If you knew that using drugs during your childs birth would lead to hyperactivity later on, don’t you think you might be motivated to learn how to give birth without any drugs, typically called Natural Childbirth?
If hyperactivity is on the rise, why do we think more drugs are the answer?
Drug use soars
A LOST generation of children are growing up taking powerful prescription pills.
Super-strength drugs to tackle a severe childhood behavioural condition are soaring on Tyneside.
According to new figures seen by the Chronicle, the number of youngsters on medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD, has doubled in Newcastle over the last two years.
Other areas are seeing an increase in the prescribing of strong stimulants such as Ritalin, Modafinil, and Dexedrine, as well as antidepressant Atomoxetine – which can all counteract hyperactivity.
The figures show prescriptions in the Newcastle Primary Care Trust area alone shot up from 2,284 in 2005-06 to 4,073 in 2006-07.
In North Tyneside, prescription numbers exploded from 528 in 2005/06 to 2,367 in 2006/07.
Gateshead, South Tyneside, Sunderland and Durham City also saw an increase in the number of prescriptions.
Children as young as six could be getting the drugs, and the rise in prescriptions has been blasted by a psychiatric health watchdog, the Citizens’ Commission on Human Rights, which claims children are being “drugged into submission”.
ADHD expert Paul McArdle, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist based at Newcastle’s Flemming Nuffield Unit, says the drugs can dramatically improve a child’s quality of life.
But he admits medicating the hyperactive is cheaper than other methods.
He explained: “With the right diagnosis and the right dose of medication, these drugs can help a child lead a more normal life and reduce a lot of the distress ADHD causes.
“There are other ways of dealing with children who have ADHD, such as specialist group work, but the investment needed for that is colossal and the funds are just not available.
“So we’re left with a real dilemma – medicate, or leave the child in an impossible situation where the future looks very bleak. One of the reasons for the increase in prescriptions could be that we are now giving out monthly doses of medication rather than previously, when we would prescribe around three months.”
ADHD severely affects around one in every 100 children in the UK, but many more are mildly affected – thought to be as many as 10%. There are thought to be more than one million adult sufferers.
The condition is caused by a dysfunction in the brain which leads the child to become overloaded with information which cannot be processed.
It is estimated that ADHD drugs cost the Newcastle PCT alone more than £198,000 in the past year and some argue they are not necessary and could even harm a child.
Brian Daniels, from the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, said: “Children do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles.
“But to represent that these troubles are caused by chemical imbalances or incurable brain diseases that can only be alleviated with dangerous drugs is dishonest, harmful and often deadly.
“They mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.”
Mum Deborah Bennett, from Washington, has decided against drugs to treat her nine-year-old son Jack’s ADHD, despite being offered Ritalin and a way to cope with his uncontrollable behaviour.
Jack, a pupil at Maplewood School in Sunderland, which specialises in helping children with conditions such as ADHD, is prone to uncontrollable swearing and aggressive outbursts towards other children, and can seldom be left alone.
Deborah, 38, said: “I was worried about the effects drugs would have on him because sometimes they can make the children seem like zombies.
“Although the summer holidays are coming up and I’m concerned about how I’ll manage his behaviour, I won’t go for drugs – and I only would as a very last resort.”
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Drug makes family life better
WITHOUT powerful ADHD medication, family life for the Fosters would be fraught with difficulties.
Jordan Foster was just five when he was given Ritalin by experts to control the condition, making him the youngest child in Gateshead to ever be given the drug.
Consultants were stunned when they visited the Fosters at their home in Low Fell, and saw the unruly youngster dart around the house attempting to rip radiators from walls and hurl toys at them.
They immediately diagnosed ADHD and Jordan is currently on a slow-release form of Ritalin 12 hours a day.
The drug often causes the youngster, now nine, to lose his appetite, but mum Christine, 43, maintains they have never looked back on their decision.
“Jordan’s behaviour was very destructive and we couldn’t do anything together as a family,” said Christine, who also has sons George, 12, and Andrew, 18, with husband Frank, 49.
“I would end up taking Jordan out separately to Frank and the boys because someone needed to control him constantly.
“We could never go out for family meals because his behaviour would cause people to stare and tut at us.
“But since the medication started, things have changed a lot and Jordan is more stable. We know what he is going to do and how he is going to react.”
Electrician Frank and Christine were initially hesitant about giving Jordan such strong medication, but were worried the condition would disrupt the youngster’s education.
And to make matters worse, Jordan, a pupil at Lindisfarne School in Gateshead, has also been diagnosed with autism.
“Initially we just gave him Ritalin during school hours and it improved his concentration a lot,” added Christine, who now runs a counselling service for families with children who have ADHD.
“He can behave more like a normal little boy and make friends, whereas before, his behaviour and the noises he made scared the other children.
“Putting Jordan on medication was a very difficult decision, but it has so many benefits and our family life is now a lot better.”

But isn’t that decision made so much easier simply because the drugs exist and are widely available?
Nutrition, gentle natural birth, and attachment parenting are the answer for this “LOST generation of children”

Jenny Hatch

Official’s death sentence a warning – paper

“BEIJING – China said on Thursday that the death sentence given to the former head of its drug and food watchdog for corruption was a warning to top officials.

Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, faces execution after a Beijing court on convicted him on Tuesday of graft and dereliction of duty.

He left his post before a recent wave of medicine safety scandals engulfed China. But state media have acclaimed the unusually harsh sentence as showing the Communist Party’s determination to purge corruption.”

Man, how would it be if our government made it a goal to send that sort of a message to our FDA???

“Zheng, 62, head of the drug and food agency from 1998 to 2005, took bribes worth some 6.5 million yuan ($850,000) from eight companies.

During his tenure, dozens died in China from fake or bad drugs and food products. In one of the most notorious cases, in 2004, at least 13 babies died of malnutrition in Anhui province after being fed fake milk powder with no nutritional value.”

More at the New York Times: China Sentences Former Drug Regulator to Death

“The court accused Mr. Zheng of accepting about $850,000 in bribes in exchange for approving drug production licenses.

Worried that some of those drugs may be substandard, China is now reviewing more than 170,000 production licenses issued by food and drug agency over the past decade.

Some drug experts in China agreed that Mr. Zheng deserved the death sentence because abuses in the drug industry became widespread during his tenure.”

Death Penalty for corruption in the drug industry. Hmmmmm, maybe China is on to something here.
Jenny Hatch

FDA Tyranny to become LAW
Mike Adams:

“On July 11, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed HR 2900, blocking debate on the law and preventing the introduction of any amendments that might have provided meaningful drug safety protections for consumers. This action demonstrates that the House of Representatives, much like the Senate, is utterly controlled by Big Pharma and has abandoned any responsibility to defend the interests of the voters. Drug companies now have complete control over the U.S. Congress, and through a campaign of intense lobbying and financial influence, they have managed to easily water down a law that once proposed to end the American monopoly on pharmaceuticals and ban advertising on new drugs.

Instead of placing new restrictions on Big Pharma and the increasingly dangerous power of the FDA, this new law (a combination of HR.2900 and S.1082, when it is hammered out in conference) grants more power to the FDA while deepening the financial ties between the agency and drug companies. The law effectively surrenders America to a system of medical tyranny under which a criminally-operated FDA will continue to promote pharmaceuticals, censor nutritional education and discredit alternatives that threaten drug company profits. Nothing in the new law protects consumers’ access to dietary supplements or natural medicine……”

……Notice, too, that this sellout crosses party lines and involves both Democrats and Republicans. Only one Congressman, Rep. Ron Paul (a Libertarian-leaning Republican), was attempting to introduce meaningful amendments that would protect the interests of the people. His efforts were blocked by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat……
The passage of this FDA reform law is merely one more sign of how thoroughly committed the U.S. Congress is to creating a future of death, disease and bankruptcy for the American people. You gotta give ’em kudos on consistency, however. At least the lawmakers are predictable.
Welcome to the United States of Big Pharma.”
Byron Richards

“On Wednesday, July 11, 2007 the House passed HR.2900 without allowing the Ron Paul (R-TX) amendments to protect dietary supplements. Representatives Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), John Dingell (D-MI), Henry Waxman (D-CA), and others falsely proclaimed that they were doing America a favor by passing this sweeping FDA-supported legislation that grants the rouge agency more power and money, and even transforms it into a quasi drug company.

Both the House and Senate (S.1082) have made the fatally flawed assumption that the reason for so many deaths and injuries from drugs was due to the FDA’s lack of resources. In reality, it is the INTENTION of FDA management that is the problem, combined with the simple fact that multiple drugs are extremely toxic and don’t work as advertised. Giving the FDA more power and money will only cause the agency to speed more drugs onto the market faster with even less safety testing — while abusing its power and actively stamping out competition to drugs.

FDA management is in bed with Big Pharma and this new legislation makes matters significantly worse through the creation of the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA. This new entity places the FDA in charge of drug design, drug patents, drug licenses, and the creation of new marketing entities/companies. Such a relationship with private industry is an unprecedented conflict of interest, totally at odds with drug safety. The current commissioner of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D. is little more than a Big Biotech sales rep with massive industry connections.

The House, like the Senate, will continue to allow direct to consumer advertising of new drugs with unknown risks — a flagrant safety risk that will cost many people their lives. Congressional leaders said they couldn’t prevent this advertisement for fear of violating the first amendment rights of drug companies. What a joke. The FDA routinely squashes the first amendment rights of American citizens to understand natural health options and the science that explains how they can prevent and treat disease. Thus, the first amendment argument is simply a matter of convenience.

The FDA wants to actively suppress information that will help people, yet allow highly risky and misleading promotion of toxic substances often for untested uses. The FDA even wants to prevent citizens from suing drug companies when they are injured, thus protecting Big Pharma. FDA tyranny, based on this type of arbitrary and unrestrained exercise of power, is used to promote and protect the pharmaceutical industry while at the same time undermining the dietary supplement industry…..

….A new tone has been set. A new chart has been plotted. Congress has transformed the FDA into a quasi drug company with unprecedented new regulatory power to control all health options in America. How many deaths and injuries will it take for a comatose and medicinally-overdosed public to wake up?”

I believe it will take fifty years before America fully wakes up and realizes that we have sown the wind as a society and we are about to reap the WHIRLWIND….

Jenny Hatch

Michael Moore Blasts Blitzer: “Why Don’t You Tell The Truth To The American People?”
I LOVE Rachel Sklar over at the Huffington Post. Very funny lady. She has put together a nice overview of a recent interview Wolf Blitzer did with Michael Moore on CNN.
Here is her intro:

“Ooh, wow — somebody’s going viral: Earlier this afternoon on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Michael Moore went berzerko on Wolf Blitzer”

She has nice links and a video. I’m planning to go see Sicko, so I can blog it properly. My very first post at Free Republic was writing a movie review for Farenheit 9-11. I was enraged after watching that movie, especially since my brother was in Iraq when I went to see it.
I anticipate enjoying Sicko though because I have heard that in it Moore uses his special propaganda skills to take on Big Pharma. And that is a battle that only someone with MM’s special Michigonian set of cahones should take on. As a fellow Michigander, I understand his debate style, use of certain gotcha tactics, and use of hyperbole to make a point. I met many people like him where I grew up. His accent is so familiar, it feels like being home.
I totally disagree that the answer for our health care is to socialize it, and I know he makes the case for socializing and that he is in fact going to be hammered by the evidence piling up about socialized countries ineptitude and inefficiency around medical care.
Privatizing the whole thing is the only way to sort our ways out of this health care mess.
However, I am happy to join an alliance with Mr. Moore in his desire to see the Pharmaceutical companies reigned in and held accountable for crimes against humanity, especially as related to psychiatric drugs. Click on this link to watch a short clip of Moore talking about Anti-Depressants. (Scroll down just a bit)
And the whole Movie:

More Here:

“The president of the Galen Institute, Grace-Marie Turner, who spoke to reporters during the call, said later that “I don’t know how good he is a filmmaker, but he certainly is a master of hype.”

Last week, her organization held a symposium on single-payer health care, the timing of which Mrs. Turner described as coincidental to the impending release of Mr. Moore’s film.

Not that the release hasn’t advanced her cause.

“It’s created a buzz and what we’re doing is trying to use the opportunity to get out what it’s like to live under a single-payer system,” she said.”
I appreciate the conservatives (backed up by the pharma companies) using Moore’s film to help educate the public about the dangers of socialism and socialized medicine. And I am completely on board with that effort, because Socialism as a political entity is indefensible. However, I wish those same Conservative Institutions would apply equal time to the very real hazzards of having our FDA in bed with the drug companies. I don’t see it happening in the short term, but Ron Paul, who is running for President, as a doctor, understands this issue very well and I believe will help educate the public about the dangers of Big Pharma Running the world. Here is a video of him talking about it:

Jenny Hatch