From: "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 06:22:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: [RANT] Giving Mind Control Drugs to Children
In-Reply-To: <199607070742.AAA26296@netcom5.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.94.960707141928.179A-100000@gak>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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This will be my last comment on this thread.

On Sun, 7 Jul 1996, Mike Duvos wrote:

> Goodness gracious, you make these people sound almost reasonable.
> I remember last year one local TV station did a piece on "school
> phobia", and the wonderful drugs that could be used to treat it.
> The kid profiled simply didn't like school, and refused to attend
> it, and the list of symptoms given to help parents recognize the
> disorder were entirely attendance related.

Then the list of symptoms given was incorrect.  The list I got was from
_Living with Fear_ by Isaac M. Marks, M.D.

> ADD people are simply the upper 5-10% of the population with
> regard to behavioral traits which make learning more difficult.
> Of course such things can be hereditary and of course people who
> can't live up to expectations placed upon them sometimes get
> clinically depressed.
> 
> The thing to remember here is that we are looking at things which
> show continuous normal variation in any population, like height
> and hatsize, and the people who are being labeled and treated
> here are hardly some huge number of standard deviations away from
> the norm.

That still doesn't mean it isn't a disorder.  People with ADD _want_ to get
better and be able to concentrate more.  Drugs such as ritalin help them do
just this.  Dyslexia is also something that is a normal variation.  Somehow,
since it isn't psychologically related, no one would object if a drug was
discovered that could cure it and was administered to children with dyslexia.
Many people with ADD do not want to act the way they do, so it doesn't make
sense to not treat it as a disorder.

> 
>  > There are real illnesses, and there are fake ones.  Just
>  > because the psychiatic profession does attribute certain
>  > behavior to some non-existent illness doesn't mean there is
>  > any reason to not believe in any psychological maladies.
> 
> Which of course is not the issue here.  No one has stated that
> legitimate mental illness does not exist, merely that the
> profession has a tendency to use creative imagination where a
> market or political pressure exists.

Who decides which mental illnesses or disorder are legitimate?  I think both
school phobia and ADD are disorders that can be treated if the person with
the disorder is willing to be treated.  You are, of course, free to believe
that these disorders are illegitimate, but the millions of people afflicted
with these would tend to disagree.

> 
>  > It's surprising to me that people consider the Unabomber
>  > "insane" but yet do not believe that many very real mental
>  > illnesses and disorders exist.
> 
> Insanity is a legal term which by its very construction, is an
> almost impossible set of criteria to meet.  It has nothing to do
> with any scientific definition of mental illness.  You can be
> completely bonkers and carrying on meaningful conversations with
> wall ornaments, and the government will be more than happy to fry
> you in the electric chair.

People who use the term to describe people who are abnormal don't know that.
The word "sane" comes from the same root as "sanitary" which means clean or
disease-free.  Hence, insane means ill.  It is true that the legal term
"insane" is different from the scientific term "mentally ill", most people
use insane as a diminutive term for someone they believe to be abnormal.

- -- Mark

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markm@voicenet.com              | finger -l for PGP key 0xe3bf2169
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"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.  If that
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