Moody women are now on drugs

A female psychiatrist writes in the NY Times:

WOMEN are moody. By evolutionary design, we are hard-wired to be sensitive to our environments, empathic to our children’s needs and intuitive of our partners’ intentions. This is basic to our survival and that of our offspring. Some research suggests that women are often better at articulating their feelings than men because as the female brain develops, more capacity is reserved for language, memory, hearing and observing emotions in others.

These are observations rooted in biology, not intended to mesh with any kind of pro- or anti-feminist ideology. But they do have social implications. ...

Sales of antidepressants and antianxiety meds have been booming in the past two decades, and they’ve recently been outpaced by an antipsychotic, Abilify, that is the No. 1 seller among all drugs in the United States, not just psychiatric ones. ...

At least one in four women in America now takes a psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men. Women are nearly twice as likely to receive a diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder than men are. ...

The most common antidepressants, which are also used to treat anxiety, are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (S.S.R.I.s) that enhance serotonin transmission. ... These medicines frequently leave women less interested in sex. ... On S.S.R.I.s, you probably won’t be skipping around with a grin; it’s just that you stay more rational and less emotional. Some people on S.S.R.I.s have also reported less of many other human traits: empathy, irritation, sadness, erotic dreaming, creativity, anger, expression of their feelings, mourning and worry.

Nobody wants to say it, but most women are emotionally unstable, without a man in the house. They need a man, or drugs, or they go nuts.

I did not know that the biggest selling drug is an anti-psychotic. That drug is primarily used for the treatment of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Under Obamacare, mental illness is supposed to be covered the same as physical illness. A separate story says nursing homes overuse this drug, and bill Medicare.

There is research showing that women change their mate preferences during their monthly cycles. There are also feminist scholars who deny this, as it implies that women are slaves to their hormones and emotions.

Incapable of distinguishing criminal behavior

The Free Range Kids blogger has been called the worlds worst mom, but sometimes I think that she is the only one with any common sense. Now she warns:

The so-called “Cinderella Law” working its way through Parliament may sound as if it is going to rescue ragamuffins stuck in their own little corner in their own little chair. But in fact, by expanding the definition of child cruelty to include emotional, psychological or even intangible harm, it holds the threat of criminalizing any of us who think  our kids can handle more than the state (or some tsk-tsk’ing agent) believes they can.

I prefiously warned England to get Cinderella Law and Britain makes emotional cruelty a crime.

Now she refers to a British essay:

There is little doubt that the ominously titled Serious Crime Bill, currently working its way through parliament, will significantly expand the definition of the offence of child cruelty. It may be nicknamed the Cinderella Law, but it will criminalise behaviour falling far short of anything experienced by Cinderella. Clause 65 of the bill, in particular, will make two changes to the offence of child cruelty.

First, it will enable prosecutions to be brought where a child, although not physically harmed, has been harmed in other ways. Any form of emotional, psychological or intangible harm could be caught by this new definition of ill-treatment: ‘physical or otherwise’. This reform will overturn a House of Lords decision from 1980 that confined the offence of child cruelty to cases involving a child’s physical needs. This specifically excluded other aspects of harm, such as a parental failure to meet moral, educational, spiritual or emotional needs. That the government’s proposal now includes such forms of intangible harm will mean that children and their many one-eyed advocates in the child-protection industry will find it all too easy to bring normal incidents of parenting within the scope of the criminal law.

Secondly, clause 65 will also remove the examples that currently illustrate the severity of an injury necessary for its infliction to be regarded criminal. So, since 1933, ‘injury to health’ has ‘includ[ed] injury to or loss of sight, or hearing, or limb, or organ of the body’. These examples have ensured that one-off incidents of bruising, for example, would not be treated as child cruelty. Clause 65 will sweep away all the examples and replace them with the expansive and all-encompassing words ‘whether of a physical or psychological nature’. In other words, any form of injury to health, whether of a physical or psychological nature, will potentially fall within the scope of the criminal law.

The effect these two changes will have on the policing of parents by criminal-law enforcement agencies should not be underestimated. ...

Under the current law, a number of parents have already fallen foul of child-protection officials who, having lost all sense of perspective, have used criminal law to prosecute parents whose behaviour fell a long way short of anything that warrants a ‘criminal’ tag.

I am afraid that the trend in the USA is in the same direction, and there is not the political will to stop it. CPS has little interest in distinguishing criminal from non-criminal behavior, and there is no complaint that is too trivial for it to investigate.

Here is the latest example of over-aggressive CPS action:

Later that afternoon, Langwell decided to check out and go home. Langwell said the baby was breastfeeding well and was healthy, and she preferred to take her home early "AMA" (against medical advice) so they could all get some sleep. When she left, a member of the hospital's staff called and reported her to the county's child welfare agency. ...

According to the child welfare agency's report, a hospital staff member described Langwell as "hostile" and suggested that her behavior was "consistent with someone with substance abuse issues." (According to a representative from the county's child welfare department, the majority of the cases they see are neglect cases, and most of those are related to substance abuse.) ...

A child welfare agent came to the house the next day to check on the baby. The home had a security fence, and Langwell and Hodek did not hear the knocking at the gate, which was some distance from the front of the house. The agent called the police. When Langwell eventually appeared at the security gate, she saw two police officers and the welfare agent, who told her that the hospital had alerted the agency when she checked out early. Langwell refused to let the police and welfare agent inside the house but brought the baby out so they could see that she was OK. The agent noted in her report that the baby had good coloring. Langwell submitted to an on-the-spot drug test, but according to the report, the test was inconclusive, because her saliva sample was too thick ­— "which may have had something to do with the fact that I had just given birth and it was 110 degrees," Langwell says bitterly.

The agent returned later that day with a warrant to take the baby — just to the hospital for a full exam, Langwell and Hodek initially thought. ...

A child welfare agent came to the house the next day to check on the baby. The home had a security fence, and Langwell and Hodek did not hear the knocking at the gate, which was some distance from the front of the house. The agent called the police. When Langwell eventually appeared at the security gate, she saw two police officers and the welfare agent, who told her that the hospital had alerted the agency when she checked out early. Langwell refused to let the police and welfare agent inside the house but brought the baby out so they could see that she was OK. The agent noted in her report that the baby had good coloring. Langwell submitted to an on-the-spot drug test, but according to the report, the test was inconclusive, because her saliva sample was too thick ­— "which may have had something to do with the fact that I had just given birth and it was 110 degrees," Langwell says bitterly.

The agent returned later that day with a warrant to take the baby — just to the hospital for a full exam, Langwell and Hodek initially thought. ...

"The Juvenile Court upholds approximately 98 percent of our actions to remove children from their homes based on evidence presented," Pettet says, meaning that in about 2 percent of the cases where a removal has occurred, the judge will return the child to the home of a parent.

We have objective, cheap, and accurate drug tests, so no one should be falsely accused of drug use.

I mentioned that I was suspicious of all the Bill Cosby fan-girls who claim that they got date-rape drugs decades ago. Here is a study from a couple of years ago:

SUSPECTED victims of drink spiking are more likely to be suffering from drugs and alcohol they have willingly consumed, according to Australian research.

Of 100 suspected drink-spiking cases reviewed in a West Australian study, none were found to involve being slipped a sedative or illicit drug.

What emerged instead was a concerning picture of excess alcohol and illegal drug use by people – usually young women – at the centre of these drink-spiking claims.

“The public’s perception that it’s a guy putting a sedative drug into a woman’s drink, at a pub or a club, we just didn’t find that at all,” Dr Mark Little, a clinical toxicologist at the Royal Perth Hospital, said.

“As a community, we have a bigger problem with illicit drug use and alcohol binge drinking than we do with drink spiking.”

I am coming around to the view that unless the woman goes straight to the police within 2 hours and has a medical exam, then her allegations are likely to be mostly false.

Exposing the false accuser

More info is out on Jacqueline Coakley, the accuser behind the UVa rape hoax:

Gotnews.com has obtained the rape obsessed Pinterest account of the 20-year-old girl at the center of the University of Virginia rape hoax.

We can also confirm that Jackie Coakley has misled other students at both her high school and her college about her past sexual relations with men.

Coakley’s social media postings (below) reveal a woman obsessed with rape and well aware of the political consequences of rape allegations.

The mainstream media does not name rape victims, but there is every reason to name false accusers. Jezebel says it is irresponsible to name Coakley.

I do not want to put all the blame on her. The world is full of crazy mixed-up bitches without a firm grip on reality. I place much greater blame on those in higher positions of responsibility.

Sabrina Rubin Erdely deserves much more blame for writing the phony story, but she is also just another crazy feminist who apparently has been lurid stories of false accusations for years. Why has no one called her on it before?

More blames goes to the supposedly reputable publishers, like the Rolling Stone and Wash. Post, who put their reputations behind this story. And they still refuse to come clean, and call this the hoax that it is. In spite of all the evidence that the story was a hoax, a Wash. Post columnist writes:

We should believe, as a matter of default, what an accuser says. Ultimately, the costs of wrongly disbelieving a survivor far outweigh the costs of calling someone a rapist. Even if Jackie fabricated her account, U-Va. should have taken her word for it ...

President Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, and much of the mainstream news media are dedicated to creating racial and sexual animosity. They get their votes by convincing non-whites that Republicans hate them, and convincing single women that there is a war on women. To do that they create hoaxes.

Why was the whole nation preoccupied by an obscure Ferguson Missouri police shooting? Michael Brown was a thug, robber, and attempted murderer of the worst sort. His death is not a tragedy as the world is very much better off with him no longer able to commit violent crimes against people. The evidence confirmed the officer's self-defense story.

And yet Obama and the Democrats have done everything they can to incite blacks to riot over this. The Democrats gave the (false) impression that white racist cops pick on blacks for no reason, and shoot them in the back in front of a dozen witnesses. Obama continues to this day to imply that the Ferguson police were the criminals.

Likewise, Obama and the Democrat news media are constantly telling us that American society has some sort of rape culture where Republicans and other evil-doers approve of rape. So we have all these stories like the UVa frat party rape, the Bill Cosby raping with date-rape drugs, Lena Dunham being raped by the campus conservative, colleges being disciplined for not acting more aggressively on rape complaints, etc.

There is no merit to any of this nonsense. Rape is on a long term decline, like other violent crimes. Most of these college stories are just slutty girls who get drunk and have some regrets the next morning. The big majority of the black-white crime is blacks attacking whites, not whites attacking blacks.

Another facet to the battle is the GamerGate controversy. Gamers want to play computer video games without interference from the social justice warriors who want change to suit their leftist politics.

A lot of people thought that electing Barack Obama in 2008 was going to bring a new era in improved race relations and bipartisan government. Just the opposite has happened. He has refused to work with the Republicans, and has engaged in the most hateful and divisive tactics of any President in my lifetime. He has turned the Democrats into the hate-white-Christian-men party.

Bill Cosby is innocent

I regularly argument that men should be innocent until proven guilty, especially when there is a frenzy of decades-old dubious accusations from people seeking financial settlements.

Brendan O’Neill writes in the UK :

Whatever you think of Cosby – I remember even as a kid I thought The Cosby Show was pants [is this some British jargon? -George] – this media-led public criminalisation of someone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime should chill you. Because the fact is, Cosby is innocent of rape. Just as you are. Just as I am. At least until such a time as someone does the very hard job of proving beyond reasonable doubt that he did rape someone. There’s a phrase for this, I think. How does it go? Ah, yes: ‘A man is presumed innocent until proven guilty.’

The speed with which Cosby has gone from being the uncle of modern America to the scum of the world wide web has been terrifying. As a CNN headline summed it up: ‘From TV dad to accused sexual predator.’ That’s basically what has happened to Cosby’s reputation in the space of two weeks.

Many of the pundits rushing to demote Cosby to devil have used the phrase ‘no smoke without fire’, now that 16 women have made similar allegations. This might seem commonsensical, but it is also antithetical to what we used to know as justice. As historical incidents everywhere from Salem in the seventeenth century to Shieldfield in the 1990s show, lots of accusations do not mean guilt can be inferred, and can actually mean the opposite. ... In short, often there is smoke without fire, especially in a climate of ‘frenzy’; a climate of fear; a climate that longs for a monster; a climate like Salem, where accusations also spread like wildfire; a climate like that currently surrounding Cosby. ...

Well, I have news for these twenty-first-century Salemites: Bill Cosby, we must presume, is innocent. And given that the passing of the statute of limitations means he’s very unlikely to be brought to court to face his accusers, he will remain innocent. I’m sorry if that gets in the way of your search for a demon to yell about, but that’s life: liberty and justice are more important than your weird psychological need for evil.

The clincher for me was the accusation that he used a date-rape drug against his victims. While such drugs do exist, their usage by sexual predators is almost entirely a myth. I do not think that there has ever been a case of someone like Bill Cosby using it. If he had, and one of his victims made a prompt complaint and got a urine test, then he would be behind bars.

The fact is that women often consent to sexual relations and have regrets the next morning. They tell themselves stories to excuse themselves, and sometimes they even believe their own BS.

Update: If you are wondering about motives, Bill Cosby is worth $400M.

Foster system drugging our kids

The San Jose Mercury News has a special report:

With alarming frequency, foster and health care providers are turning to a risky but convenient remedy to control the behavior of thousands of troubled kids: numbing them with psychiatric drugs that are untested on and often not approved for children.

An investigation by this newspaper found that nearly 1 out of every 4 adolescents in California’s foster care system is receiving these drugs — 3 times the rate for all adolescents nationwide. Over the last decade, almost 15 percent of the state’s foster children of all ages were prescribed the medications, known as psychotropics, part of a national treatment trend that is only beginning to receive broad scrutiny.

“We’re experimenting on our children,” said Los Angeles County Judge Michael Nash, who presides over the nation’s largest juvenile court.

Followup stories said:

With pressure on California's foster care system to curb the rampant use of powerful psych meds on children, concern is mounting about the doctors behind the questionable prescribing.

For months, the state has adamantly refused to release data that this newspaper sought to expose which physicians are most responsible. Now, in response to a request from state Sen. Ted Lieu, California's medical board is investigating whether some doctors are "operating outside the reasonable standard of care."

And this:

Some of the state's most influential lawmakers on Monday called on California's foster care system to stop the reckless prescribing of psychiatric medications to troubled children, demanding the state quit spending tens of millions of tax dollars on such risky therapies.

The demand for action comes a day after this newspaper published "Drugging our Kids," an investigation that found nearly one in four adolescents in the nation's largest child welfare system is prescribed at least one psych med -- 3 1/2 times the rate of all teens.

Almost 60 percent of foster youth prescribed psychotropics in California are being given antipsychotics, the most dangerous and expensive class of the drugs, which can result in rapid-onset obesity, diabetes and uncontrollable tremors. Lawmakers expressed outrage over the newspaper's findings that many of the medications are prescribed for behavior management -- not the mental illnesses they are approved to treat -- and have little, if any, science supporting their safety and effectiveness in children.

This reporter has written several exposes of the foster care system, but she does not seem at all interested in similar problems in family court and elsewhere.

I have posted on this blog the extensive use of psychiatric drugs on foster kids in a 2011 post and a 2012 post, and also complained about dubious use of such drugs on other kids.

Pregnant women using opioids

I recently posted a story about a breastfeeding mom going to prison for using prescription morphine. Apparently millions of these prescriptions are being written. The NY Times reports:

Doctors are prescribing opioid painkillers to pregnant women in astonishing numbers, new research shows, even though risks to the developing fetus are largely unknown.

Of 1.1 million pregnant women enrolled in Medicaid nationally, nearly 23 percent filled an opioid prescription in 2007, up from 18.5 percent in 2000, according to a study published last week in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. That percentage is the largest to date of opioid prescriptions among pregnant women. Medicaid covers the medical expenses for 45 percent of births in the United States.

The lead author, Rishi J. Desai, a research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said he had expected to “see some increase in trend, but not this magnitude.”

“One in five women using opioids during pregnancy is definitely surprising,” he added.

In February, a study of 500,000 privately insured women found that 14 percent were dispensed opioid painkillers at least once during pregnancy.

Wow, I thought that pregnant women were scrupulous about avoiding drugs, out of maternal instincts. I had no idea that physicians were so actively giving opioids to them.

Update: Another study warns about harms from pregnant women taking anti-depressants like Prozac:

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health are calling attention to a new study linking anti-depressants with autism.

Published online earlier this week in the journal Pediatrics, the study was joint effort between researchers at Bloomberg and at the University of California at Davis' MIND Institute.

"This research also highlights the challenge for women and their physicians to balance the risks versus the benefits of taking these medications," said Irva Hertz-Picciotto, a researcher at the MIND Institute, "given that a mother's underlying mental-health conditions also may pose a risk, both to herself and her child."

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, are the most popular class of drugs prescribed for depression and anxiety symptoms -- endorsed by doctors for their high rate of success and relative safety. But for pregnant moms, SSRIs may put their baby-on-board at risk.

In a study of nearly 1,000 mothers and their children, researchers found a strong connection between prenatal SSRI exposure and developmental problems, including autism, in boys.

Sluggish cognitive tempo is the new ADD

Just when I thought that the shrinks already had too many excuses for drugging kids, the NY Times reports on a new one:

With more than six million American children having received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concern has been rising that the condition is being significantly misdiagnosed and overtreated with prescription medications.

Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems. Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. By some researchers’ estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children.

Experts pushing for more research into sluggish cognitive tempo say it is gaining momentum toward recognition as a legitimate disorder — and, as such, a candidate for pharmacological treatment. Some of the condition’s researchers have helped Eli Lilly investigate how its flagship A.D.H.D. drug might treat it.

“This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels,” Keith Conners, a psychologist and early advocate for recognition of A.D.H.D., said of the rising rates of diagnosis of the disorder.

The Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology devoted 136 pages of its January issue to papers describing the illness, with the lead paper claiming that the question of its existence “seems to be laid to rest as of this issue.” The psychologist Russell Barkley of the Medical University of South Carolina, for 30 years one of A.D.H.D.’s most influential and visible proponents, has claimed in research papers and lectures that sluggish cognitive tempo “has become the new attention disorder.”

You can bet that the drugs for this will be abused.

Major League Baseball bans a lot of performance enhancing drugs, but if the player has a documented attention deficit, then he gets to take pills to increase his alertness.

Forensic lab expert is convicted

In a rare case of accountability for forensic experts, a corrupt chemist is going to prison.

AP reports:

A chemist at a Massachusetts drug lab accused of faking test results in criminal cases has been sentenced to three to five years in prison.

Annie Dookhan, of Franklin, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, perjury and tampering with evidence. Friday in Suffolk Superior Court.

She'll also be on probation for two years when she gets out of court.

Dookhan sent the state's criminal justice system into a tailspin last year when state police shut down the state Department of Public Health lab she worked at after discovering the extent of her misconduct.

Since the lab closed in August 2012, at least 1,100 criminal cases have been dismissed or not prosecuted because of tainted evidence or other fallout from the lab's shutdown.

She did not make all drug tests positive, of course -- just the one where she knew that the prosecutors wanted a positive result. More details:

State police shut down the state Department of Public Health lab she worked at after discovering the extent of Dookhan's alleged misconduct.

Prosecutors said Dookhan admitted "dry labbing," or testing only a fraction of a batch of samples, then listing them all as positive for illegal drugs, to "improve her productivity and burnish her reputation." ...

Dookhan's lawyer, Nicolas Gordon, argued that she made a series of tragic mistakes and that her only motivation was to be "the hardest-working and most prolific and most productive chemist."

"This is not a woman who ever set out to hurt anyone," Gordon argued during a court hearing last month.

She is a scapegoat. None of the prosecutors is being punished.

The judge piles on:

Sentencing guidelines called for a maximum sentence of three years for Dookhan, but Ball said in a ruling last month she wanted to impose a tougher sentence “given the magnitude of the harm she has done, considerations of general deterrence and, particularly, punishment.”

The judge said in the ruling that “the consequences of her behavior, which she ought to have foreseen, have been nothing short of catastrophic: Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core.”

Dookhan pleaded guilty to 27 charges, including evidence tampering and obstruction of justice. She worked at a now-closed Department of Public Health lab in Jamaica Plain.

A scientific determination that a substance seized by police is an illegal drug is a cornerstone of a drug case in court. A defendant cannot be convicted for possession or distribution of, for example, a harmless white powder.

No, the whole state criminal justice system should have foreseen this. Those judges and prosecutors surely realized that they were giving incentives for pro-prosecution faking.

It is very easy to devise a system where it would be impossible to do what Dookhan did. Just occasionally send duplicated samples to an independent out-of-state lab. Anonymize the samples so that no one at the lab knows which samples are supposed to be positive. Use some of the quality control methods that are now used in factories all over the world.

The state has to do some of these things anyway in order to get admissible evidence in court. Someone is supposed to be able to testify about the reliability of the lab results, and they need to do some sort of double-checking in order to estimate the reliability.

No, the state of Mass. deliberately created a system for framing defendants with bogus lab results.

The problem is worse in the family court. I do not see how Dookhan's crime is any worse that what psychologist Ken Perlmutter does. He refused to do my evaluation until he could call Commissioner Irwin Joseph to find out what outcome he wanted. And then he dry-labbed his report, ignoring the evidence on the record. This Complaint to State Board details how he failed to do a proper evaluation. The California board verified all the factual allegations, but did not take his license away.

Psychotropic pills peak before divorce

Discover mag Neuroskeptic reports:

People are almost twice as likely to be taking antidepressants or other psychotropic medication just before getting a divorce.

This striking graph, from a new paper out of Finland, shows the data.

The vertical bar represents the divorce date. The solid curve is the divorcees, and the other two are comparison individuals who were either married throughout the period, or not married at all.

In both the male and the female divorcees, rates of psychotropic use began to climb about four years before the divorce date, peaking a few months before the event.

As usual, it is tricky to deduce the causation from the correlation.

Maybe bad marriages are driving the couples to depression and then divorce.

Maybe the drugs are raising the self-esteem and outlook of depressed spouses, so that they have the courage to file for divorce.

Maybe the drug side effects kill libido, so they divorce when their sex life is no good anymore.

Maybe they stop the pills after the divorce because their are no longer on the spouse's health insurance.

Maybe people seek lifestyle changes that include getting rid of the spouse and the pills.

Maybe squabbling couples foolishly seek marriage counseling, where their complaints get passed off to someone to give them feel-good pills.

Did I miss any possibilities? Maybe you can think of some more.

Court oversees giving Risperdal to a child

A local grandma wrote this letter to Tamara (Tami) Ellis, a local parenting coordinator with dubious credentials:

I wonder if you are aware that the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency has decided that D. H. does not belong in its MHSA program. After seven years they are only now making that decision, only now after he has brought thousands and thousands of dollars into the health agency’s coffers; and only now as an audit is being conducted into the use of MHSA funds! He never did belong in the program for the Seriously Mentally Ill. D. is Asperger: a condition, neither a mental disorder nor a mental illness (half D.’s extended family is Asperger), yet you kept him in that program unnecessarily and suffering for seven long years.

You are neither a doctor nor a lawyer. Yet despite your ignorance and your specious credentials you were able to convince the Family Law Court judges that you knew what was best for D. You saw him once four years ago and that was all you needed: D. should be on drugs. Why? The anti-psychotic drug Risperdal is for psychotics: schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and the extreme moods of autism. Risperdal made D. very sick, but that didn’t matter to you.

Janssen, the drug’s manufacturer, said the ‘treatment’ should be discontinued, that ‘D. was having all the side effects (except the sexual ones, being only a little boy) exhibited by 10 percent of all users.’ But no, you knew what was best for D. and you convinced Robert Brown, M.D. (who should have known better), the lawyers (your friend Jennifer Gray), Bret Johnson, and the judges of the Family Law Court, that your verdict was the only one.

You, Tami, have denied D. his childhood. You harmed him and you harmed his father. Indeed, you have harmed D.’s entire family.

May the shame of your actions be always with you!

I do resent the suggestion that Asperger is a condition that needs to be treated with a drug. It has been dropped from the DSM-5, as the current psychiatric consensus is that it is not a disorder. Even if it were a disorder, it is crazy to try to treat it with this drug. Judges and other court personnel have no business meddling with such dubious treatments.

Lockyer forgives addict-slut

I mentioned the Bill Lockyer wife story in Feb. and Sept. of 2012.The San Jose newspaper now reports:

California state Treasurer Bill Lockyer's differences with his estranged wife, former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer, might not be so irreconcilable after all.

The 71-year-old mainstay of state Democratic politics this week withdrew divorce papers he had filed last July against his 41-year-old wife, whose methamphetamine addiction and extramarital affair ended her political career and could have stained his.

"could have stained his"? His career is definitely stained.

"I thank my husband and family for their unwavering support. Bill and I agree reconciliation would be best for Diego (their 9-year-old son) and for us, and we're committed to reaching that goal," she said. "Addicts cannot achieve a safe and healthy life unless we take responsibility for our actions and conquer our addiction first. I pray that all addicts who are also victims of abuse, violence and exploitation find inspiration in my story."

find inspiration in my story?! Is she kidding? Here is her story:

Nadia Lockyer recently finished a 180-day residential drug treatment program she had entered after her Aug. 28 arrest in Orange County. Police were tipped that she had drugs in the home where she was staying with Diego. Officers found a tube of aluminum foil with a burned end, and when they met Lockyer later that day, she showed signs of being under the influence of drugs.

She was charged with felony methamphetamine possession and three misdemeanors: being under the influence of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, and child abuse and endangerment.

Her Thursday morning court appearance in Santa Ana was continued until March 30, Stokke said, adding that "the court said she was doing very well in her treatment program."

Nadia Lockyer early last year claimed Stephen Chikhani of San Jose had attacked her in a Newark hotel room, but the state Justice Department investigated and eventually declined to charge him with any crime. As details emerged about Lockyer's lengthy affair with Chikhani and their drug use, she resigned her supervisorial seat last April.

The woman was married to the California attorney general and she was meeting a meth addict in a seedy hotel for rough sex instead of taking care of their 8yo son? I am usually in favor of ignoring minor faults and keeping joint custody, but she is unworthy of the forgiveness that she has gotten from her husband.

Pothead mom has pothead child

An Oregon newspaper reports:

Mykayla Comstock's family says marijuana helps her fight an especially aggressive form of leukemia, keeps infection at bay and lifts her weary spirit. Twice a day she swallows a potent capsule form of the drug. Some days, when she can't sleep or eat, she snacks on a gingersnap or brownie baked with marijuana-laced butter.

Mykayla is one of 2,201 cancer patients authorized by the state of Oregon to use medical marijuana.

She is 7. ...

Mykayla's father, who is divorced from the girl's mother, was so disturbed by his daughter's marijuana use that he contacted child welfare officials, police and her oncologist. Jesse Comstock said his concerns were prompted by a visit with Mykayla in August.

"She was stoned out of her mind," said Comstock, 26. "All she wanted to do was lay on the bed and play video games." ...

Immediately, Purchase, who is divorced from Mykayla's father and has sole custody, faced decisions about her daughter's treatment.

With chemotherapy, doctors put Mykayla's odds of survival at 76.9 percent and her chance of relapse at 7 percent, Purchase said. Purchase accepted the chemo as part of her daughter's treatment, although she takes a generally dim view of the pharmaceutical industry, is skeptical of childhood vaccines, rejects genetically modified foods and avoids products made with high-fructose corn syrup.

What Purchase believes, emphatically, is that cannabis heals.

Purchase said her stepfather's topical application of cannabis oil cured his skin cancer. She said an acquaintance's lung cancer went into remission after he used pot.

And Purchase herself consumes marijuana daily.

She said she became an Oregon medical marijuana patient in 2010 to treat vomiting from a metabolic problem and from her pregnancy with her second child. She is so convinced of the drug's safety that she consumed it during the pregnancy and while breastfeeding.

She was certain of one thing when Mykayla was diagnosed: The child would use marijuana to defeat cancer.

There are many things wrong with this. How does a dopehead mom get sole custody?

I usually support parental authority in making medical decisions, but the sensible parent has been cut out of the picture.

Manual for prescribing drugs

A reader sends the DSM-5 news:

Controversy continues to swell around the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as DSM-5. A new study suggests the 900-page bible of mental health, scheduled for publication in May 2013, is ripe with financial conflicts of interest.

The manual, published by the American Psychiatric Association, details the diagnostic criteria and recommended treatments — many of which are pharmacological — for each and every psychiatric disorder. After the 1994 release of DSM-4, the APA instituted a policy requiring expert advisors to disclose drug industry ties. But the move toward transparency did little to cut down on conflicts, with nearly 70 percent of DSM-5 task force members reporting financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies — .

The story is also here.

If the field were scientific, the conflicts of interest would not matter. Their diagnoses would be grounded in objective research. But there is not much chance of that.

The DSM-5 will be like a cookbook for prescribing psychoactive drugs. You can count on that.

CPS puts toddler on drugs

A reader sent this video from last year about a CPS case. CPS was trying to terminate the parents' rights, because they got caught with some minor recreational drug use. So CPS seized the 3-year-old, and put her on Risperdal! The video is shocking. It is complete with cruel CPS policies, spineless judge, suffering parents, and incompetent case workers. Watch this, and you will wonder why anyone would ever think that CPS is better able to handle a child than the natural parents.

Some people call it irony when CPS puts a child on drugs as part of an effort to shelter her from drugs. That is way too nice of a word for those evil creeps.

I notice that all of the CPS case workers were obese women. I may be prejudiced, but it seems to me that if a woman cannot even manage her own food intake, then she should not be telling others how to run their lives. She cannot even run her own.

Dosing Kids with Psychiatric Meds

SciAm writer John Horgan lists ugly experiments:

Are the days of ugly research over? If only. In the past two decades, American psychiatrists have been carrying out what is in effect an enormous clinical trial involving millions of children. Physicians are medicating children with stimulants such as Ritalin, antidepressants such as Prozac, anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax, bipolar drugs such as lithium and antipsychotics such as Risperdal. “It’s really to some extent an experiment, trying medications in these children of this age,” child psychiatrist Patrick Bacon told producers of the 2008 PBS documentary “The Medicated Child.” “It’s a gamble. And I tell parents there’s no way to know what’s going to work.” As of 2009, more than 500,000 American adolescents and children, including toddlers younger than two, were taking antipsychotics, which “may pose grave risks to development of both their fast-growing brains and their bodies,” according to The New York Times. In Anatomy of an Epidemic (Crown, 2010), which I have written about previously, journalist Robert Whitaker presents evidence that psychiatric drugs may be hurting more children than they help. Since 1987, he reports, while prescriptions for children have soared, the number of patients under 18 receiving federal disability payments for mental illness has multiplied by a factor of 35. By this measure, the experiment does not seem to be working.

We should first agree that it is a giant and dangerous experiment, and second, agree on some measure for deciding whether it is a success or a failure.

Antipsychotic drugs grow more popular

Antipsychotic drugs are the latest fad, and you don't have to have a mental illness to have them prescribed. The Wash. Post reports:

exemplify a trend that alarms medical experts, policymakers and patient advocates: the skyrocketing increase in the off-label use of an expensive class of drugs called atypical antipsychotics. Until the past decade these 11 drugs, most approved in the 1990s, had been reserved for the approximately 3 percent of Americans with the most disabling mental illnesses, chiefly schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; more recently a few have been approved to treat severe depression.

But these days atypical antipsychotics — the most popular are Seroquel, Zyprexa and Abilify — are being prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat a panoply of conditions for which they have not been approved, including anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems in toddlers and dementia. These new drugs account for more than 90 percent of the market and have eclipsed an older generation of antipsychotics. Two recent reports have found that youths in foster care, some less than a year old, are taking more psychotropic drugs than other children, including those with the severest forms of mental illness.

In 2010 antipsychotic drugs racked up more than $16 billion in sales, according to IMS Health, a firm that tracks drug trends for the health-care industry. For the past three years they have ranked near or at the top of the best-selling classes of drugs, outstripping antidepressants and sometimes cholesterol medicines.

It is all about money. Or control. Or evil. I'm still not sure.

Joint custody and vaccinations

UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh reports:

What happens when divorced parents with joint legal custody disagree about whether their child should be given the routine childhood immunizations? That’s the issue in Grzyb v. Grzyb (Va. Cir. Ct.), decided in mid-2009 but just uploaded to Westlaw a day or two ago.

The Grzybs were the divorced parents of a 3-year-old girl, with “joint legal custody of the child, which implicitly included joint decision-making regarding the child’s medical and health care.” The father wanted the daughter immunized, but the mother had a religious objection to the immunization

The judge tried to rule based on the BIOTCh, and got hopelessly confused by conflicting and irrelevant considerations. Volokh cannot figure out what he would do either, but starts with these faulty premises:

since joint custody presupposes an ability to agree — and one parent should be given sole custody as to medical matters. But which parent? ... there has to be one decision made on the child’s behalf, so it makes sense that the court would need to decide which parent is most fit to make that decision.

This is where he goes wrong. There is no necessity for one parent to make all the medical decisions. Once you go down the rabbit hole of a judge second-guessing minor parental decisions, there there is no end to the conundrums like this case.

Saying that the mom is more fit to make a vaccination decision just because she has spent more time on the matter is absurd. She may have spent most of that time praying, and her church does not even agree with her religious objection. The other considerations are also intrusions into parental rights.

There is just no reason for the court to get involved. The parents can each do what they want on their own time. Maybe they would use different pediatricians, and make different decisions. There are some scenarios in which a medical treatment might require the cooperation of the other parent, but this is not one. The dad could get the vaccination, and the mom's interests will not be harmed in any tangible way.

This is all based on vaccinations being within the range of decisions that parents are normally allowed to make. Some people feel very strong about vaccination, one way or the other, but it is very unlikely that the decision will make any noticeable difference. If there is some compelling medical necessity, then this case would be different.

I have several comments on the above blog, where I argue with lawyer-types who want to use courts to overrule parents. The funny thing is that the blog is fairly libertarian on other issues, and is frequently promoting free speech, gun rights, and marijuana legalization. But they don't seem to understand that the family court is a massive invasion of civil liberties.

I have refrained from discussing the medical problems of my own kids, but I can say that making one parent solely responsible for medical decisions has been a disaster. It is nearly always better for both parents to be involved, even if they disagree. Letting a judge make the decision is worst of all. In the above case, the judge decided that the dad had the more valid opinion, but let the mom make the decision anyway.

Texas has counseling for over-prescribers

A Dallas News editorial says:

All eyes in the U.S. Senate committee room were fixed on the star witness as he carefully read his testimony from prepared text. Senators leaned forward, and cameras recorded the moment from all angles. Mom sat in the next chair for moral support.

Ke’onte Cook, 12, a seventh-grader from McKinney, had a story to tell that was as heartbreaking as it was uplifting.

He was invited to share his experiences as a former foster child who was kept on different regimens involving 20 mind-altering medications for more than four years, at times reaching five drugs at once, changing through a series of homes and mental hospitals. Ke’onte said he was sometimes in a falling-down stupor, irritable, with an aching stomach and no appetite. ...

The issue is a financial one, since Medicaid paid for more than $200 million in psychotropic drugs for children in Texas alone in 2008. Senators also made clear that the issue is one of child welfare, and they bored in on a new, five-state study, including Texas, showing that foster children are prescribed psychotropic drugs at rates far beyond those in the general population of Medicaid children.

This story has gotten a lot of press, including on this blog, but it turns out to be an old story:

The trend line in Texas, however, is a positive one. Even as the number of foster kids continues to climb — from 27,000 to 47,000 over the past 10 years — the rate of medicating these children has been declining. In 2003, nearly 30 percent of all foster children in Texas were on a mind-altering drug; that number fell to less than 20 percent this year. The potentially risky practice of putting kids on multiple drugs has been curtailed as well.

Credit a multi-agency network in Texas that tracks tax-paid drug prescriptions and triggers added scrutiny when a physician’s use of mind-altering medications strays from statistical bounds. That doctor may have his or her practices reviewed and may receive counseling. The state has also mapped out and circulated clear drug-use guidelines for medical professionals to consult.

So Texas recognized that this foster child drug problem was out of control in 2003, and took systematic steps to curtail it. They tracked the over-prescribing doctors and threatened to force them to get counseling!

Wow, I had no idea that a state agency could be so competent. But the system still seems corrupt to me. In 8 years, they only reduced the drug use from 30% to 20%. My guess is that they are effectively giving license to physicians to give bogus drugs to foster kids, as long as the rate stays below 20%.

Still, I am encouraged that there is at least some accountability in the Texas foster care system.

Michigan mom gets kid back

I mentioned in August this story of CPS-forced drug use, and NaturalNews has this update:

The horrific saga of Maryanne Godboldo's battle with domestic terrorists in the government of her home state of Michigan appear to finally be coming to an end. The Detroit Free Press reports that two higher courts have confirmed the ruling of a lower court several months ago that Godboldo's refusal to administer the dangerous Risperdal drug to her daughter was fully legal, and that all charges and actions taken against her by the state were unwarranted.

In case you missed the story, Child Protective Services (CPS) in Michigan sent a SWAT team and tank to Godboldo's Detroit home back in April after the mother refused to keep giving her 13-year-old daughter Risperdal (risperidone), a dangerous schizophrenia drug that had been causing her daughter to experience severe adverse reactions. Godboldo's doctor had recommended that she discontinue use of the drug, but CPS felt otherwise, and decided to launch a full-scale terrorist raid on the woman's home, where they proceeded to illegally kidnap her daughter.

For months, these domestic terrorists held Godboldo's daughter, Ariana, in captivity at a CPS facility in Northville, Mich., until finally, after a long and grueling court battle, it was determined that Godboldo's choice in taking her daughter off the dangerous drug was fully legal. In fact, when she first began administering Risperdal to Ariana, it was plainly stated in the consent document she signed that Ariana was free to "stop taking it at any time".

It is rare that a court will directly order a psychotropic or other drug. The spineless bureaucrats will not take responsibility for that. Instead they will just threaten to take the kid away if the drugs are not taken. Most people are easily intimidated, when CPS threatens to put the child in foster care.

Argument for confronting witnesses

I mentioned below that the US Supreme Court was hearing another case on the right to confront witnesses. The leader in this subject, law professor Jeffrey L. Fisher explains it:

ON Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Williams v. Illinois, the latest in a string of cases addressing whether the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause — which gives the accused in a criminal case the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him” — applies to forensic analysts who produce reports for law enforcement. In other words, should an analyst responsible for, say, a fingerprint report have to show up at trial to face questions about the report?

A logical application of the law produces an easy answer: Yes. The court has defined a “witness against” a defendant as a person who provides information to law enforcement to aid a criminal investigation. That is exactly what forensic analysts do.

Subjecting forensic analysts to cross-examination is also good policy. ...

Despite all this, the Supreme Court has been sharply divided on the issue. In similar cases in 2009 and earlier this year, in which I represented the defendants, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. accepted claims by state governments that, simply put, confrontation in this context costs too much. It is far more efficient, these justices contend, to let analysts simply mail their reports to court. Having to appear at trials pulls them away from their labs, and only occasionally proves more revealing than their written testimony. Hence, these justices maintain, “scarce state resources” are better committed elsewhere.

It is distressing that four justices could give such a ridiculous argument. They could just look the famil court to see the folly of letting experts just mail in their reports.

I reported on a local court expert with a mail-order degree who wrote a court-order requiring a psychotropic drug for a child. Such a witness would be out of business if she were held accountable with vigorous cross-examination. Someone would ask: What his your expertise on this drug? Who have you ever treated? Why does your university have an address in the Cayman Islands? How would you recognize adverse side-effects of the drug?

This current Supreme Court case is an important case. If the defendant loses, we will be on the way to having phony govt experts deciding who get punished in our society.