Technology Helps Severely Disabled People Use Their Noses to Drive Electric Wheelchairs, Write Text Messages

July 26, 2010 — Israeli scientists have developed a device that allows severely disabled people to sniff to precisely control objects such as wheelchairs and personal digital assistants, a new study says.

The nasal-mask device works so well that disabled people who can’t move at all can learn to write text messages and drive electric wheelchairs by sniffing, researchers report in the July issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Noam Sobel, PhD, of the department of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and colleagues set out to find a way to allow people with disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to “locked-in syndrome” to learn how to control devices with their noses just as they would using a joystick or computer mouse.

The Weizmann Institute has filed for a patent on sniff-controlled technology, which the researchers report as a possible conflict of interest.

The researchers built a “sniff controller” that measures changes in nasal pressure, which occur when the soft palate (the soft area at the back of the roof of the mouth) is repositioned. The device was tested on healthy and disabled people. The researchers report that sniffing can be done with precision, and that it requires precise movements of the soft palate, which receives signals from cranial nerves that often are not affected by paralytic injury and other disorders.   

‘Sniffing’ Study

The study involved 96 healthy and 15 severely disabled people who were taught to sniff in different ways to send various electrical signals to a controller. For example, two in-sniffs meant forward, and two out-sniffs backward. Various sniffing sequences allowed participants to turn and steer a wheelchair.

In the end, a quadriplegic person could use the sniff controller to drive an electric wheelchair with precision after only 15 minutes of practice, the study says.

The researchers report that healthy people played computer games with the device as adeptly as they might with a mouse, joystick, or other controller.

Quadriplegic patients managed to use computers to write text messages and learned to control electric wheelchairs as well as the healthy people taking part in the research, the study says.

People who are “locked in” — completely paralyzed but cognitively intact — also were able to use the device to produce text messages.

One woman communicated for the first time in seven months, and another wrote for the first time in a decade, the researchers say.

Researchers say the device now awaits testing in disorders of consciousness, including the vegetative state.

View Article Sources

SOURCES:

News release, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Plotkin, A. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2010.

© 2010 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

By Jeremy P. Meyer, July 12, 2010
The Denver Post

Federal authorities are encouraging school districts to spend education stimulus money to save jobs and blunt the effects of statewide budget cuts, but districts have been slow to draw their share of the funds.

"We really hope that you’ll do your best to see how these funds can help alleviate the layoffs and budget crises that your districts or states are facing," Maura Policelli, a senior adviser with the U.S. Department of Education, said in an online seminar, or webinar, last month.

"That does require some courage, and it does involve the possible risk of investing in staff that you may not be able to retain in the 2011-12 school year," she said.

Districts across the nation have been slow to tap stimulus money that is targeted for specific programs — particularly the money intended to bolster programs for students with disabilities or those who come from low-income households.  

At the halfway point before the Sept. 30, 2011, deadline for the money to be distributed, Colorado districts have used 25 percent of the $110 million available in Title 1 funds for low-income students and 28 percent of the $149 million in Individuals With Disabilities Education Act money for special education.

The same thing is happening nationwide. On average, 39 percent of the $11.3 billion in special-education money for states has been claimed.

Midpoint for spending

"We would have expected to see a higher rate of obligation at this midpoint," said Candace Cortiella, director of the Advocacy Institute and who created a website called IDEA Money Watch (ideamoneywatch.com) to track the spending.

"We do this report at the end of every month, and I have been surprised how little it changes," Cortiella said.

Federal, state and local officials say there is nothing to worry about. The money will be spent. The slow drawdown is a matter of process. And stimulus funds are saving or creating tens of thousands of jobs.

This past quarter, the stimulus funding for special education and Title 1 saved or created more than 100,000 jobs, Cathy Solomon, adviser for Recovery Act Implementation for the Education Department, said in a webinar discussion last month.

The special-education stimulus money was responsible for 9 percent of all federal jobs in the last quarter, Solomon said.

"These programs have had a huge impact on the entire recovery effort, in addition to keeping public education intact," she said.

In Colorado, stimulus money has created or saved on average 5,119 education jobs every quarter — including math and literacy coaches, paraprofessionals and full- and part-time teachers.

Still, districts across the nation are trying to get an understanding of the spending guidelines and are figuring out ways to allocate the one-time funds without affecting budgets over the long term.

Because the money runs out Sept. 30, 2011, districts are being careful to spend the money on programs that won’t need funding after 2011.

There are also restrictions on how the money can be spent.

One metro-Denver district wanted to spend its special-education stimulus money for full-day kindergarten programs. But that did not fit requirements under the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, and the district was denied.

Where the money goes

Districts are spending the money on salaries, teacher training and contracting for services, as well as buying materials and even paying for construction. Denver Public Schools has been allocated $16 million in IDEA stimulus money but had used $4.7 million as of June 1, or 29 percent.

"We anticipate spending all of the money that is due to us," said John Simmons, Denver’s executive director of student services.

"Structures are very strict in terms of how you spend that money. We will be slightly behind spending half of our funds this year," Simmons said.

DPS has used the funds to add teachers, including "disability-access teachers" in high schools and middle schools to help develop systems to ensure that students with disabilities can access the general education curriculum. The lag is occurring because the district had to get approval, identify the positions, post the jobs and hire the personnel.

Boulder Valley has used 31 percent of its $5.1 million allocation for special education. Much of the spending will be on professional- development sessions over the summer as the district looks to overhaul its special-education program over the next few years.

Each teacher is getting paid for two days of work for attending the training sessions.

"We have used it to be able to keep teachers on staff," said Kim Bane, director of the district’s special-education department. "We have used it to purchase equipment and assessments, and to hire two teachers on special assignment who are helping us this year and next year."

Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367    or jpmeyer@denverpost.com

Integrative Management of ADHD: What the Evidence Suggests

By Geoff Adams-Spink , April 23, 2010
Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website

The father of a child with severe autism has developed technology to help him communicate.

Stephen Lodge said the idea for his Speaks4Me system came to him years ago but has been waiting for technology to catch up in order to make it a reality.

His eleven-year-old son, Callum, is non-verbal and uses his father’s invention to speak.

Speaks4Me was on show at Naidex 2010 – the annual disability exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham.

Mr Lodge’s system runs on any device that can run the Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 operating system.

It uses the concept of dragging and dropping images from one area of the screen to another to form sentences.

The user then presses a speech button to "verbalise" the sentence.

"Callum has been using Speaks4Me for some time now and he has already been able to create some very expressive sentences," Mr Lodge told the BBC.

Examples include, "I want a drink of juice", "I want to go outside", and "I feel tired".

Mr Lodge – who lives in South Yorkshire – has 20 years’ experience in technology and developed Speaks4Me after deciding that other products on the market were unsatisfactory for Callum.

He cashed in his savings and raised money on his property in order to finance the venture.

Speaks4Me is currently sold on a portable, touch screen media player imported from the Far East.

But the company is finalising a "software only" price which will mean that it can run on any Windows laptop, desktop or even an interactive plasma white board in schools.

Mr Lodge says that several people have already tried the system.

"It’s fabulous to see how such an exciting but simple concept is well understood by the children that have been introduced to it," he said.

Mr Lodge estimates it takes half an hour or less to be able to understand and use the system.

He is also hoping that it will prove useful to stroke survivors – about a third of whom lose the ability to speak, either temporarily or permanently.

"Imagine waking up in hospital, not being able to speak: how would you ask for the toilet?" he said.

Speaks4Me currently retails for about £2,000.

Mr Lodge says his future plans include being able to put his software on other portable devices such as mobile phones and gaming handsets.

On call

Also having its UK launch at Naidex was a French product called the Minifone.

It is being sold in the UK by Essex-based PivoTell which describes the product as the world’s smallest digital cordless phone.

Designed with older and disabled people in mind, the Minifone is worn like a wrist watch.

It can be used to summon help from three pre-programmed numbers and has the additional option of being connected to a call centre.

Provided that the landline has caller line identification (CLI) enabled, the Minifone will also display the date and time and the name or number of an incoming caller.

The Minifone uses a built-in speaker and microphone.

"The experience in France has been that – unlike alarm pendants which have a certain stigma attached – people find these quite attractive and so are more likely to be wearing them," said Adrian Milne of PivoTell.

The device costs £150 and a subscription to the call centre is £10 per month.

Naidex 2010 was at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham from 20 – 22 April.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/8634607.stm
Published: 2010/04/23 10:05:02 GMT

Since the Jan. 14 death of Phoebe Prince, the 15-year-old in South Hadley, Mass., who committed suicide after being bullied by fellow students, many onlookers have meditated on whether the circumstances that led to her after-school hanging might have been avoided.

Could teachers have stepped in and stopped the bullying? Could parents have done more to curtail bad behavior? Or could preventive measures have been started years ago, in early childhood, long before bullies emerged and started heaping abuse on their peers? (Read what can be done about bullying in school.)

Increasingly, neuroscientists, psychologists and educators believe that bullying and other kinds of violence can indeed be reduced by encouraging empathy at an early age. Over the past decade, research in empathy — the ability to put ourselves in another person’s shoes — has suggested that it is key, if not the key, to all human social interaction and morality.

Without empathy, we would have no cohesive society, no trust and no reason not to murder, cheat, steal or lie. At best, we would act only out of self-interest; at worst, we would be a collection of sociopaths.

Although human nature has historically been seen as essentially selfish, recent science suggests that it is not. The capacity for empathy is believed to be innate in most humans, as well as some other species — chimps, for instance, will protest unfair treatment of others, refusing to accept a treat they have rightfully earned if another chimp doing the same work fails to get the same reward.       

The first stirrings of human empathy typically appear in babyhood: newborns cry when hearing another infant’s cry, and studies have shown that children as young as 14 months offer unsolicited help to adults who appear to be struggling to reach something. Babies have also shown a distinct preference for adults who help rather than hinder others. (Read about the link between bullying and suicides.)

But, like language, the development of this inherent tendency may be affected by early experience. As evidence, look no further than ancient Greece — at the millennia-old child-rearing practices of Sparta and Athens. Spartans, who were celebrated almost exclusively as warriors, raised their ruling-class boys in an environment of uncompromising brutality — enlisting them in boot camp at age 7, and starving them to encourage enough deviousness and cunning to steal food — which skillfully bred yet more generations of ruthless killers.

In Athens, future leaders were brought up in a more nurturing and peaceful way, at home with their mothers and nurses, starting education in music and poetry at 6. They became pioneers of democracy, art, theater and culture. “Just like we can train people to kill, the same is true with empathy. You can be taught to be a Spartan or an Athenian — and you can taught to be both,” says Teny Gross, executive director of the outreach group Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence in Providence, R.I., and a former sergeant in the Israeli army.

What the ancient Greeks intuited is supported by research today. Childhood — as early as infancy — is now known to be a critical time for the development of empathy. And although children can be astonishingly resilient, surviving and sometimes thriving despite abuse and neglect, studies show that those who experience such early trauma are at much greater risk of becoming aggressive or even psychopathic later on, bullying other children or being victimized by bullies themselves.

Simple neglect can be surprisingly damaging. In 2007, researchers published the first randomized, controlled study of the effect of being raised in an orphanage; that study, and subsequent research on the same sample of Romanian orphans, found that compared with babies placed with a foster family, those who were sent to institutions had lower IQs, slower physical growth, problems with human attachment and differences in functioning in brain areas related to emotional development.

Institutionalized infants do not experience being the center of a loving family’s attention; instead, they are cared for a rotating staff of shift workers, which is inherently neglectful. Such children miss out on intensive, one-on-one affection and attachment with a parental figure, which babies need at that vulnerable age. Without that experience, they learn early on that the world is a cold, insecure and untrustworthy place. Their emotional needs having gone unmet, they frequently have trouble understanding or appreciating the feelings of others.

Nearly 90% of brain growth takes place in the first five years of life, and the minds of young children who have been neglected or traumatized often fail to make the connection between people and pleasure. That deficit can make it difficult for them to feel or demonstrate love later on. “You can enhance empathy by the way you treat children,” says Martin Hoffman, an emeritus professor of psychology at New York University and a pioneer of empathy research, “or you can kill it by providing a harsh punitive environment.”

See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.

See The Wellness Blog.

Discipline, but Don’t Punish?

The cold environment of an orphanage can be considered on a spectrum of punishment, at the other end of which is simple child discipline — an issue that sometimes confounds even the most mindful parents. How do you teach a child right from wrong without being too tough, or slipping into abuse? Who among us has not raised our voice — O.K., screamed — while disciplining our children? (Read about what makes us moral.)

But shouting at or, worse, hitting a child results in fear, rather than an understanding on the child’s part of why he or she is being punished, say researchers. Over the long term, the routine use of corporal punishment, such as spanking, not only fails to change behavior for the better, but has also been shown to increase aggression in children.

“Instead of starting from the assumption that you have to beat the badness out of a child, turn on that empathy and compassion switch,” says Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life.

In other words, start by teaching children to understand their own behavior and feelings — it provides the basic tools for understanding the behavior and feelings of others. For instance, when dealing with a child who has hurt another person, help him or her “anchor how they felt in the moment,” says Mary Gordon, founder of Roots of Empathy, a school-based program designed to foster compassion. “We always think we should start with, ‘How do you think so-and-so felt?’ But you will be more successful if you start with, ‘You must have felt very upset.’ The trick is to help children describe how they felt, so that the next time this happens, they’ve got language. Now, they can say ‘I’m feeling like I did when I bit Johnny.’”

When children are able to understand their own feelings, they are closer to being able to understand that Johnny was also hurt and upset by being bitten — that “switch” is the spark for a change in behavior.

But understanding suffering alone does not teach empathy, says Gordon, which helps explain why children who suffer more — enduring abuse at home, for instance — are more likely to become bullies. It’s not that they don’t know what it feels like to be hurt; it’s that they have learned that violence is the way to express anger or assert power.

In Gordon’s Roots of Empathy program, which is currently being used in about 3,000 kindergartens, elementary schools and middle schools in Canada, and 40 schools in Seattle, children get to see a visiting parent and infant interact in the classroom about once a month, and watch the foundations of empathy being built. When the baby cries, the Roots of Empathy instructor helps the mother and students think about what might be bothering the baby and how to make things better.

Students are taught that a crying baby isn’t a bad baby, but a baby with a problem. By trying to figure out what’s going on, the children learn to see the world through the infant’s eyes, and to understand what it might be like to have needs but not be able to express them clearly.

“We love when we get a colicky baby,” says Gordon, because then the mother usually tells the class how frustrating and annoying it is when the baby won’t stop crying. That gives children insight into the parent’s perspective — and how children’s behavior can affect adults — something they have often never thought about. “If you look at the development of empathy, one of the key features is perspective-taking,” says Gordon. “In coaching that skill, we help them [take the perspective of] their classmates.”

To date, nine separate studies have shown that Roots of Empathy has helped reduce bullying at school, and increased supportive behavior among students. Many school districts in the U.S., including New York City’s, have recently expressed interest in using Gordon’s approach. (See “The Year in Health 2009.”)

Setting an Empathetic Example

A child’s individual capacity for empathy can further be encouraged when parents model empathetic behavior themselves. When parents treat other people with compassion, selflessness and a lack of judgment, children copy those behaviors. “Empathy can’t be taught, but it can be caught,” says Gordon.

Her own family was a shining example. As a young girl in Newfoundland, Gordon says she grew up in a large, multigenerational family — including four siblings, two grandparents and a mentally disabled uncle — that also often included “strays.” Her parents liked to take in people in need: unmarried pregnant women who had no place to go, recently released prisoners who would stop by for a free meal. Gordon also tagged along with her mother, an artist (Gordon’s father was the Canadian minister of labor), as she visited poor families in the community, bringing them food, clothing and coal for heat.

When young Mary sneered and asked why a woman stored coal in her bathtub instead of bathing in it, her mother admonished her — but in private. “My mom would never embarrass anyone, so she wouldn’t embarrass me as a child either. She saw the dignity in everybody,” Gordon says. “In the car, she said, ‘You judged that woman when you made that face.’ She would say, ‘She’s made the best decisions she could with the challenges she has, and you don’t know her challenges.’”

Not every child is raised by a Mother Gordon. But even children who have survived rough environments — like the gang members Teny Gross of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence works with in Providence — can be helped to “catch” empathy.

Gross has found that his outreach workers are most successful when they build relationships based on caring and fairness. “People have a sense of justice,” Gross says, explaining why even troubled teens respond well when counselors, with whom they have an ongoing relationship, take a firm stance with them regarding their behavior. “[Our kids are] used to injustice; they’re used to abuse at school and from the police. But when constraints come from a place of love and caring, people don’t think it violates their sense of justice.” (Read “Are Humans Selfish?”)

Gross’s program focuses on introducing young men and boys in gangs to a new network of people who not only care about them, but do so dependably — providing the kind of secure environment that many of them missed in childhood. By employing former gang members to mentor the troubled boys, Gross makes it easier for them to foster relationships of mutual understanding and connection with one another. Mentors show up consistently at the boys’ important events — court dates, funerals — demonstrating care and concern. They also organize social outings for the boys, like a trip to a local beach last summer for a day of surfing. That excursion purposefully included boys from rival gangs, in the hopes that the introductions could help reduce violence later on.

Indeed, research shows that simple exposure to other kinds of people in a friendly setting can increase your empathy toward them. Although some gangsters and sociopaths may never be reachable, Gross holds out hope. He points to statistics such as the near halving of the U.S. murder rate over the last 20 years that suggest a “different life is possible. It’s not easy, but a lot of it is common sense,” he says.

Szalavitz is the co-author of Born for Love: Why Empathy Is Essential — and Endangered (Morrow, April 2010).

Today, the “epidemic” of ADHD has grown to about seven million young people in the U.S. Most of these children are on medication. And if you add in the numbers that are on antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, the number is over 10 million. That is larger than the entire population of New York City!

By Jon Herring, Total Health Breakthroughs, March 10, 2010 

“Hey, Phillip… do you mind if I sit here and eat with you?” I asked.

“Sure, whatever…”

“How’s school going? Are you doing well?”

“Not really. I just want it to be summer.”

“Yeah, I remember how that used to feel,” I told him.

Phillip is eleven years old. He’s the son of some family friends and I was at a small party when I saw him sitting by himself. I hadn’t seen him for a few years, so I wanted to remind him who I was and get to know him a little better.

As he became comfortable, he opened up a bit more. He told me his plans for the summer. He told me about his friends and the girl he likes at school. And he also told me that he didn’t care for school all that much.

“It’s hard,” he said. “Plus, I have ADHD, so I don’t pay attention very well.”

“Really? How do you know you have ADHD?” I asked.

“That’s what my doctor said. He said I’ve had it since I was born. That’s why I have to take medicine.”

“Well, I think you’re just fine. How does that medicine make you feel?”

“It used to make me kinda nervous,” he said. “And I couldn’t go to sleep when I took it. Now, it just makes me not want to eat.”

After complimenting Phillip on his manners and intelligence, I changed the subject back to his plans for the summer. But what he said bothered me. Here was a bright young boy who was bored and frustrated in school… who probably had a few behavioral problems… and who had now been labeled as having a “disease” and put on medication.

And, unfortunately, Phillip is just one of millions…

I was bothered by his story because I could only imagine what that would do to the psyche and development of a child to be handed a lifelong sentence like that from a doctor. You are broken. You are defective. Your brain doesn’t work right. You are not acceptable in your natural state, but taking these drugs every day can help you.

It might be one thing if ADHD was actually a “disease”… but it’s not.

In 1987, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was voted into existence by the American Psychiatric Association and inserted in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Yes, that’s right… the “disease” was “voted” into existence.

Can you imagine if we had to take a “vote” to determine whether cancer is a disease… or diabetes… or heart disease? That would be patently ludicrous. But every year, more and more disorders are voted into the DSM.

In the case of ADHD, psychiatrists made a list of the most common behaviors among children that parents and teachers object to — and then termed them a disease. Within one year, more than half a million children were “diagnosed.”

Since then, the number of behaviors that constitute the disorder has continued to grow. There are now 18 of them. That opens the door for even more children to be labeled and then put on drugs.

Today, most ADHD “testing” consists of parents, teachers, school administrators, or social workers checking off these behaviors as observed at home and in the classroom. A doctor reviews the checklist, and if six or more of these behaviors are exhibited, then the child is “diagnosed” with ADHD. In almost every case, the treatment is pharmaceutical.

Today, the “epidemic” of ADHD has grown to about seven million young people in the U.S. Most of these children are on medication. And if you add in the numbers that are on antidepressants and other psychotropic medications, the number is over 10 million. That is larger than the entire population of New York City!

You might ask, where were these kids when I was growing up?

Dr. Russell Barkley, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts, has the answer for that. They were there, he says. “They were the class clowns. […] Back then, we didn’t have a professional label for them.

“They were the lazy kids, the no-good kids, the dropouts, the delinquents, the lay-about ne’er-do-wells who were doing nothing with their lives. Now we know better. Now we know that it is a real disability, that it is a valid condition…”

They were the dropouts, huh? The kids who didn’t fit in? The kids who found traditional schooling to be hostile, boring, and unacceptable? I wonder if Barkley was referring to “dropouts” like:

• Bill Gates & Paul Allen (college dropouts, cofounders of Microsoft)
• Sir Richard Branson (high school dropout, founder of the Virgin Group)
• Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, and Steve Jobs (college dropouts, computer company founders)
• Kirk Kerkorian (eighth-grade dropout, billionaire)
• William Faulkner (high school and college dropout, Nobel Prize-winning novelist)
• Ray Kroc (high school dropout, founder of McDonald’s)
• Dave Thomas (high school dropout, founder of Wendy’s)

Almost certainly, if many of these men were in school today, they would be “labeled” with a mental disorder.

The pharmaceutical companies and modern psychiatry represent ADHD to be a biological abnormality of the brain. Along with many other “mental illnesses,” it is often said to be caused by that catch-all phrase — “a chemical imbalance.”

The problem is that psychiatry has never validated ADHD as a biological entity. They have never shown even the slightest bit of proof of a “chemical imbalance” or that this is an actual brain disease. And yet, millions of children and parents are told fraudulently that this is the case.

Dr. Fred Baughman is a respected pediatric neurologist who has been in practice for 35 years. He knows what a real disease is. So, from 1993 to 1997, he doggedly pursued correspondence with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Ciba-Geigy (the original manufacturers of Ritalin), and top ADHD researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health. He asked them to show him ANY peer-reviewed scientific literature proving a physical or chemical aberration that would qualify ADHD as a disease or a medical syndrome.

After years of persistence, Dr. Baughman finally got these groups to admit that there is NO objective validation for ADHD. Today, the National Institutes of Health state that, “We do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there is no data to indicate that ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.”

And yet, hundreds of thousands of doctors still “label” children as diseased and prescribe powerful and dangerous drugs for something that they have admitted they can’t prove. That is not medicine. It is fraud.

And many doctors and social workers push these drugs forcefully and manipulatively. I heard of one doctor who asked a parent, “If your child had diabetes, you would give him insulin, wouldn’t you?”

Unfortunately, that parent probably didn’t know enough to tell the doctor that diabetes can be measured — either by blood sugar abnormalities or pancreatic malfunction — while ADHD cannot.

When you go to a doctor, they take blood, they do X-rays. They don’t ask how you behave. And yet, that is how the “disease” of ADHD (along with depression and many other “mental illnesses”) is diagnosed.

Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York, says, “No behavior or misbehavior can be a disease. That is not what diseases are.”

Diseases are malfunctions of the human body. For example, typhoid fever is a disease. Spring fever? Not so much. Spring fever is a metaphor. It is a figure of speech… just like most mental illnesses. And yet, the treatment for this figure of speech is now worth billions of dollars a year.

Though there are now many drugs used to treat ADHD, Ritalin (methylphenidate) is one of the most common. In 1970, there were an estimated 150,000 U.S. children taking Ritalin. Today, the number is estimated to be higher than five million. According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, the production of methylphenidate increased 700% between 1990 and 1997!

And the trend is to “diagnose” children at younger and younger ages. According a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, prescriptions for two- to four-year-olds increased by almost 300% between 1991 and 1995. I didn’t search for more recent statistics, but you can be sure the trend has continued.

And despite what those who promote them might say… these are NOT safe and harmless medications.

Ritalin, for example, is classified by the FDA and the DEA as a Schedule II Controlled Substance. It is listed in the same category as methamphetamines, cocaine, morphine, and Dilaudid (among other powerful illegal and prescription drugs). These drugs are powerful. They can cause harm. And they carry a significant risk of abuse.

Most ADHD drugs are a class of amphetamine. On the street, these stimulants are commonly known as “speed.” And while “speed” can increase alertness and productivity, the trajectory is crash and burn.

But what are the risks of long-term use of these drugs, especially by developing children?

These drugs have been known to cause depression and psychotic states. And they can be the cause of real neurological disorders like epilepsy and seizures. They can also lead to physical dependence and have been shown to precipitate illegal drug abuse.

Studies have also shown that ADHD drugs stunt the physical growth of children and cause the brain to atrophy and shrink.

But of course, the biggest risk is death. In fact, research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health showed that children and teens on drugs such as Ritalin have a 500% higher risk of sudden death than would be typical for children of a similar age and health status.

Not surprisingly, long-term use can increase the risk of heart attack.

And cancer is a known risk, too. In one study, researchers identified twelve children who met the criteria for ADHD in the DSM-IV and were to begin taking methylphenidate in daily doses between 20 and 54 mg. Because the test group was small, each child was used as his or her own control.

Chromosomal abnormalities in blood cells were measured before starting the treatment. Then these same tests were performed after three months of taking the medication. Three separate chromosomal abnormalities were evaluated. In every single child, significant increases in chromosomal aberrations were measured. On average, the aberrations increased by 323% following treatment. Researchers believe that greater frequencies of these aberrations equate to an increased risk of cancer.

And to balance out these significant risks… there are absolutely NO long-term studies that show positive effects from these drugs on learning, academic standards, or social behavior.

Certainly there are children who are misbehaving at school and at home. There are kids who are unable to achieve self-control. There are those who are unusually hyperactive.

But in the vast majority of cases, these kids do not need medication. They certainly do not need to be exposed to the dangers of these drugs. But do their doctors ever ask what kind of foods, preservatives, and additives these children are exposed to? Do they inquire about nutrition or give advice about the many ways that the foods children eat, the toxins they are exposed to, and the nutrients they are missing can affect mood and behavior? Of course, most doctors do not. That would require too much effort and follow-up. It is much easier (and more profitable) to write a quick prescription and usher in a new patient.

Today, we are constantly told to protect our children from drug abuse. And yet, there are some disturbing exceptions to that rule. Thomas Szasz put it well when he said, “Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.”

To Your Health,

Jon Herring
Total Health Breakthroughs

By Health News Digest, Jan 20, 2010 

(HealthNewsDigest.com) – ANN ARBOR, Mich.—School psychologists, counselors and social workers are often the first line of support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems. Problems can range from attention deficit disorder and homelessness to depression and bullying all of which can make academic success a challenge.
The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health asked nearly 1,100 parents across the United States to grade their children’s public schools on how well they support children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
Thirty-seven percent of parents gave primary schools an A for support for children with ADHD and other behavioral problems, and 34 percent gave an A for support for children with emotional or family problems. Twenty-two percent of parents gave secondary schools an A for support for children with behavioral, emotional or family problems.
In contrast, for overall education 52 percent of parents gave primary schools an A and 38 percent of parents gave secondary schools an A.

“According to national estimates, about 20 percent of school-age children need formal mental health services related to conditions like autism, attention-deficit disorder, depression and eating disorders,” says Matthew Davis, M.D., M.A.P.P., director of the poll and associate professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at the U-M Medical School. “As many as 50 percent of children need emotional support to deal with difficulties in family, peer or other relationships. Our findings indicate that parents think schools are doing better with educational goals than with emotional and behavioral support.”
In the current economic climate, some stakeholders argue that school funds should be restricted to instructional services. However, drastic cuts to student support services
May work against instructional objectives if behavioral or emotional problems interfere with children’s ability to learn, Davis says.
“As a new semester begins for many junior high and high school students, it’s essential for parents to communicate with their children’s teachers about emotional, behavioral and family concerns that they worry may affect children’s school performance,” says Davis, who is also associate professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
If parents find school resources declining due to budget constraints and need assistance, Davis suggests they start with their primary care providers who can help direct them to appropriate services in the community.

Resources for parents
AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics:
Policy on School-based mental health services:

http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;113/6/1839
Mental health links:
http://www.aap.org/mentalhealth/mh8ml.html
Source: HealthNewsDigest.com
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JERUSALEM — He can be impulsive. She has a touch of bossiness. Next-door neighbors for nearly a year, they talk, watch television and explore the world together, wandering into each other’s homes without a second thought. She likes his mother’s eggplant dish. He likes her father’s rice and lamb.

Friendship often starts with proximity, but Orel and Marya, both 8, have been thrust together in a way few elsewhere have. Their playground is a hospital corridor. He is an Israeli Jew severely wounded by a Hamas rocket. She is a Palestinian Muslim from Gaza paralyzed by an Israeli missile. Someone forgot to tell them that they are enemies.

“He’s a naughty boy,” Marya likes to say of Orel with an appreciative smile when he gets a little wild.

When Orel arrived here a year ago, he could not hear, see, talk or walk. Now he does them all haltingly. Half his brain is gone. Doctors were deeply pessimistic about his survival. Today they are amazed at his progress although unclear how much more can be made.

Marya’s spinal cord was broken at the neck and she can move only her head. Smart, sunny and strong-willed, she moves her wheelchair by pushing a button with her chin. Nothing escapes her gaze. She knows that Orel is starting to prefer boys as playmates and she makes room. But their bond remains strong.

In a way, a friendship between two wounded children from opposing backgrounds is not that surprising. Neither understands the prolonged fight over land and identity that so divides people here. They are kids. They play.

But for those who have spent time in their presence at Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem, it is almost more powerful to observe their parents, who do understand. They have developed a kinship that defies national struggle.

“The wounds of our children, their pain, our pain, have connected us,” noted Angela Elizarov, Orel’s mother, one recent day as she sat on a bed in the room she shares with her son. Next door is Marya, her 6-year-old brother, Momen, and their father, Hamdi Aman. “Does it matter that he is from Gaza and I am from Beersheba, that he is an Arab and I am a Jew? It has no meaning to me. He sees my child and I see his child.”

It was two weeks into Israel’s Gaza war last January when Orel was hit. After days in a shelter his mother took him out in the car. As they drove around Beersheba, a siren blared, warning of an incoming rocket. She pushed Orel to the ground, lying protectively on him. When she heard the explosion in the distance, she rose in relief. A second rocket exploded and she saw her son’s head bleeding profusely.

A surgical nurse, she flagged down a passing motorist who drove them to the hospital where she works.

“I saw his brain coming out, everything around me was burning, and I was not even scratched,” she recalled. “When I got to the emergency room, I said to the doctor: ‘You can’t kid me. I know he has no chance of survival.’ The doctor looked away. But after six operations, he is actually making some progress. God took my son from me, but he has given me another one. A year ago, he was the best in his class in sports, the best in math. Now he is learning to walk and talk.”

Her husband, Avrel, who works with children, spends much of the week at home with their 18-month-old daughter but comes often. The couple, originally from Azerbaijan, had been childless for years, and Orel’s birth, coaxed along by infertility treatments in Israel, seemed a miracle.

Their hospital neighbor, Mr. Aman, is a 32-year-old construction worker from Gaza who not only cares for his own two children but helps with Orel. He is regarded as a luminescent presence, an inspiration to staff, volunteers and fellow parents.

This is partly because the pain in his own story is hard to fathom.

More than three years ago, Mr. Aman and his uncle had split the cost of a car and, having paid for it two hours earlier, took it on the road. With them were Mr. Aman’s wife, their three children and his mother.

Prowling above, an Israeli jet fighter on an assassination mission was seeking its target, a militant leader named Ahmad Dahduh. Two missiles were fired at Mr. Dahduh’s car just as it passed Mr. Aman’s, killing Mr. Aman’s oldest son, wife and mother. Marya was thrown from the car.

He and his children have been at Alyn Hospital, which specializes in young people with serious physical disabilities, for nearly the entire time since. The Israeli government, which brought him here for emergency help, wanted him and his children either to return to Gaza or to move to the West Bank. But attention in the Israeli news media produced a bevy of volunteers to fight on his behalf. Marya would not survive in either Gaza or the West Bank. The government has backed off, supporting Mr. Aman on minimum wage and paying for Marya to go to a bilingual Arabic-Hebrew school nearby.

But Mr. Aman has no official status and is also raising a healthy and bright son in a hospital room. He wants residency or a ticket to a Western country where his children will be safe and Marya will get the care she needs.

Volunteers who help are often religious Jews performing national service. Some ask Mr. Aman how he can live among the people whose army destroyed his family.

“I have never felt there was a difference among people — Jews, Muslims, Christians — we are all human beings,” he says. “I worked in Israel for years and so did my father. We know that it is not about what you are but who you are. And that is what I have taught my children.”

Mr. Aman’s hospital door is rarely closed. Asher Franco, an Israeli Jew from Beit Shemesh who has been coming to the hospital for six months for his daughter’s treatments, was a recent visitor. They greeted each other warmly. A manual worker and former combat soldier, he was asked about their friendship.

“I was raised as a complete Zionist rightist,” he said. “The Arabs, we were told, were out to kill us. But I was living in some fantasy. Here in the hospital, all my friends are Arabs.” Ms. Elizarov, Orel’s mother, noted that in places like Alyn Hospital, political tensions do not exist. Then she said, “Do we need to suffer in order to learn that there is no difference between Jews and Arabs?”

Hine Ma Tov (Play)

By comparing how a gene critical for language works in humans and chimpanzees, researchers have identified an entire network of genes involved in the incredible linguistic powers of Homo sapiens.

The findings don’t explain how language functions at the biological level, or exactly what changes were needed to put an otherwise unremarkable monkey on its chattering, Earth-dominating trajectory. But they do give researchers a foundation for investigating these questions.

“We know a fair amount about the brain structures involved in speech and language, but we know very little about how that evolved, or how genes contribute to that,” said Daniel Geschwind, a University of California, Los Angeles neurogeneticist.

The target of Geschwind’s analysis was FOXP2, a gene that rose to scientific prominence during the study of a London-based family afflicted by hereditary speech disorders. Of the extended family’s 30 members, one-half have severe linguistic deficiencies, as well as a FOXP2 mutation. Those who don’t have the mutation are able to speak normally.

That connection was revealed in 2001, and subsequent research has shown FOXP2 to be play a role not only in acquiring grammar and syntax, but in developing motor skills and helping brain cells form new connections. Studies also suggested FOXP2 had mutated rapidly in the Homo sapiens lineage, and worked differently in humans than in chimpanzees, our closest genetic relative.

But though FOXP2 has been dubbed “the language gene,” language is certainly far more complicated, involving hundreds and probably thousands of genes, interconnected and ever-shifting in their activity. Researchers needed an approach that delved into this complexity, and in a paper published Wednesday in Nature, Geschwind and fellow UCLA neurogeneticist Genevieve Konopka provide this approach.

“We were able to identify a network of genes connected to FOXP2,” said Geschwind. “Maybe this will give us an entry into to the broader view of what’s going on. We won’t just study one gene, but the whole biological network related to language. FOXP2 is the window, but the network is going to be the story.”

Geschwind’s team engineered lines of brain cells in which they could turn FOXP2 on and off, and measure what happened to other genes as they did so. Then they did the same thing with brain cells into which the human version of FOXP2 had been replaced with its chimpanzee counterpart.

Armed with a list of genes linked to FOXP2 in both species or just one, the researchers then measured the activity levels of those genes in brain tissue samples from humans and chimps. This revealed 116 genes connected only to the human version of FOXP2, which indeed appears to have accumulated many new functions in humans.

“We found that the targets of the gene are not only involved in brain function. Some of them are involved in the development of non-nervous system tissue and cranial structures involved in speech production. That’s remarkable,” said Gerschwind.

“This is a fascinating and important study with important implications for human evolution,” said Ajit Varki, a University of California, San Diego glycobiologist who studies the molecular differences between human and chimpanzee cells. Varki was not involved in the study.

His assessment was echoed by Yale University neuroscientists Pasko Rakic and Martin Dominguez. In a commentary accompanying the analysis, they call the findings a “starting point for future studies of the molecular basis of language and human evolution.”

Geschwind’s research “does what important discoveries usually do: It answers many questions, but raises even more,” wrote Rakic and Dominguez.

Among the questions is what this gene network actually does, which other genes and networks they’re connected to, and what part they might play in language and developmental disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.

“Now that we have these targets, we can ask what each of them does,” said Geschwind, who envisions running the same type of experiment with the new genes, and using brain imaging techniques to connect their activity with neurological function.

“Because this identified pathways and networks, there are a bunch of directions to go in,” said Geschwind.

Images: 1. Flickr/Hryck 2. A map of the gene networks activated by human and chimpanzee FOXP2 genes. Overlapping genes are in red.

See Also:

• Roots of Language Run Deeper Than Speech
• Researchers Synthesize Evolution of Language
• Evolution of Language Parallels Evolution of Species
• Humans and Chimpanzees Share Roots of Language

Citations: “Human-specific transcriptional regulation of CNS development genes by FOXP2.” By Genevieve Konopka, Jamee M. Bomar, Kellen Winden, Giovanni Coppola, Zophonias O. Jonsson, Fuying Gao, Sophia Peng, Todd M. Preuss, James A. Wohlschlegel & Daniel H. Geschwind. Nature, Vol. 462 No. 7269, November 12, 2009.

“The importance of being human.” By Martin H. Dominguez and Pasko Rakic. Nature, Vol. 462 No. 7269, November 12, 2009.