Bipolar Disorder: Epidemic Without a Disease.

*Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Neurologist, Child Neurologist

June 4, 2008

In the Newsweek cover story of May 26, 2008, Growing Up Bipolar, Mary
Carmichael describes yet another magical psychiatric epidemic. In any
report of an epidemic there should be a description of the disease of
which the epidemic is comprised and mention of the test by which the
disease is diagnosed. But nowhere is there mention of a physical
abnormality-gross (visible to the naked eye), microscopic or chemical,
to make it a disease. Where is the proof that Max Blake, now ten, is
other than physically, medically normal?

Symptoms abound. Max can't sleep. Max is sad. Max wants to kill
himself. All serious symptoms to be sure, but entirely
subjective--not objective "signs," abnormalities, diseases.
Undaunted, Carmichael calls "bipolar" an "elusive disease" with a
grave prognosis: a "horror story," in which "terrible things happen."
But still no disease.

Next, we are told: "some doctors do not believe (bipolar) exists in
children." But diagnosis is not a matter of belief. If no
abnormality is demonstrated the diagnosis is "no evidence of
disease"-NED, or "no organic disease"-NOD.

Absent abnormalities, Carmichael, marshals more symptoms: "These
babies are born screaming."

Next, seeking to overwhelm with epidemiology, Carmichael writes:
"800,000 children in the United States have been diagnosed." "The
disease is hard to pin down." Nor does repeating the word "disease"
make it so.

Parents are asked to chose from among the "many drugs" available even
though "it's unclear how they work." How could it be otherwise
without a disease to treat. No infection, cancer, or diabetes-all
diagnosable, all treatable. In psychiatry, drugs change emotions and
behaviors by damaging the normal brain, causing intoxication,
poisoning, abnormality-disease.

"The disease is hard to pin down."
"Its unclear how they (the drugs) work." This is not medical science,
it is the "medical-speak" of "biological," psychiatry that is
deceptive, fraudulent, and intent on peddling drugs. When, the
patient is known to be normal but is called "diseased" and is
"medicated," is that not poisoning? Is it not assault and battery?
If the same patient dies, what is that called?

While false diagnostic labels alone may not make persons psychiatric
patients-in-perpetuity, drugs which cause chemical dependency and
conspicuous injury, such as Parkinson's syndrome or tardive dyskinesia
in a seven year-old, surely do. Max's parents were told (1) "treat
(your) child and risk a bad outcome, or (2) "don't treat and risk a
worse one." In either case, this message is surely to the liking of
the pharmaceutical industry which bankrolls it all.

Max and his parents have come to believe the "bipolar" fiction and to
play out their roles in it. The main authors--perpetrators of this
and all of psychiatry's fictitious "diseases" are the DSM Committee of
the American Psychiatric Association and "researchers" at the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

For Max's mother: "There was one good thing about this strange
diagnosis, she thought: at least it meant she wasn't a bad mother."
Max and his parents all had roles to play. Max's role is to be
"bipolar," a psychiatric patient-in-perpetuity. Everything else would
take care of itself and psychiatry and Big Pharma would reap billions
a year. And who knows, perhaps the 800,000 "bipolar" Max's Carmichael
says we have this year will become 1.5 to 2 million next year, which
many think it already is.

Harvard psychiatrists Joseph Biederman and Janet Wozniac were said to
have "described" pediatric bipolar disorder in 1995. I have no doubt
that they "described" it but, as is the case with all of psychiatry's
"chemical imbalances" they have never proved that a single one is an
actual disease, as throughout the rest of medicine.

At 2 ½ years of age, Rebecca Riley of Hull, Massachusetts was
"diagnosed" ADHD and bipolar disorder, by child psychiatrist, Dr.
Kayoko Kifuji, and was put Clonidine, Depakote and Seroquel, the last
of which is a potent, poisonous, antipsychotic. None had been
approved by the FDA for children so young. Rebecca became like a
"floppy doll" and died December 13, 2006, at 4 years of age, not from
a psychiatric disease, because there is no such thing, but from the
very real, very toxic psychiatric drugs prescribed for her.
Incredibly, her parents sit in jail, charged with her murder. Who
made it appear that Rebecca had two "diseases"? Who convinced the
parents she did and that the medications prescribed were "treatments"
for them? Countless hundreds if not thousands of children thus
diagnosed and drugged are dying, not from psychiatric diseases, but
from the one or several drugs prescribed for them as "treatment."
Between 1990 and 2000, 186 deaths from methylphenidate-Ritalin were
reported to the FDA-MedWatch program, a voluntary reporting program
the FDA itself, says detects no more than 1-10 percent of the actual
number.

Who is responsible for the murder of Rebecca Riley? Who is
responsible for the thousands or tens of thousands of deaths from
prescribed psychiatric drugs for psychiatric "diseases" that do not
exist?

*Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Neurologist, Child Neurologist, Fellow,
American Academy of Neurology; Director of the March of Dimes-Birth
Defects Clinic of Western Michigan, 1967-1975. He has discovered and
described real diseases including CHANDS: The Curly
Hair-Ankyloblepharon-Nail Dysplasia Syndrome. The Clinical Delineation
of Birth Defects, Volume XII, 100, 1972 and is author of the book: THE
ADHD FRAUD