Wampum

Conservatives, ADHD and Mercury

This began as JAAP (Just Another Autism Post) but was waylaid. While researching some autism material, I stumbled into the world of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). In particular, I stumbled into the conservative view of ADHD.

Many conservatives hold what I consider an extreme position with regard to ADHD. They deny it exists. For an interesting article critiquing that view and exploding much conservatives mythology about ADHD, please see this article by Michael Fumento. The article first appeared in The New Republic.

Fumento, is a science writer, a conservative, and fancies himself a dispeller of science myths. As Insight Magazine wrote:

Writer Michael Fumento believes that conservative-oriented investigative reporting is necessary to counter the mind-set of the liberal media. He maintains that too many media reports on scientific subjects are based on speculation and scare tactics.

When Fumento argues that ADHD is real, conservatives should listen.

If conservatives deny that ADHD exists, how do they explain the large number of kids diagnosed with ADHD and the large number of kids taking medication (Ritalin and other drugs) for the condition?

There are some very strange views out there. As Fumento points out, Thomas Sowell thinks that hyperactive behavior is just “boys being boys.”

Right wing radio talker Neal Boortz thinks that it is a conspiracy of public school teachers who want to make their job easier by drugging the students:

Have you put your kids on drugs yet? Have you let your government school teachers and administrators convince you that your child has a disease that doesn't even exist?

You see, within the first few days of school many teachers out there had already identified the children in their classes who had active imaginations. They knew that these kids would present somewhat of a problem during the school year. While teachers were busy teaching the dumbed-down politically correct curriculum to a bunch of glassy-eyed myrmidons some children were getting restless. They wanted to learn. They didn't need their self-esteem cranked up, they just needed to be challenged, and that just wasn't going to happen. So, get them on drugs. Tell the parents that their kid has some phony disease and get him on some mind-altering drug that will make him sit the hell down and shut the hell up in class. It sure beats actually having to gain their attention through effective and challenging teaching techniques.

Phyllis Schlafly apparently thinks that ADHD is just a way for school stystems to get more special ed money:

The number of children labeled ADHD and taking Ritalin has greatly increased since 1991 when ADHD was covered under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal program that brings more funding to public schools in order to provide extra services.

Fumento notes that Johan Goldberg reduces ADHD to a case of “ants in the pants.” I suspect that if that was all that it is, the parents of such kids would simply remove the ants.

Rush Limbaugh takes a traditional tact when discussing neurological conditions of children. Like Bruno Bettelheim, Rush blames the parents. Fumento quotes Limbaugh:

Limbaugh calls ADHD "the perfect way to explain the inattention, incompetence, and inability of adults to control their kids." Addressing parents directly, he lectures, "It helped you mask your own failings by doping up your children to calm them down."

Rush should know something about using drugs to mask one’s failings but in this case he is just wrong. I am no expert on ADHD but I know a lot of parents of autistic kids whose life would be much easier if they simply drugged their kids. Usually, they do not choose to do so.

My life would be a lot easier if we drugged Bobby. We try to draw a bright line between helping Bobby and making our lives easier. We will give Bobby drugs if they help him overcome his autism but we refuse to do so to help us. We have not yet tried any drugs. I cannot imagine that parents of ADHD kids are a whole lot different. They give their kids Ritalin not to make their life easier but to help their kids function with a neurological disorder.

Perhaps the most ridiculous conservative myth is that ADHD is part of a feminist conspiracy to make little boys act like girls. Fumento notes:

Many conservatives observe that boys receive ADHD diagnoses in much higher numbers than girls and find in this evidence of a feminist conspiracy... Sowell refers to "a growing tendency to treat boyhood as a pathological condition that requires a new three R's – repression, re-education and Ritalin."

Fukuyama claims Prozac is being used to give women "more of the alpha-male feeling," while Ritalin is making boys act more like girls. "Together, the two sexes are gently nudged toward that androgynous median personality ... that is the current politically correct outcome in American society.

George Will, while acknowledging that Ritalin can be helpful, nonetheless writes of the "androgyny agenda" of "drugging children because they are behaving like children, especially boy children."

Parents, teachers and doctors are all part of a grand feminist scheme to impose an “androgyny agenda” on America’s youth. Didn’t someone recently write that it was the left that was prone to conspiracy theories?

There are two more conservative arguments about ADHD that I wish to discuss. First, many conservatives note that there is no “objective test” for ADHD. That argument is often intoned with great gravity as if it is an important insight. For instance, Fumento quotes anti-Ritalin author Thomas Armstrong as saying:

ADD is a disorder that cannot be authoritatively identified in the same way as polio, heart disease or other legitimate illnesses.

Armstrong’s point, while true, is of no importance whatsoever. Many, many neurological conditions can not be diagnosed with a lab test, an MRI or any other “objective” test.

Alzheimer’s can not be diagnosed with an “objective” test. Any person who has watched a beloved parent or grandparent gradually be afflicted with the disease knows that regardless of what any lab test says, the disease is real.

Similarly, there is not “objective test” for autism. It is diagnosed by observing behavior. Nonetheless, if you come to my house and observe an almost nine year old boy who can not talk, is still in diapers, who will not eat meat, vegetables or fruit and who likes nothing better than to play, rewind and replay a fifteen second snippet of a video tape four or five hundred times without a break, you will need no lab test to know that something is not right.

I suspect that the parents of ADHD kids have similar observations and a similar level of certainty about their kid's condition.

The final conservative argument that I wish to address is in the form of, “it can’t be real because we did not have all those hyperactive kids when I was young.”

In this World Daily Net column by Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld we find:

There was no ADD or Ritalin when I was going to school in the 1930s and '40s. And that's because you simply could not have an attention deficit disorder in the kind of classrooms that existed then: clean, quiet and orderly. We sat in desks bolted to the floor, and the teacher was the focus of our attention.

There has been a large increase in the number of kids diagnosed with ADHD over the last couple of decades. Why is that? I suspect two factors are in play.

First, I suspect that many of the ADHD kids in past times simply were not diagnosed or treated. They were labeled "trouble makers" and lived with the condition untreated. I suspect that while we did not have school children taking Ritalin, we also had a great deal more misery and disfunctional kids.

That reason is consistent with an incidence of ADHD that has remained fairly constant over time. Perhaps though, there has been an increase in the incidence of ADHD. What could account for such an increase?

One suspect is heavy metals. New research by a team of scientist led by Dr. Richard Deth suggests such a link. The study is here (pdf). A more understandable news release is here.

From the news release:

According to new research from Northeastern University pharmacy professor Richard Deth and colleagues from the University of Nebraska, Tufts, and Johns Hopkins University, there is an apparent link between exposure to certain neurodevelopmental toxins and an increased possibility of developing neurological disorders including autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The research – the first to offer an explanation for possible causes of two increasingly common childhood neurological disorders – is published today in the April 2004 issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

Though some speculation exists regarding this link, Deth and his colleagues found that exposure to toxins, such as ethanol and heavy metals (including lead, aluminum and the ethylmercury-containing preservative thimerosal) potently interrupt growth factor signaling, causing adverse effects on methylation reactions (i.e. the transfer of carbon atoms). Methylation, in turn, plays a significant role in regulating normal DNA function and gene expression.

Recently, MB noted that more than 600,000 American kids are born each year with mercury levels that put them at risk for learning disabilities.

Julia, who has been all over the mercury issue, notes that energy lobbyists have been permitted to write the new regulations for mercury emissions for power plants while the administration prevented the EPA from conducting a scientific review of the effects of the new regulations. The new regs, needless to say, do not clamp down on the emissions of heavy metals.

I guess conservatives just find it easy to rationalize allowing power plants to spew more mercury and other heavy metals into the air and water. They get a whole lot of campaign contributions from energy executives. And besides, those neurological conditions the parents claim their kids have are not real. Their kids' behavior is a result of lousy parenting, or perhaps it is just boys being boys, or perhaps it is a result of lazy teachers or even a grand feminist conspiracy to make our boys girly. And anyway, there aren’t any objective tests proving the conditions. It really is easy for them to rationalize a policy thet permits more mecury and other heavy metal exposure.

It is harder for me. I just got back from changing the diaper of a kid who is almost nine.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at April 5, 2004 11:59 PM | TrackBack