SFTU 1. Dyslexia and ADHD are Myth and Fraud (Note to ADHD-Coach Jeff)

• By: Dr. Floyd
• Summary: A brief explanation of the fact that dyslexia and ADHD are fraudulent politicized myths.
• Tags: ADHD, dyslexia, child abuse

Dyslexia and ADHD are Myth and Fraud (Note to Jeff)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK-he2JWfU4

Content

• Curing Dyslexia in China
• Childhood Reading vs ROI
• Myth that Literacy is Necessary
• ADHD is a Myth and a Fraud (Baughman and Szaz on ADHD)
• References

So-called dyslexia is a fraud. The fraud diagnosis of dyslexia is modern, unscientific, and abusive. History bears witness that the world has never had – nor needed – anything like the unscientific, abusive fraud of "dyslexia."

Curing Dyslexia in China

Throughout history, literacy was very low in China. Then, in the 20th century, psychiatrists took over in China, diagnosed millions of children with dyslexia (and ADHD), prescribed anti-psychotic medications and sit-still training – and then the rates of literacy skyrocketed.

Just kidding. What really happened is that Communists took over in China, simplified written Chinese, and then rates of literacy skyrocketed. Imagine that: a solution that does not involve pathologizing normal people.

Dyslexia, Actually

What is so-called dyslexia? According to Psychology Drs. Peterson and Pennington, published in the Lancet: Dyslexia is characterized simply as slow and inaccurate word recognition.[1]

Is a diagnosis of dyslexia based on biology whatsoever? No. According to the research of three bookworms at MIT, published in the journal of Current Opinion in Neurobiology: no evidence shows a biological cause of so-called dyslexia.[2]

Pathologizing people as dyslexic is not objective. Instead, so-called dyslexia is an unnecessary invention to pathologize children (and adults) who simply read at a level toward the lower bounds of a normal statistical distribution. This is according to research published thirty years ago (and never refuted) in the New England Journal of Medicine, by two doctors of medicine and three doctors of research.[3]

Childhood Reading vs ROI

As a master of finance, you recognize that return on investment (ROI) can be a key consideration when prioritizing between and among options. Here are three examples where ROI arises in everyday life:

(1) Medical students famously have poor sleeping habits, and are thus commonly sleep-deprived; this is because medical students tend to see sleep as a having a lower ROI than spending their time otherwise.

(2) Medical doctors famously have poor writing habits, and their handwriting is thus hard to read; this is because medical doctors tend to see taking the time to write well as having a lower ROI than spending their time on everything else – while writing just well enough to where their writing can be read.

(3) Children with so-called dyslexia have poor reading and writing ability; this is perfectly explained by those children believing that reading and writing has a lower ROI than the myriad other things that a child would rather be doing in life. Then parents and clinicians compare the so-called dyslexic child to those relatively bored and boring children who value reading and writing enough to dutifully obsess over those skills enough to read and write well. Then, we get what we have: a bunch of boring, literacy-obsessed people pathologizing as "dyslexia" (and ADHD) anything but "good" children's dutiful descent into the mire of literacy-largely-for-its-own-sake. Meanwhile, as noted by no less a literary figure than Arthur Schopenhauer: an obsession with reading (and writing) makes people boring and stupid:

"When we read, someone else thinks for us; we repeat merely his mental process. It is like the pupil who, when learning to write, goes over with his pen the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly, when we read, the work of thinking is for the most part taken away from us. Hence the noticeable relief when from preoccupation with our thoughts we pass to reading. But while we are reading[,] our mind is really only the playground of other people’s ideas; and when these [ideas] depart, what remains? The result is that, whoever reads very much and almost the entire day . . . gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who always rides horses ultimately forgets how to walk. But such is the case with very many scholars; they have read themselves stupid."[4]

Myth that Literacy is Necessary

The wrongful pathologizing of children and adults as being "dyslexic" for reading slowly and poorly: this wrongful pathologizing proceeds from the modern and groundless myth that literacy is necessary. Many have heard those stories of the grandma or grandpa who "only had a third-grade education." But how? How could they survive without becoming neurotically book-smart? Well, setting aside grandparents who never suffered through the modern education cult – we have also the example of many great minds: people like Plato, Aurelius, Thomas Jefferson, and so forth. Some of these great minds read. Some of them even wrote. But plenty of them had scribes to read for them and to write what the great mind spoke. It is a matter of fact and historical record that an obsession with reading and writing has never been normal nor common. Thus, the modern myth that literacy is necessary leads to plenty harms – not the least of which is the pathologizing, as dyslexic, normal children and adults who read slowly or poorly.

Dyslexia is a myth and a fraud, so now we turn to the myth and fraud of ADHD.

ADHD is a Myth and a Fraud

This will be brief. Following are the respective learned opinions of two medical doctors: Pediatric Neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman (MD), and Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz (MD).

Baughman on ADHD

To clarify the above points, consider the forward of a 2006 book by Pediatric Neurologist Dr. Fred Baughman (MD). The book is called "The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes 'Patients' of normal children." The following is from pages xi-xii (roman numerals 11-12):

ADHD was not discovered by science, it was voted into existence in 1987 by a committee of the American Psychiatric Association. Beginning with that vote a series of political processes have resulted in widespread international recognition of ADHD as a “psychiatric disorder”. Medicine and psychiatry are supposed to be driven by hard science, not politics supported by pseudo-science. ADHD has snowballed internationally because the outrageous claims of the ADHD industry have often escaped scrutiny. As a result, across the globe over the last 15 years, millions of responsible loving parents have accepted at face value the advice of an “expert” child psychiatrist or pediatrician and “medicated” their child for ADHD. Typically these parents have been told their child has a biochemical imbalance in the brain best treated with safe effective stimulant medication. Most are never told the truth. Most are never told that there is no proof of a biochemical imbalance in their child’s brain. Most are never told that their child’s diagnosis of ADHD is entirely based on second hand reports of their child’s behavior. Most are never told the diagnostic criteria are no more objective than a teacher’s observation that their child avoids homework, interrupts, fidgets, squirms in their seat, loses pens and pencils, and is forgetful and disorganized. None are ever shown a blood test or a brain scan or any scientific proof of their child’s supposed chemical imbalance of the brain. Why? Because they don’t exist. Most are never told that the amphetamines used to treat ADHD are drugs of addiction with a startling range of adverse side effects and unknown long-term effects on developing minds and bodies. These parents are denied their right to informed consent about their child’s treatment. Many children are naturally inattentive, impulsive and hyperactive. In these cases normal behavior is pathologized and normal, healthy children are drugged. Some children, however, do have a range of real problems that cause disruptive behavior. For example, children who can't hear or see properly may be inattentive or impulsive because they are frustrated with not being able to keep up with the rest of the class. Likewise, for children not taught to read properly and children traumatized by events beyond their control. It is hardly surprising that drugging these children with behavior- altering amphetamines alters their behavior, masking the symptoms but doing nothing to deal with the underlying cause.[5]

Szasz on ADHD

Psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz co-founded the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). At a conference for the Commission, Dr. Szsaz denounced the ADHD fraud as follows:

"When the school authorities tell a mother that [her] son is sick and needs to be on drugs, how in the world is she to know that is simply a lie? How is she to recognize that what experts now call "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" is simply not a disease? Now, such a mother is not an expert in the history of psychiatry. She does not know that psychiatrists have, for hundreds of years, used diagnostic terms – so-called diagnostic terms – to stigmatize and control people. I will only give you a few dramatic examples. When black slaves in the South [and North] ran away to freedom – it was not that they wanted to be free: they [supposedly] suffered from a disease called drapetomania. . . . I am not making this up. This was a legitimate diagnosis – just like [ADHD] is. Women, half the population of mankind. . . if they were foolish enough to rebel against domination by a man – well, then they had a serious disease called hysteria, which was due to their wandering womb. Now, none of those behaviors was ever a disease. . . . nor is [ADHD] a disease. No behavior is a disease nor can be a disease. That is not what diseases are. So it does not matter how a child behaves: there is nothing to examine. If [the child] is sick, then there must be some objective science to it, which can be diagnosed by physicians and objective tests. That is why, as soon as you go to a doctor, they take a lot of blood and take x-rays: they do not want to hear [about] how you behave. . . . Labeling a child as "mentally ill" is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment. I have long maintained that the [pediatric] psychiatrists is one of the most dangerous enemies, not only of children, but [also] of adults – of all of us who care [about] the [two] most precious and most vulnerable things in life. And those two things are liberty and children. Now, I ask again: how can parents protect their children from the Therapeutic State? That is, from the alliance of government and psychiatry? . . . I think . . . they can only do so by . . . getting rid of the idea that what ails an unhappy and misbehaving child – . . . [which is] all children at some time . . . – is a mental illness, and that the so-called treatment can help him. This is simply not so. Diseases are malfunctions of the human body – of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain, and so forth. Typhoid Fever is a disease. [We] all know it; [we] do not question it. . . . Spring fever is not a disease. Now, why not? Because we all know that it is a figure of speech, a metaphor – a little piece of poetry. Now, so are all "mental diseases": mental disease is a metaphor. The task we set ourselves – to combat psychiatric coercion – is important. . . . It is a noble task. . . . [W]e must persevere. Our conscience commands that we do no less."[6]

References

1. Peterson and Pennington. (2012). Seminar: Developmental Dyslexia. Lancet, 379(9830), 1997–2007. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60198-6
2. Norton, Beach, and Gabrieli. (2015). Neurobiology of Dyslexia. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 0, 73–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2014.09.007
3. Shaywitz, Escobar, Shaywitz, Fletcher, and Makuch. (1992). Evidence That Dyslexia May Represent the Lower Tail of a Normal Distribution of Reading Ability. New England Journal of Medicine, 326(3), 145–150. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199201163260301
4. Arthur Schopenhauer. On Reading and Books.
5. Baughman, F. A. (2006). The ADHD Fraud: How Psychiatry Makes “Patients” of Normal Children. Trafford.
6. CCHRInt. (2008, February 16). CCHR Co-Founder Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus. Citizens Commission on Human Rights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQegsqYhuZE

–Dr. Floyd

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