Healthy Skepticism Library item: 6104

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Tanner L
New Research on ADHD Cases in U.S. Kids
2006 Sep 19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091900048_pf.html

Notes:

Stuart A Jones’ Comments:

The article by Lindsey Tanner is a mediocre piece of reporting on a study that will be unlikely to cause a furore in the halls of medical research and academia, but it got my goat!

At this point if you believe that ADHD is a biological disease with real measurable physiological markers (real aetiology) and are dogmatically convinced that is so? read no further and delete this.

It can now be presumed that most of those with a vested pecuniary interest in perpetuating the myth that ADD/ADHD are real diseases have maybe felt a little uncomfortable and left the room, as it were, I’ll continue with this critical essay on a mundane, but misleading, media report.

Having reduced the number of readers to some informed health professionals, academics, lawyers, lay activists and hopefully a few desperate parents who may be at their wits end and about to accept the label of ADHD for their child but are concerned and wish to learn more before taking this life-altering decision, I’ll continue….

For those who are not aware of how ADHD has been foisted on a largely unsuspecting population, including health professionals, a short explanation is in order. ADHD is listed in the diagnostic and statistics manual, (DSM-IV, being the current version of the bible of psychiatry) as a disease.

This was achieved by a small group of physicians, key opinion leaders (KOLs) and putative leaders in their respective fields voting by the method of a show of hands, a lumped together set of subjective symptomologies into a mental disorder of the brain, and…. Eureka! Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder came into being.

It’s an anomalous fact that many KOLs in psychiatry have close pecuniary ties to the corporate pharmaceutical industry — an entity that has gained multi-billions of profits from the sales of treatments (read dangerous chemical entity psychoactive and antidepressant drugs) used routinely for ADHD, and has been proved to have a pervasive influence and impact on all aspects of society — One is entitled to imagine that Lindsey Tanner would have taken these facts into account before reporting the linking of such a study to the dubious and controversial disease of ADHD.

The effects of smoking and lead on the foetus/neonate and the developing brain of children have been well researched and documented. Smoking, even passively, causes cardiovascular disorders, pulmonary disease, cancers and death in adults. Lead poisoning can cause brain damage and death. It is well established these contaminants, along with many others, including food additives, poor nutrition, manufactured chemicals such as DDT, organophosphates, and particulate emissions can affect the foetus and developing brains of children, they are also associated as being causative of somatic disorders such as leukaemia and many other diseases.

Lindsey Tanner’s article reports Dr. Leo Trasande as stating: “It’s a landmark paper that quantifies the number of cases of ADHD that can be attributed to very important environmental exposures,” I would contend that statement is more indicative that Dr Trasande is persuaded that ADHD is a disease, for whatever reason, than that this is a landmark study. It doesn’t quantify anything of the sort. If Dr Trasande didn’t know low levels of contaminants, including lead and tobacco were dangerous, I would seriously recommend he read the newspapers he passes comment to. But how that fact can be linked to ADHD as a disease should have beggared the belief of his common sense. It did mine!

Lindsey Tanner and Dr Trasande should have been aware that once a child is diagnosed as suffering from the so called disease of ADHD, that child has a great chance of being exposed to another type of chemical contaminant, in the form of a drug-treatment, and also that there have been authoritative studies on the effects of these chemicals as well, when taken during pregnancy they have proved to cause an increase in various somatic diseases in the neonate, including for deaths caused by persistent pulmonary hypertension, cardiac abnormalities, poor feeding ability, irritability and other problems related to substance/drug withdrawal. Had they have been conversant with these chemically induced effects, they might have wondered about that particular contaminant induced effect? Drug withdrawal in neonates, it should have begged the question of how that could happen? Despite the fact that for a long time the drug manufacturers denied the fact, it’s proven these drugs are addictive and that is passed to the developing foetus in the womb.

The article states that 4 to 12% of children suffer from this disorder (ADHD) — the figure is ever increasing, the last I read, it was 10% — and have difficulty sitting still and paying attention, that’s right! These are two of the ‘subjective symptomologies’ listed in the DSM IV — I have been privileged to father seven children and have been a grandfather to 12 more, none of them sat still, or paid attention, until they were taught how to do so.

As for the reported contribution: Dr. Helen Binns, a researcher at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said the study is a thoughtful analysis but doesn’t prove lead exposure is among the causes. It’s possible, for example, that young children with ADHD are more likely than others to eat old leaded paint chips or inhale leaded paint dust because of their hyperactivity. I would inform Dr Binns and her ilk — I presume from the article’s context, an expert in childhood behaviours — that all genetically normal babies learn by the senses of taste, smell, sight and touch, and this process aided by language in young children, carries on. When they’re of an age to understand we teach them not to put inappropriate things in their mouths, until we’ve taught them not to do such things, we stop them from doing so.

Removing lead and other contaminants — including inappropriate and dangerous chemical entity type drugs given for non-existent diseases — from the environment should be a public health imperative, but that will demand political interventions. It’s a sad fact that political policy is most often driven by economics, equals money, and the major chemical and pharmaceutical companies provide a great deal of money to the economy. But that couldn’t be the reason that our environment is so polluted, could it? —or why an ever increasing number of kids are being diagnosed as suffering from what at best can be described as a subjective disease — ADHD? or possibly have affected how and why Lindsey Tanner’s article was written?

Full text:

New Research on ADHD Cases in U.S. Kids

By LINDSEY TANNER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 19, 2006; 1:10 AM

CHICAGO — About one-third of attention deficit cases among U.S. children may be linked with tobacco smoke before birth or to lead exposure afterward, according to provocative new research.

Even levels of lead the government considers acceptable appeared to increase a child’s risk of having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the study found.

It builds on previous research linking attention problems, including ADHD, with childhood lead exposure and smoking during pregnancy, and offers one of the first estimates for how much those environmental factors might contribute.

“It’s a landmark paper that quantifies the number of cases of ADHD that can be attributed to very important environmental exposures,” said Dr. Leo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children’s Health and the Environment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

More importantly, the study bolsters suspicions that low-level lead exposure previously linked to behavior problems “is in fact associated with ADHD,” said Trasande, who was not involved in the research.

The study’s estimate is in line with a National Academy of Sciences report in 2000 that said about 3 percent of all developmental and neurological disorders in U.S. children are caused by toxic chemicals and other environmental factors and 25 percent are due to a combination of environmental factors and genetics.

“The findings of this study underscore the profound behavioral health impact of these prevalent exposures, and highlight the need to strengthen public health efforts to reduce prenatal tobacco smoke exposure and childhood lead exposure,” said the authors, led by researcher Joe Braun of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The study was to be published online Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

ADHD is a brain disorder affecting between 4 percent and 12 percent of school-age children _ or as many as 3.8 million youngsters. Affected children often have trouble sitting still and paying attention and act impulsively at home and at school. Researchers aren’t certain about its causes but believe genetics and environmental factors including prenatal exposure to alcohol, tobacco or illicit drugs may play a role.

Dr. Helen Binns, a researcher at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, said the study is a thoughtful analysis but doesn’t prove lead exposure is among the causes. It’s possible, for example, that young children with ADHD are more likely than others to eat old leaded paint chips or inhale leaded paint dust because of their hyperactivity.

The researchers analyzed data on nearly 4,000 U.S. children ages 4 to 15 who were part of a 1999-2002 government health survey. Included were 135 children treated for ADHD.

They asked whether mothers had smoked during pregnancy but used blood tests to determine lead exposure, said co-author Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a researcher at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy were 2 1/2 times more likely to have ADHD than children who weren’t prenatally exposed to tobacco.

Children with blood lead levels of more than 2 micrograms per deciliter were four times more likely to have ADHD than children with levels below 0.8 microgram per deciliter. The government’s “acceptable” blood lead level is 10 micrograms per deciliter, and an estimated 310,000 U.S. children ages 1 to 5 have levels exceeding that.

Based on study estimates, more than 5 million 4-to-15-year-olds nationwide have levels higher than 2 micrograms per deciliter, Lanphear said.

Trasande said the study adds further proof that the government should lower its threshold for safe lead exposure.

Exposure to tobacco smoke after birth was not associated with increased ADHD risks, even though childhood exposure to lead was.

“Saying there are different periods of vulnerability to different toxins is perfectly plausible,” said Dr. Robert Geller, a pediatric toxicologist at Emory University.

“There may be very specific periods of vulnerability,” depending on when the developing brain is exposed, Geller said.

___

On the Net:

Environmental Health Perspectives: http://ehponline.org

Government: http://www.cdc.gov/lead