced with an inability to educate children in public school, doctors are turning to the only thing they have left: drugs.
“I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”
Dr. Anderson is one of the more outspoken proponents of an idea that is gaining interest among some physicians. They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance. ….
Dr. Anderson’s instinct, he said, is that of a “social justice thinker” who is “evening the scales a little bit.” He said that the children he sees with academic problems are essentially “mismatched with their environment” — square pegs chafing the round holes of public education. Because their families can rarely afford behavior-based therapies like tutoring and family counseling, he said, medication becomes the most reliable and pragmatic way to redirect the student toward success.
And who’s going to pay for it? They’re hoping the government will.
“People who are getting A’s and B’s, I won’t give it to them,” he said. For some parents the pills provide great relief. Jacqueline Williams said she can’t thank Dr. Anderson enough for diagnosing A.D.H.D. in her children — Eric, 15; Chekiara, 14; and Shamya, 11 — and prescribing Concerta, a long-acting stimulant, for them all. She said each was having trouble listening to instructions and concentrating on schoolwork.
“My kids don’t want to take it, but I told them, ‘These are your grades when you’re taking it, this is when you don’t,’ and they understood,” Ms. Williams said, noting that Medicaid covers almost every penny of her doctor and prescription costs.
Has it ever occurred to their “social justice thinkers” that one possible reason for the failure of kids at school is because the school itself sucks? Or that perhaps the disintegration of the family environment to which the child returns has been smashed beyond recognition.
No. Of course not. It couldn’t be.
Recently the Florida educational authorities made the news by adopting explicitly racial standards for their schools.
On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.
The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.
“To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base,” Juan Lopez, magnet coordinator at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, told the Palm Beach Post.
Infuriated? Isn’t that exactly what the activists have been fighting for all along? One standard for this group, another standard for that group? They just don’t want it to sound that way.
And now the social justice thinkers have a new plan to spread fairness: they’re going to dope up the non-Asian minority kids.
On the Rocafort family’s kitchen shelf in Ball Ground, Ga., next to the peanut butter and chicken broth, sits a wire basket brimming with bottles of the children’s medications, prescribed by Dr. Anderson: Adderall for Alexis, 12; and Ethan, 9; Risperdal (an antipsychotic for mood stabilization) for Quintn and Perry, both 11; and Clonidine (a sleep aid to counteract the other medications) for all four, taken nightly.
Why would you stimulate the Asians if they’re already doing 90%? Doesn’t make sense. So by exclusion you’re going to stimulate the guys who are doing 45%. What could go wrong? What damage could that cause? How much damage has been caused already in the supposed process of ‘helping’ the underprivileged?
Such nasty questions.
If the advocates of this policy didn’t mean well you might be tempted to suspect them of effectively advocating a crime. How did society go from protecting children from drug abuse to pushing it on them? How did it come to this?
Because times change and so must we.
Belmont Commenters
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How much damage has been caused already…
compared to the left’s efforts to exterminate the black race via abortion, giving them nootropic drugs is down right charitable!
And when these drugged kids use their better grades to get into college, will there be a program for dispensing them more drugs available? When they then go get a job, will the drug tests be waived by the employer as per government directive?
So, people who do well by dint of their own efforts, and excel at work based on intelligence, discipline, and initiative will have to compete with less bright addicts for the same positions? Gee, I really like where this is going!
I had A.D.H.D. when I was young and I turned out O ….. Look! A squirrel.
But seriously, getting a crappy fulltime job in High School after my parents divorced cured me of that. Suddenly school wasn’t the most boring thing to me. I got good grades from there on out.
“So we have to modify the kid.”
This is how liberalism works. First they demand that park rangers control state parks. Then they demand that their salaries and pensions pay a high wage. Then they raise taxes to support that and finally they shut the parks down due to lack of funds. Kiddies are too important to our future to allow them to do unsafe things. We must educate them and protect them. We need to give money and jobs away to illegal aliens and we need to teach them that homosexuality is alright. We must teach them that Columbus was a mass murderer. Kids are getting too unruly and hard to control. This is a burden on the teachers. We must drug kids.
Hey, a$$holes. Why not just send them all home and let their parents teach them?
They are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money — not to treat A.D.H.D., necessarily, but to boost their academic performance.
“Starved of extra money.” Is there such a thing as extra money? If they are spending $20,000 per student, how much of that is extra money? And if there is extra money, should it not be used for a Supervisors Conference in Cancun in January where cost cutting ideas can be shared?
I went to a Parochial School with fifty plus kids in a class. They didn’t give out stimulants they gave out F’s. Funny, the thought of spending another year stuck in that classroom (especially the one in the basement near the boiler) tended to focus the mind on learning (or at least passing). Fear can be a stimulant.
To bad they didn’t give us all Concerta: fifty-five students bouncing off the walls.
“MY OWN KIND”
I “belong” (by default) to the subset of the “new gentry” or “clerisy” known as the “Creative Class.” Accident of birth and inclination. The kinds of people I have lived with and around and loved and called friends and family belong primarily to those groups that gave us our current debacles through the way they voted and how they influenced policies and social mores. I am even, again by default, a “secular humanist.”
I discovered a long time ago that “my tribe” is inept at governance, clueless about economics, and has an erratic moral compass. Starting in the early 80′s I made it a point to never, ever again help grant power to “my tribe.” Give “my people” power, and they are a disaster. We can serve many useful functions if they don’t involve having power over other people’s lives. I wish my tribe would know its true place in the world so as not to scew it up.
This is great news! Instead of merely getting feral children we can now have feral children on psychotropic drugs. When they get a little older just increase the dosage so they can keep all those flowering bushes in the Hollywood Hills nice and neat.
But what the heck. Drugging the children is “the most reliable and pragmatic way” to have them learn that Democrats love poor people and that sexual perversion is an excellent recreational activity. Keeps whatever may remain of a clear mind from ever thinking of how much it sucks that this is all there is. Besides, Medicaid pays for it all.
Thank you Martin, Henry and Elizabeth for setting us on the the path to this wonderful world.
How much longer before the only two career paths for any person wanting to uphold the dignity of each human being are ascetic monk or urban guerrilla?
The abortionists pushed for 40 years to rewrite, that is gut, the Hippocratic Oath. The racists drug dealers and miseducation leeches followed.
This can’t and won’t work. First the equalitarians tried to achieve equality “naturally” with affirmative action – “if you build it they will come” type thinking. Now they are trying to artificially create equality – a natural step 2. By simply living in reality, normal people see that step 2 cannot and will not work. For step 3 the equalitarians will have to go “Harrison Bergeron”. Hopefully there will be enough genetic material left after that to rebuild civilization.
“Because times change and so must we.”
Not sure if that’s sarcasm wretchard. Yes times do change and we must adapt – not the same thing at all. To revisit the past again, not for nostalgic reasons but to make a point; my 1950′s childhood spent on bikes away from home or climbing trees or wading in creeks, was centered in government housing projects called council houses in the U.K. In particular, one of these was a “slum clearance” project through which my grandparents and their kids were evacuated from London slums.
Some of the people who were evacuated had never lived in a place with a bath, or with hot water. All houses at that time were heated with coal fires in a grate so for a time some people stored coal in the bath because they weren’t sure what the bath was for. Many of these people had bad attitudes and sketchy lifestyles.
After some years there was a wholesale improvement in the attitudes of adults and children. This happened because society at the time demanded and expected better attitudes from these people. The children of the original residents started to succeed. People started to look after and take pride in their rented State homes. By the time I lived there as a kid it was a pleasant and a safe place to live. The second generation residents were normal working class people in their outlook and work occupations and had normal aspirations.
My point is that no drugs were administered to change these people and their kids. Society’s expectations and the evacuees’ own desire for a better life caused big changes in attitudes. Later on, things went all to rat-shit on these council estates because society and its attitudes changed to the entitlement/victim neuroses that we see today and individual aspirations changed from maximising personal achievement to maximising personal freeloading.
Yes times change and we must adapt. Where is it written that poor people have to embrace personal decline and defeatist neuroses in the name of what some pointy headed twit medico calls “social justice”? Nowhere. Nowhere. It is not written and that smug, evil, drug pushing social engineer should be thrown into the saltchuck.
Dr. Anderson is running the risk of becoming as infamous as this monumental fraud (and monster):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money#Sex_reassignment_controversy.E2.80.94David_Reimer
After reading the “sex reassignment” part, keep reading the “Pedophilia” one right below it.
Dr. Anderson should have his license reviewed by a state board.
I’m posting a link from a 2006 series in the NYT on children and psychotropic medications. Yes, I know the series is six years old and the usual BC caveat about considering the source applies, but according to the CDC, the prescribing of these meds for kids has only gotten worse since 2006.
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/health/series/troubledchildren/index.html
There is a graphic in the sidebar that accompanies the third article (“Proof Is Scant on Psychiatric Drug Mix for Young”), with stats on the number of kids taking stimulants, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and sleeping medications– and the percentage taking multiple drugs. Utterly horripilating.
I’m hoping Dr. Irons will weigh in with his experience.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081455/
I believe that this scheme has already been covered by ‘Scanners.’
———–
The ‘School Desk of Procrustes’ — it ought to fit.
Well, if it does not work, if we just can’t seem to make little genius’s out of the poor performers, we will just have to “enstupify” (as Fred puts it) the over achievers. Mr. Vonnegut had something to say on this I believe…
There may be some direct connection between mental health, the ability to concentrate, and having the chance to run in the woods, bike around helmetless and shoot BB guns till dark.
Yeah, you can tell by Mr. Lopez’s comment that he was FURIOUS!…and I quote, “To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base,”
Taken literally he is actually suggesting that by not giving minorities the drugs we are actually expecting less of them.
What times we live in. As I tell my 7 kids- keep it simple, do what’s right and pray for the others.
#5 Annoy Mouse
LOL…after flunking out of community college (one has to actually work at that) and joining the army as enlisted, standing guard duty in the winter at Ft. Riley Kansas began to make me think that after my 4 years was up I may need to give this collge thing a try again. The funny thing though, for some reason I don’t feel that much smarter even thought I now have an MBA… oh well
I’ve been a licensed physician since 1968 and the most active part of my career, until about age 50, was as a family doctor in a small farming/ranching county. The question of drugs, ADHD, etc is very complicated since it’s generally agreed that the problem is both over- and under-diagnosed, and there are good reasons for that.
This opens the door for all kinds of mischief on both sides of the question if you just think a minute.
At the dawn of it all it was called ”hyperactivity” and the first case I ever saw was while I was serving with the USMC, the son of a friend, a career Marine. You can imagine his attitude about giving his son a pill for behavior in school. Fortunately/unfortunately his ways of behavior modification (and he wasn’t cruel, only strict and fair—I personally vouch for that and I knew the kid) had failed completely, he was beginning to have doubts himself, and the wife finally prevailed to give Ritalin a try.
The difference was so profound it seemed to border on miraculous; I saw it all myself and I had been very skeptical. The boy’s parents were in tears, the school staff couldn’t believe their eyes.
So … I became a believer in the year 1971.
But the word got around and there began to be pressure on FPs and other doctors to give this stuff out more and more. I began to get requests for what I considered boisterous behavior, maybe needing a little USMC method. And not just Ritalin but for ”tranquilizers”. Needless to say a relentless parent will eventually find a pliable doctor (like one of my former partners, a decent and moral man who just could not say ”no” to pressure).
One good thing about a small town is it’s easy to get around so I would frequently call the teacher—who was often a patient of mine—and ask about the boy (seems to always be a boy) and actually often visited the class and sat in the back.
Very often, but not always, I would see other boys in the class acting about the same as the one who was a problem and the teachers often agreed. On reporting this to the parents I would get anything from grateful relief to anger and quitting my practice.
So: the teachers in this community were quite often women who’d grown up there and the farm/ranch culture was more supportive of, let’s say, traditional boyish behavior. The older ones, almost without exception, could spot which boys might well benefit from a trial of Ritalin and which were just rowdy. This was just a subjective judgement, based on years of watching how kids behave, but I found it was equal to all the interviews and questionnaires I tried to use.
I have no doubt that today’s younger teachers in the big cities have a mindset that any kid who doesn’t conform to today’s lesson plan, draws attention to himself far too often, most likely needs a doctor.
It’s not a treatment—it’s a sociopolitical philosophy.
Now here’s the kicker: in my mid-40s I suddenly realized that I was an ADHD kid in school from the late 1940s to the end of the 1950s. Not only that, I was still one, although less!!!
This was before ”adult ADHD” started the hit the headlines but all I had to do was look at my old report cards (which my mother had saved) and it was crystal clear:
”He is an extremely bright student but his constant talking disturbs the other students” is one example, year after year.
With that moment of epiphany practically a whole lifetime fell into place and I set about correcting my habits, mostly with good success (OK, I still fidget but I am a good listener now).
Seeing the current state of things gives me great sadness. This whole question of which behavior needs medical treatment is a minefield, even under the best of situations. The PC-ization of it I fear is going to do a lot of harm.
One last thing: ”hyperactivity” is very often due to depression and tension/anxiety in the child due to a problem at home, very often a troubled marriage and/or alcoholism. Again, this is the benefit of practicing in a small town. The kid is constantly tense and on edge as he sees the parents ”interacting” and this huge tension buildup finds an outlet in ADHD-like behavior.
Want to see somebody quit you and find another doctor? Try this: ”No wonder he acts that way; your husband’s drunk all the time.”
“We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”
Really? Should read: “Too many parents have decided they can’t be bothered to properly raise their own children, and demand that the State do it for them, at the publics expense. This results in all manner of behavioral problems, which we end up having to dope out of them.”
I am planning to move somewhere extremely remote and just watch from a distance as this all falls apart. I am getting too old to go tilting at windmills. We get the world we deserve, then we rebuild it.
I’m trying to figure out how knowingly prescribing unnecessary medications for Medicaid patients is not Medicaid fraud.
“The New York Times describes how “social justice” thinkers believe that kids must now be medicated for their own good.”
These articles are planted by the manufacturers for these drugs. They are trying to change societal perceptions to allow for continued growth in the number of perscriptions filled. Scientific studies will be carried out and published so that he pharmaceutical reps will have glossy scientific reprints to drop off at the doctor’s office. Panels will push for adoption of an expanded range of conditions that will be appropriate for treatment by the drugs. New “Best Practice” guidelines will be released to pressure doctors that are lagging behind in the prescriptions written to catch up to the rest.
Its an insidious and nearly unstoppable process because at the root of it lies the profit motive.
Maybe medication should be like public policy. You need a definite and compelling reason to do something or else don’t do it. In the public policy world you leave government out of the loop unless there’s a clear and obvious case for intervention.
Similarly, don’t give kids drugs unless this is obviously and blatantly indicated.
There is a horrible tendency to intervene in order to “improve” things. Michael Crichton talked about how the park people “improved” Yellowstone until they destroyed it. Unintended consequences have a way of cropping up. God preserve us from those who would improve us; lengthen our limbs, dampen our passions, alter our minds — those who would redecorate the world to conform to their own tastes. Trouble lies down that road.
And people made fun of the fluoridation in the water kooks. Public Health fascist need only expand the inkspot.
It’s a Brave New World.
The kids won’t behave in school – give them drugs.
The young adults won’t focus at work – give them drugs.
The people won’t buy the propaganda of the government – give them drugs.
We are no longer free men. We have become herd animals manipulated by a cynical few.
My friend and I joke that we will see each other in the gulags – although we may not know each other, due to excessive head trauma meted out during detention or drugs involuntarily administered.
I worked in the kitchen of a nursing home for two years in highs school. I saw patient after patient arrive full of life, but in need of assistance become drug addled vegetables within three months of arrival. The fastest declines occurred among the most vivacious arrivals. Very, very sad.
At first blush at reading Wretchard’s post, my mind went quickly to where I think novanglus is going; the next step of this “behavior modification” is mind control for the “undesirables”- those thinking outside the bounds of what are deemed appropriate thoughts by our clerisy. I mean why stop at kids?
Hey, let’s control:
• your speech
• your religion
• your guns
• your body
• the food you eat
• what you can listen to or see
• where you can live and how you can live
• and finally your mind
Then we will be within reach of the marxist nirvana on earth- a true socialist paradise.
Politicians and their subset of school board members and teachers unions don’t like to trust in anything as intangible as the spirit. The spirit of a Child perhaps least. Education is imagined as a machine, long since perfected, like a meat grinder. Pour in the children, turn the handle, and out come educated children. All that is left is managing a just wage for the union butcher. I’ve said this on this forum before, I fear. The secret to the school system’s malignant buffoonery is that each new child is fresh and eager to learn and understand the world around them and will take a lot of abuse, accepting a lot at face value, up until it becomes intolerable, as we are approaching now as whole school systems fail. The darned little ones keep trying to learn. It brings tears to the eyes.
I recall being a child. Even and importantly being taught by my parents, not necessarily in words, that I was a child of God. Something about me was respected. The ‘I’ part of me. I understood that I had a right to exist, to breathe, to honor my desire to know the truth. I recall the day I formulated the thought, accompanied by impotent outrage, that the adults were acting like the children and the children were forced to be the adults. 5th Grade. Listening to my teacher lecture on something that didn’t add up, I don’t recall the particular lecture. Was it the day my geography teacher explained that god was something primitive people came up with as a way to explain volcanoes and earthquakes? Perhaps going on a field trip and having a black lady explain that black people should be given job preference because white kids don’t need it. Looked me right in the face, without an ounce of kindness.
Now I am old enough to see that my high aspirations, and high self-regard, as a grade school academic, was untested. I was able to expand my understanding of subjects horizontally, but not easily vertically, and didn’t survive contact with Calculus and Physics. I ain’t that bright, is what I’m saying. But I also recall that I gave up sometime in middle school, and skated through. And then it was mighty hard to catch up. (Could that be the game?) The pressures of violence, society, and the demands from those in positions of authority, were overwhelming. So who knows. I do have my resentments of that system, though. I would have benefitted from the understanding that the process was going to be one of conflict, and not a disinterested pursuit of the truth. Some things you learn too late, that’s why we have a word for regret.
I expect a fair percentage of those kids who are drugged as children to unleash their rage on society once they are free. Others will swallow their shame and anger and die as drug addicts.
“Isn’t that exactly what the activists have been fighting for all along?”
Indeed they have. When I heard the news about the new Florida educaion standards I recalled how several years back the Florida chapter of the NAACP had called for a national boycott of Florida as a vacation destination.
The reason? Black kids were not doing too well on the standardized Florida educational evaluation tests. They demanded that the standards be lowered so that black kids could pass the tests easier.
This came soon after the Florida NAACP had called for a national boycott of Florida orange juice because Rush Limbaugh was advertising it. That worked and Rush was dropped from the advertising campaign, so they decided to flex their muscles and make another demand.
I saw no indication that anyone paid the NAACP any attention, but obviously someone finally did.
And parallel actions have been underway for some time. For example, in SC State government, hiring practices require that black applicants receive extra points right off, just for being black.
So you accept lower educational standards and then you build into your bureaucracy ways to compensate for that.
And if the kids decide to take drugs of their own choice, on their own initiative, they will be branded as criminals.
Eventually, they will also be branded as criminals for refusing to take the State-mandated drugs.
Soon we will all be Borg, resistance is futile.
22. wretchard
God preserve us from those who would improve us; lengthen our limbs, dampen our passions, alter our minds
Ayn Rand’s best nonfiction essay was entitled “The Comprachicos”. It was published in 1970 and was about the educational system. She nailed it, all right, and things have only gotten worse since then.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/51894820/Ayn-Rand-The-Comprachicos
As a parent of twins with OCD, who spent two years trying to get help in early 80′s, let me give you the other side. Howard Hughes one of the richest, smartest men in the world was brought down by OCD. It drove him from life to living in a “small” apartment in Las Vegas. No amount of money could cure him.
Today my sons have full time jobs, and live with women who love them. Medication that the richest man on earth could not buy 40 years ago, lets them live a normal life.
The problem is who decides who needs medication? We still know so little about the brain. We are still in the alchemy stage. “Try this and see if it works”.
We don’t know why some drugs work, how they work, how to improve them, who not to give them to, and what are the long range side effects. I approved giving my sons drugs that might have long term damaging effects, because their lives would be ruined if what they had was not treated. The medications were not “approved” for anyone under 18. Such a hard choice, yet easy. The drugs they had were the drugs they had. No one had been taking them long enough to know the long term impact. We still don’t. Life is full of risks.
That is the other side of the over-medication debate. I too likely have Adhd. The squirrels in my brain are always finding interesting nuts to distract me with. (Rather than make work calls, commenting in the club.)
Yet this may be the place where creativity lives. To kill one may kill the other. Who decides? Society or the individual? Isn’t that what this election is all about. Who decides who lives or dies, and how.
There was a time when such a crazy idea would simply be dismissed. Nobody would take it seriously. But now I’m not so sure. We live in a world of “don’t you remember how I called the Libya attack terrorism 24 hours after it happend?” “Why sure I remember,” adds Candy, “don’t you Mitt? How can you lie about a thing like that Mitt?”
Well I don’t. Honest I don’t. But everyone else does. Funny that. It kinda gives you the idea that maybe nothing is too crazy to think any more. The only crazy thing left is not to go along with the program.
People wonder how child abuse could have taken place in the BBC. Why didn’t someone stand up? But that’s amateur hour by comparison. They’re fixing to drug thousands, maybe millions of kids, all paid for by the government because the state teachers can’t teach them to read. So maybe if we hop them up the words will form themselves up before their eyes. It’s a plan isn’t it?
And then we wonder how those parents could let Jimmy Savile or “Uncle Dick” do stuff to their kids. It’s easy once you go the first step.
That Quack needs to be in prison, NOW! I am not one to call out child abuse easily but that is the very definition of what he is doing and unfortunately the parents are not educated enough to see it for what it is. These children will not be normal for a very long time after they are grown. They will crash when the drugs are taken away. This will not end well and I predict that the suicide rate for his young patients will be far higher than their peer group.
Insanity!
If carried all the way….
Better learning through chemistry should permit every student to be above average.
————–
As for our better, smarter students: choom, choom cheree.
“A little bit of THC makes the learning go down….”
“Up where the smoke is
All billered and curled
‘Tween pavement and stars
Is the choom’ney sweet world”
———–
Did you know that
“That a…
Spoonful of medicine helps the learn’n go down
The medicine go down-wown
The learn’n go down
Just a spoonful of medicine helps the learn’n go down
In a most delightful way”
A contributor at a conservative website recently described Obama’s ecomomic policies (green energy, various stimulus boondoggles) as creating a “Potemkin Economy” – a thin veneer of economic activity, but utterly useless underneath.
The link to W’s topic – I’ll accept that a certain portion of the youngsters may benefit from a 12 year medical attitude adjusmtent, but beyond that – who knows. The real world requires more than a transcript, as many here have no doubt discovered. Success flows from so many things not learned in a classroom.
Call it “Potemkin Education.” The recipients of all the chemicals will have a diploma. Yippee. To paraphrase Dear Leader, will they have anyone setting an example for them related to all the other factors? Have they seen an adult go to work day in and day out? Has anyone told them the value of tattoos in a professional workplace? Do they have any conflict management skills beyond role-playing with caricatures?
What depresses me about this topic: There are adults, supposedly serious, who truly believe that just making it through the education system somehow punches a ticket. Yeah, I know a lot of them are protecting the racket. Those folks I can almost respect. But the rest, the True Believers . . . . . Lord, save us from our betters.
An interesting PDF article
Suffer the Restless Children:
The Evolution of ADHD and Pediatric Stimulant Use, 1900-1980
University of Richmond
https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~bmayes/ADHD_Mayes_Rafalovich_HistoryofPsychiatry.pdf
If the issue is mostly black/disadvantaged kids are there similar studies
of black adopted kids by white 2 parent households
and kids from middle/upper class 2 parent households?
given leftists penchant for mass murder, which group will they eliminate (first) when the chance to do so arises/arrives?
When this program fails, it will be modified to drug the bright children. In this way, successful equalization of outcomes will be assured.
The very nerve
To think a curve
Could put someone in place
Or IQ test
Reveal the best
It couldn’t be one’s race
Nobody white
Cries it ain’t right
That Asians get high score
It’s safe to say
That DNA
Determines you’ll be poor
I’ve never thought
Brains could be bought
Or drugs could make you smart
You’re what you are
A dunce or star
The gods just throw a dart
You cannot choose
You’re born to lose
Or maybe born to win
But don’t complain
‘Cause in the main
You’re same as all your kin
This sounds like medical malpractice to me but what do I know? I also would guess that not all the kids turn out so OK after being saturated with this rocket fuel year after year. And when they fail despite the drugs? Or when they suffer side effects? Or some condition they can plausibly blame on the drugs? Guess what, it will be litigation city. If I were the maker of these products and I was on notice that Dr. Anderson and his ilk were prescribing them in this way, I would be talking to my lawyers.
“Overprescribed” is a Dodge, as in not a Datsun. The psych industry won’t even acknowledge there are hard moral issues at stake in the first place.
31 “Howard Hughes one of the richest, smartest men in the world was brought down by OCD. It drove him from life to living in a “small” apartment in Las Vegas.”
Not so sure of that. Hughes’ story sounds rather like “Soros” or any of the fronts controlling our world.
In the opening post, Dr. Anderson’s thinking is a clear descendent of John Dewey’s thought. Dewey’s approach raised some profound philosophical problems, namely, what is the proper relationship of a being (ie., a child) to an external set of facts, knowledge and stimuli (ie., a curriculum)?
In the previous thread I answered the question of how did all things get to this state with the quip, “You never get out of high school.” I wasn’t being facetious. John Dewey recognized the power of such an institution for its social shaping potential, and then he managed to set us all down the path toward his philosophical utopia based on social justice. Schools were to be a crucial, indespensible instrument for shaping outcomes. You do it right, you not only teach a child a body of knowledge but you also teach him how to REACT to various facts.
And this is what public schools (high schools in particular) are today, and have been for three generations now: engines of social reform. Learning subject matter is actually a secondary aim. Schools today brazenly admit this, touting “critical thinking” over content. “Critical thinking” is code, of course, for “the proper reaction”. What’s important is “the socialization”. Lack of “the socialization” is also the biggest knock on home schooling. You risk raising freaks, you risk child abuse itself and contumely, should you choose to home-school. Everything is forgiven should you recant and submit to the experts. And, perhaps, the Ritalin.
High schools are little feudal worlds, riven with cliques, and encumbered by a set-in-stone and often cruel pecking order. And all the wheels are greased by supposedly benevolent, empowered agents of a higher good (ie., the teachers, unions, and bureaucrats).
The great mistake of John Dewey’s approach was not his recognition that reaction to stimuli depended on a perception of reality, it was in not understanding that a vision of social justice is not reality.
And so we’re here. Barack Obama is not just the first black president, nor (as some of his supporters have said) the first gay president, he’s also the first Student Council President.
200r @ 35: A contributor at a conservative website recently described Obama’s ecomomic policies (green energy, various stimulus boondoggles) as creating a “Potemkin Economy” – a thin veneer of economic activity, but utterly useless underneath.
Yes, y’know, but here’s the weird thing, I keep seeing just the opposite going on, too. Welfare and foodstamps and porkulus keep the schools open and everyone fat and happy, but the jobs just keep evaporating. We’re living on Bernankebucks and Obamaphones.
It’s not supposed to work even this well, but it is. I’m wondering if this is the Brave New World after all. And if it is – well, first we rewrite the econ textbooks. Then, I dunno.
Why are these people reacting in this way? They are reacting in the way that they’ve been taught:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EohGmG-QUhA#!
Wretchard@32: ‘The only crazy thing left is not to go along with the program.’
See “Asch conformity experiments”
Why does this remind me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD64pIsVNIY
So our “highly skilled and trained” teachers want to dope the kids they are supposed to teach, but for some reason can’t. I as a parent said, “Hell no!” when the school called my wife and I in to discuss the need to dope our son on Ritalin when he was in the 1st grade. “It is your job to teach my son, not put him on drugs” Stood my ground. And he turned out just fine without the drugs: graduating from high school, becoming an Eagle Scout, enlisted in the Air Force as an E3 because he scored so high on his tests, went to a JC when he got out and is now enrolled in the Business Program at the University of California at Irvine while holding down a full time job. Parents have to learned to fight for their kids. Otherwise it will be a Brave New World.
According to some IQ vs race/culture studies, black IQ is about one standard deviation below the average, or about 85, compared to 100 as average. Asians were higher and Ashkenazic Jews were way above at about 112 – 120. Something must explain the high achievement of European Jews all out of proportion to their numbers, and likewise the lack thereof on the African continent.
Legislating special set asides, biased treatment and propping up with drugs will not overcome centuries of genetics in mind power anymore than legislating that all NBA teams must be 1/3 Asians and Jews will lead to better basketball teams.
This kind of junkthink lowers overall GDP, our standard of living and personal trust among people in a nation, and it infuriates me. We’ve been doing this crap for almost 50 years now, and things are getting worse, not better. Washington DC public schools, 76% black and probably leading Florida in bandaging the boil rather than lancing it, have an on-time graduation rate of only 50%, yet they spend $24,600 per pupil and want more so that they can (ready……drum roll…..) “aim to quadruple the proportion of students who are proficient in reading by 2017, but that would still mean that fewer than six out of 10 pass standardized reading tests.”
Lord have mercy on us; four generations after the end of slavery, blacks were approaching parity in America, and now, three generations after that, the majority of them are back to being ignorant slaves with Uhbamaphones, with no hope of employment.
Damn Lyndon Johnson and every Demoncrat who perpetuated his swill.
A cautionary tale. Our youngest son (third child) began “acting up” in class. He had suffered some emotional trauma, and we figured that was the root cause. However, the teacher and principal, at our private mid-up-scale school were convinced that he was “not normal”.
They referred us to a shrink that offered her services to parents at the school at a discount rate, because she honestly had a soft heart for kids. We did some diagnostic tests, some first-hand, some reports from current and past teachers. Our son didn’t fit the classic “types” of ADHD. However, we were told that giving him an ADHD stimulant would be a good “test”. If a *stimulant* caused him to focus better (rather than becoming more unruly), it would indicate he suffered from ADHD. The logic was that children without ADHD on a stimulant would do *worse*. So we did a trial over a period of a few months.
After the first week, there was a marked increase in his ability to focus. His behavior was improved, almost miraculously. We were convinced that, despite my HUGE initial reservations, that he did indeed have ADHD.
About a month in, however, our son began to exhibit signs of acute depression that were entirely out of character. He also became lethargic, if “more controlled”. Close family became alarmed, as did his mother and myself.
We did a little digging, and went to another shrink recommended by the first (!). They had us stop the medication over a period of time, and then we went in for an evaluation. While our son sat in the corner for 20+ minutes drawing, the new psychologist told us there was no way that our son was ADHD. That type of behavior simply wasn’t possible for a true ADHD child.
We commenced therapy, and worked through our issues (our son is adopted, and into a trans-racial family). He’s doing very well now.
When I look back at how high my defenses were against an ADHD diagnosis, and yet I wound up being convinced by “experts”, erroneously, I feel a mixture of horror and deep anger.
What we were never told is that the ADHD drugs are stimulants, and in fact they will help almost anyone “focus”… they stimulate the regulatory areas of the brain. So if you are faced with a possible ADHD diagnosis, do NOT let the fact that the drugs help be enough to sway you. Personally I would insist on a PET scan which shows the brain activity patterns that are behind “real” ADHD, which is a very small portion of children that are diagnosed “ADHD”. And if you don’t see a good fit from the evaluations into the classic forms of ADHD, again be be very careful.
Since ADHD drugs are typically prescribed until late-adolescence or beyond, and since they are mind-altering (not always in a good way), be particularly careful and cross-check any diagnosis. This truly has become a default, fall-back diagnosis for most any behavior that is inconvenient for the school systems. If there are other possible causes, trauma of any kind, that should be the default case to pursue.
We almost made a terrible and costly error, despite being well informed and well intentioned parents.
“Barack Obama is not just the first black president, nor (as some of his supporters have said) the first gay president…..”
Well, some in the black community in Chicago are openly referring to Mr. Obama as the first gay President. Seems it has been a widely held belief in both the Chicago gay and black communities for some time:
http://hillbuzz.org/think-squad-chicago-blacks-say-democrats-are-clueless-about-how-mad-theyve-made-black-folk-in-last-year-87735
Kevin DuJan has been laying out a pretty convincing case of late over at Hillbuzz. Somewhat skeptical myself, but would help explain a lot if true in the One’s behaviour.
Moot (17),
That was awesome, thanks! The miraculous switch sort of mirrors our own experience with our youngest. Yes, there was something real there, a real diagnosis, and an amazing turnaround in academic performance. (Doesn’t mean that overdiagnosis is not a problem, of course…)
The real treat in that hillbuzz article, is how Drudge lays out his website to give hints about Obama and his peculiar ways.
Josh @ 43 re the economy: “It’s not supposed to work even this well, but it is.”
This may seem a little off the topic of medicating kids, but hang with me. A few weeks ago, a Scottish “Conservative” leader created a tiny ripple in the news media by doing an Obama — going to another country to make a speech running down her own. She claimed that only 10% of Scots were net contributors to the economy. Think about that claim — you can have a modern country with freeways, airports, hospitals, hotels, parks; all it needs is one person in ten to be a net economic contributor.
As a proper Scottish Conservative, that woman views her own country as a pox-ridden affront to all that is good in the world. (Yes, the Obama thing again). But it got me thinking — what would the corresponding figure be elsewhere? In the US, about 2/3 of human beings file tax returns; only about 1/2 of those pay taxes; quite a few of the apparent tax contributors are probably benefitting from government jobs & other kinds of subsidies — by the time we are done, maybe less than 20% of people in the US are net contributors (in the sense that Conservative leader meant). And that is the US! What about socialist paradises like France or Sweden?
The underlying message is that we don’t need most people working at productive efforts. In contrast to the caveman economy (where everybody had to work at feeding himself), the modern economy of specialists with knowledge & energy sources requires only a small portion of the population actually to work at creating necessary goods & services. The question that has not been faced in the political arena is — What do we do with the people (the majority) whose services are not required in the productive economy?
If our forefathers had chosen to require them all to dance round Maypoles (or something equally irrelevant), all would have been well. Instead, they chose to make the surplus people into regulators & bureaucrats — people whose job is to prevent others from producing and to find burdensome solutions to mis-diagnosed problems. Which brings us back to proposals to medicate boys who are (for the most part) just being boys.
What the world needs now is to find a way to turn millions & millions of bureaucrats into Maypole dancers, who will remaing well-paid provided they dance somewhere out of the way and don’t obstruct the minority whose role is to produce necessary goods & services.
“What could go wrong?”
I dunno. But it should be fun to watch. Results in a decade or so. If it works, the country will be transformed. Maybe even for the better as everyone takes the drugs, children of all races and adults. If it doesn’t, I’m sure the side effects and failures will be blamed on the villain-of-the-day, which by 2025 will surely be someone besides white businessmen.
“So we have to modify the kid.”
Why drugs? Use the socialist model of reform through labor. Under our current progressive educational regime the transformation from school to labor camp is but a small step.
“They just don’t want it to sound that way.”
How do you avoid being charged with offensive or hate speech?
About 10 years ago I had a part time job (grant funded) to go into elementary schools and present a child safety program to kindergartners and first graders. We used puppets and stories to educate the kids about personal safety issues, stranger danger, personal space, etc. We went to a variety of schools, when requested by the guidance counselor or nurse, the program was free to the schools. Over the two years that I was involved in the program I saw the wide variety of quality in local schools in the Dayton Oh area. I am not an education specialist, but I came up with three reasons why kids don’t do well, based on what I saw and from my own experience as a parent.
1. Poor teaching and lousy schools. I saw teachers who yelled at and belittled the kids, and who were just putting time in until retirements. Some of them had no idea how to control a classroom. I also saw some excellent teachers including one really good young kindergarten teacher, I wonder how long she will last at that school.
2. Bad family environment. I saw kids who needed baths, had dirty clothes and who obviously had been up too late the night before. I’m guessing that their homes had no structure or regular schedule, and the only reason their kids got fed breakfast and lunch is because the school provided it. This is one of those issues that nobody will bring up. Instead the school is attempting to take over being the parent.
3. Not all kids are capable of excelling in school. I know this is extremely politically incorrect to say but it is true. They may have other abilities that need to be nurtured, but because of not having engaged caring adults in their lives may not happen.
I have been doing psychodiagnostic evaluations for everything from ADHD to trauma to major mental illness for almost 30 years, and I have to say that miracle cures such as the few outlined above are extremely rare. Much more common are histories of brief (several-month) successes followed by years of biochemical floundering, searching for that magic again, and a variety of negative effects of at least some of the medications. Even more common than that is no real help whatsoever from psychotropics, but an endless series of efforts to find the right one anyway.
Meanwhile, the youth culture has been deteriorating precipitously, particularly during the past decade, so now my recommendations are usually a litany of efforts to help parents get a spine, reinforcing their sense that the culture is ruining their children and that they need to protect them, and prescribing the most extensive external structure possible. When the resources are there, I will often suggest 12-18 months on a therapeutic ranch in the middle of nowhere for reprogramming, which works surprisingly well for the most difficult cases: most difficult usually defined by an inability of parents to keep their kids out of the clutches of evil because of where they live and who they hang with.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against the use of medication in specific cases, and I don’t doubt its usefulness when used properly, which often means temporarily as a way of resolving a developmental crisis.
But the upshot of what Dr. Anderson is doing will be exactly what people here expect, to promote lifelong substance abuse and impair long term adaptability. It makes me think of poor little Judy Garland, who was given stimulants by the film industry at a young age and looked like an advanced Parkinson’s patient by the end of her abbreviated life.
Now, the other piece of this is one intimated by a couple of the comments above that refer to “society” doing this or that. We should be clear that this is the product of so-called enlightenment thinking that replaced the notion that things on earth were being done by and for God with one grounded in human desires and capabilities. And here we are.
Drugs are just the first step. Eventually we’ll start messing with genes. Low intelligence and poor self-control will become “illnesses” to be cured. We are heading towards a Gattaca world.
As ErisGuy states, this could go either way. A real problem would be the first generation of “new men” (much sarcasm intended). How do you reach out to, socialize, and educate that IQ 130 child with a superb attention span whose parents just happen to be a couple of violent meth heads? I’ve read many accounts of smart kids who overcame precisely those sorts of backgrounds, but now we would have to deal with millions over a very short time span.
We know what Mustapha Mond would do, but how do you run a world full of “Alphas?” Who turns the wrenches and keeps the axles greased?
An alternative hypothesis about how Ritalin and related drugs are effective: (I state this not to horrify parents of ADD/ADHD children but rather to inform others of my direct observations) Ritalin works by making children very, very suggestible. I had the misfortune to be in seventh and eight grades with a crop of unusually intelligent children. It didn’t take us long to learn how to manipulate the Ritalin kids. X, go expose yourself to the cheerleaders and you’ll be cool (he did it). Y, tell the teacher she is fat and ugly (he did it). Z your hair is too long, cut it (this from a bunch of very shaggy kids and yes, he did it).
I’m not very proud of those days, but there you have it. All drugs have side effects.
I have repeatedly called for such measures, 55. The country air is like breathing oxygen to misguided youth. Criminals can be reformed to behave appropriately. Cultivation increases to match that of steel production. Barring unforeseen difficulties, the idea works.
maineman wrote: “the youth culture has been deteriorating precipitously, particularly during the past decade”
We’ve noticed this. When we let our young daughters watch “Hannah Montana” and “Wizards of Waverly Place,” they become a pair of back-talking, sarcastic drama queens (because that is precisely what the lead characters of both of those shows are). After cutting them off, they both resumed normal behavior quickly.
KathyC #54
Let me say again the essence of my post in the previous thread. It was the Civil Rights Movement.
Roughcoat said that the change in our country took pace over decades. Maineman said, no, that it was very quick.
They are both right. In our schools – the focal point of the Civil Right Movement – the change was astonishingly rapid. I recall as a high school senior in 1970 going back in to our physics classroom to pick up something I had left there and seeing a freshman class “in progress.” I was stunned; the teacher probably could have prevented the kids from setting the place on fire, but certainly no more than that. It looked like food fight at a kindergarden in a mental institution.
The main reason is that any single disciplinary problem became a racial, and thus political, issue. Black activists complained about disciplinary action for black students. Teachers were reluctant to impose normal order and discipline on black students because they knew of the protest it would bring. Being reasonable people, they felt they could not impose discipline on white students only. So discipline all but evaporated. Today it is common to have “School Resource Officers” – cops in the school, full time. When someone suggests that we don’t have the money to have cops stationed at every school strong objections arise from the educators.
Things progressed in the rest of the society from there. When kids don’t learn discipline then they don’t learn much of anything else, either. Ronald Reagan said our biggest problem in school was discipline – and this raised a howl of indignation.
k @ 52: What the world needs now is to find a way to turn millions & millions of bureaucrats into Maypole dancers, who will remaing well-paid provided they dance somewhere out of the way and don’t obstruct the minority whose role is to produce necessary goods & services.
… as well-described in the classic scifi story, “The Marching Morons”, 1951, or for that matter H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”, 1895.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons#Stories_with_similar_premises_and_themes
Even Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” can be looked at in these regards, when the unappreciated top 20% “go Galt”.
Not to mention other stories about serving man, for which our current POTUS has already won a Nobel Prize, so with his penchant for green solutions … too bad Romney didn’t run at the camera in the last debate screaming, “Obama Green – it’s millionaires and billionaires!”
Um yeah, what I meant to mention was “Brave New World” and the drug “soma”. Marx’s “opiate of the masses” taken literally.
So, we’ve seen Bernanke coming for a long, long time, and Ritalin, and maybe iPhones. As I said above, we are Borg, resistance is futile.
3. Not all kids are capable of excelling in school.
Except in Lake Wobegone.
We give stimulants and other drugs to air force pilots and soldiers to enhance performance because it works. Why stop at low performing children? Just make them available to anyone.
An article appeared in the prestigious journal Nature a few years back arguing just that. These scientists argued that they too deserved Ritalin etc because it made them smarter and more productive. I would bet that the doctor knows something about that, how long demanding hours or cramming for exams go better with some jet fuel. I would bet that the surgeon coming into the hospital at 3am could use some help.
We all use something don’t we? Caffeine and alcohol are acceptable psychotropic drugs, so maybe some of the others in pill form are no worse. I think it is a valid question.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v456/n7223/full/456702a.html
Living in Alabama about 15 years ago, on my son’s Little League team was a boy named Omar. I knew him from the Section 8 craphole apartments he lived in. His biological father was an older decent uninvolved Black man, his mom a serious crackhead. Needless to say Omar and his brothers raised themselves.
He slapped a girl in middle school after similar incidents. After a stint in the juvenile jail, they sent him to the shrinks who put him on Ritalin and Prozac. I remember a game where Omar was playing first base. The batter hit a ground ball past him. The ball laid on the ground about 20 feet behind Omar. He stood there oblivious as the batters circled the bases.
Today he’s probably on the chain gang at Holman Prison or dead or a wino. The problem is trying to put a chemical bandaid on societal breakdown , much of it created and accelerated by liberal stupidity. I fear what’s coming in urban America will far outweigh the ability of the elites to try to paper it over.
But the upshot of what Dr. Anderson is doing will be exactly what people here expect, to promote lifelong substance abuse and impair long term adaptability. It makes me think of poor little Judy Garland, who was given stimulants by the film industry at a young age and looked like an advanced Parkinson’s patient by the end of her abbreviated life
I had a family member who had surgery several years ago. During the recovery, his doctor diagnosed him with “depression” and gave him some medication. He stayed on that medication for years, and steadily got worse and worse. Eventually I did some research.
Apparently it’s pretty common to go through a brief period of depression following major surgery. Nothing truely wrong with the brain, just the temporary result of the body recovering from trauma. It goes away on it’s own.
Unfortunately, the medication was a disaster. The way it works is to artificially supply the brain with mood stabilizing chemicals, checmicals the body normally manufactures itself. But when it’s swimming with artificial versions, it shuts down the factories. After a while, you need the drugs because your body is no longer capable of manufacturing it’s own chemicals. Your brain is totally dependant on the medication.
My family member was in fact diagnosed at one point with Parkinsons, though a second doctor, upon looking at the drugs he was taking, said “He has Parkinson’s symptoms, but they could be the result of the medications he is on. We have to take him off these medications for several weeks to know.”
Hmmm. That would be the same prestigious journal, Nature, that made up bogus stats to support the neo-communist propaganda during the Iraq intervention.
The same argument could be made for drug use in sports, in everything, for that matter. No way I would pay such a journal one red cent, so I couldn’t read the whole article, even if my blood pressure would tolerate it.
Such flat out stupidity and ignorance is unforgivable in a professional. We have already come up with a response to those who are clamoring for such performance enhancing additives: no. Not unless you are sick, meaning suffering from a real live disease that needs to be treated. Less than desired school performance is not a disease, kind of like pregnancy is not really a disease.
These people are insane, Spin, and I mean that in the professional diagnostic sense. Their perspective on reality is grossly impaired, as in kaput.
59. RWE: “Roughcoat said that the change in our country took pace over decades. Maineman said, no, that it was very quick…. They are both right.”
Yes.
The changes were a long time gestating, but the actual birth of the new was, or could be, quite swift. In 1968 I was a freshman at Michigan State. In the fall quarter the old rules applied: one night a week (Tuesday, not, significantly, on Friday or Saturday) girls were allowed to visit the boys in their dorm rooms and vice versa. The stipulation being that the doors had to be open the width of a book. Some students tried to work around this rule by inserting a matchbook in their [closed] doors but the RAs always put a stop to this. The doors stayed open and a rather genteel and conservative atmosphere pervaded the leafy groves of that august institution of higher learning: accordingly there were frat parties with sister sororities, dances and mixers, boys and girls dated, went steady, got laveliered, then pinned, and sometimes married. There was little difference, in the social essentials–the interactions of the sexes–between going to college in the autumn of 1968 and, say, the autumn of 1908.
Then, during the winter quarter, the student government eliminated parietal hours along with all visiting constraints and restrictions. Thenceforward girls could visit their boyfriends in the latter’s dorm rooms any time, day or night, and stay for as long as they wished. The sexual mores of the campus changed literally overnight, and changed radically. Within weeks a goodly (and ever increasing) number of male and female students were essentially cohabiting in their dorm rooms. That same year birth control pills became available to girls, further loosening inhibitions. Perhaps not coincidentally, porn became easily obtainable and widely available. Plus, it was in color! And the guys no longer wore their black socks and shoes while shtooping! Wowza!
Put bluntly, a lot of young people started getting laid, a lot. It sure was fun, hey: for the guys especially. Up til then it was really, REALLY hard to get laid short of marriage. After that, it was, well, open season. If the girls didn’t put out they knew you’d dump them for someone who would. So, they took the pill and put out.
Amazingly, women thought they were getting the better part of the deal: sexual liberation and all that. For all I know, they still think that way.
IMO, the ramifications of Dr. Anderson’s ‘strategy’ and liberal acceptance of it, provide a profound insight into the left and ‘progressive/liberalism’.
First the context:
If we accept for arguments sake that the story of Adam & Eve in Genesis in the Bible is a somewhat accurate allegory for the human condition; specifically the divorcement between mankind and the divine, then mankind cannot help but make mistakes, even and perhaps most often, when intentions are ‘good’.
If in fact there is a divine creator, then the subconscious yearning for reconnection with the divine, has to exist in all of mankind.
Yet Post Modernism, the catechism of the left, inherently rejects the possibility of the divine…but, nature does not tolerate a vacuum. So something has to fill that emptiness. That something is utopia and the perfectibility of mankind.
The majority of the left seek a perfect world of social justice. They are utopian in their outlook and goals. ‘Fairness’ is the siren call that motivates liberals. Of course the world cannot be made perfect, not in a universe of cause and effect. And if the left’s search for utopia is really a search for an alternative for reconnection with the divine, then all that remains is finding the means to perfect humanity.
So inevitably that must lead to the Dr. Andersons of the world. Just a temporarily more benign version of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, more commonly known as the NAZI Party.
Dr. Anderson’s ‘solution’ inevitably leads to Hitler’s “final solution”.
The left’s solution inescapably leads to 1984.
Just for the record, I never said that the deterioration of the culture was rapid, just that the decline among adolescents over the past decade has been precipitous based on my experience.
65 maineman
I think you are referring to the Lancet
They published the article by the Hopkins epidemiologists with the bogus numbers on Iraq.
This article was an editorial written by a group of scientists so not a peer reviewed scientific article. It is behind a pay wall now but I think it raises some interesting questions about what is a drug and what are the boundaries of legitimate use. I do not agree with them nor with this pediatrician but I do not fault them for publishing the editorial. In real life this happens often. On campus a Ritalin goes for around ten bucks and students take them to study for exams.
What about Viagra, Testosterone, or HGH? These can all boost performance in various ways. What are the limits? Important questions and I think that Nature was correct to bring up the question.
I have to admire Dr. Anderson for just coming out and saying it.
My problem is that he has taken things too far. People come to him because their child is sick, hurt, or otherwise in distress. That is the basis of what he does every day. Social justice is something else. I can get that someone sees root problems and becomes interested in solving them. Some docs have quit medicine and gone into politics for that reason.
At some point there should be a boundary. The pharmacy is not the body politic. Medicine needs to keep a clear line there or risk loss of credibility and internal ethical structure.
Spindok
Last thing.
Wretchard wrote:
Maybe medication should be like public policy. You need a definite and compelling reason to do something or else don’t do it.
It is another way of phrasing the primary principal of medical ethics.
Primum non nocere
I would flip the first sentence. Maybe public policy should be more like medication.
stevesmith:
I disagree. Down that path has you hanging from tubes in some Necromonger ship hold being ‘converted’. (Channeling Riddick)
Or to quote my fav vampire; “No pain. No pain.”
Don Rodrigo – “MY OWN KIND”
Kind of sounds like one of my haunts. “Hi, I’m _______ and I’m addicted to gear oil 90.” Actually, you made me laugh.
We are a nation under medication. Now where did I put mine?
We are an under medicated nation? Oh, there it is.
Wow. I live in Cherokee County. Our school system was reported by the local fish wrap as having ‘the best SAT scores in Georgia’, from what I read.
There was nothing about the NYT article noted locally. Wonder why…
tom