Yet another new study by scientists has been released purporting to prove something we can see is not right.
This time it is ADHD, that spurious childs complaint that allows children to be medicated for no reason at all. Apparantly, a study by scientists from Cardiff University, and published in the Lancet, has found some kind of genetic link by analysing the DNA of 366 children diagnosed with the disorder.
So at the sweep of a genetic pen, the reason for unruly behaviour is re-written as a brain disorder.
Yet my direct experience of a child diagnosed with ADHD was to see him dosed with Ritalin by parents who just could not/would not cope with the fact he needed regular stimulation. Yes he was an active child, but one that would also behave well when kept busy, but of course that method means that the parent has to put themselves out. The child I talk about is now a non-ritalined adult doing very well for himself in the working world, which provides him with the stimulas so lacking in his childhood.
As an avid watcher of Supernanny, most of the children in the families she is brought in to help display ADHD type behaviour, yet she usually turns the situation around within a week or 2. Episode after episode reveals that the problems nearly always lie with the parents and not the children. Parents who are too busy to pay attention to their children, parents whose work or cleaning of house comes first, parents whose own parents had been poor role models or perhaps too strict, parents who give their children no boundaries and so on.
As I write this, Professer so and so from Cardiff University is on the BBC banging on about this wonderful discovery as though everybody can just forget everything they have seen or known of ADHD and its causes.
But the sadness of this whole nonsense is that now we've had more scientific drivel about ADHD being a genetic problem, not only will the children not get the attention (yes, they are lacking attention!) they need but will no doubt become the guinea pigs for a host of new drugs to make the pharmaceutical companies even richer.
Suffer the little children.
2 comments:
Lou Reed wrote a superb song called Kill Your Sons. It was about how scientists were 'treating' kids who were different, as if the were ill rather than just non-conformist. That was in the late 60s maybe early 70s. Things don't change.
Indeed - we can't have non-confirmity can we?
Check out the Judge Rotenburg Centre - they give electric shocks to kids who don't confirm.
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