Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment Rampant

[Alive]

Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment Rampant

A recent paper published in the British Medical Journal says evidence is mounting that medicine is harming healthy people through ever earlier detection and wider definitions of disease. We speak to one of the authors, Ray Moynihan. (23?23?)

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thiswayup/audio/2533286/overdiagnosis.asx

[TylerDurden]

Classic examples of the above consist of the fake autism epidemic in which psychologists have "re-diagnosed" countless people  with other mental health issues as having Asperger's Syndrome, mainly because the latter condition has far more research money invested in it, and then there's the nasty tendency of scientists etc. inventing new mental health conditions for perfectly normal conditions such as shyness, or  diagnosing ADHD  for perfectly normal boy-like misbehaviour so as to force many boys to be rendered zombie-like by the drug Ritalin.

[goodsamaritan]

It's like what they are doing with AIDS in Africa.
Diagnosing AIDS gives you grants and other benefits...
...when the cases are mostly TB, malnutrition, parasitism, malaria... and the poisons from the retroviral drugs themselves.

[eveheart]

Overdiagnosis and overtreatment is what medicine has always done. Just look at tonsillectomy, non-religious circumcision, hysterectomy, Prozac, vegetarianism, bottle-fed babies, .... While it's true that new technologies allow medical doctors to cry, "Early diagnosis!", these doctors have always found something unnecessary to do with their time and our money.

[cherimoya_kid]

... diagnosing ADHD  for perfectly normal boy-like misbehaviour so as to force many boys to be rendered zombie-like by the drug Ritalin.

To be fair, teachers and parents are more than happy to have their hyperactive children calmed down.  Raising or teaching a hyperactive child can be exhausting and very trying.

[sabertooth]

I have relatives that would regularly give their children cold medicine, just to make them go to sleep. Every-time a child has a virus they want to give them Tylenol. Alregy medicine for every sniffle, and they think nothing of it.


Generally speaking
The drugs are screwing up the ADHD kids with long term side effects, a high percentage of Ritalin kids turn into underdeveloped  adults with a lot of issues, while non medicated hyperactive children (in general) have a better chance of growing out of their condition, especially with more holistic treatments.

[TylerDurden]

To be fair, teachers and parents are more than happy to have their hyperactive children calmed down.  Raising or teaching a hyperactive child can be exhausting and very trying.

The trouble is that parents have become selfish and like to pretend that it's their baby's fault that it is crying etc. It is normal for boys, always has been, to be a bit mischievous and play sport and run around etc.

[Alive]

The problem is the school system - preschool is a marvelously rich experience where children are stimulated, have friends, and free choice. Then suddenly being sent off to primary school is worse than joining the  - the power & control, lack of freedom, can only eat and move at set times.

If these kids just went to schools that respected their natural rights of freedom of association, eating schedule, and choices of play then they would not need to be drugged into submission.

Remember that schools have been designed for teachers, not for children!

[TylerDurden]

I wish my parents had gone in for homeschooling. The money saved thereby, and the lack of bullying involved would have vastly helped me. Never go to private  schools or State schools. In the former, you mostly just get alcoholic, 2nd-rate teachers with the private pupils bizarrely thinking they are super-intelligent for passing the entrance exams to their private schools while arrogantly and stupidly being unaware that, in most cases, the only reason they got in was because their parents were stinking rich and could give donations etc. In the case of State schools, nothing gets taught because the teachers are too scared of the students, and the boy pupils just spend all their time trying to impress the girls rather than studying etc.

[cherimoya_kid]

The trouble is that parents have become selfish and like to pretend that it's their baby's fault that it is crying etc. It is normal for boys, always has been, to be a bit mischievous and play sport and run around etc.

Agreed.  I think part of the problem is that we have too many kids for the number of adults.  Reduce the birth rate, and we can afford to give each child more individual attention.

[sabertooth]

The problem is that most family members within societies where nearly all adults were compulsorily schooled are so highly integrated into the matrix that they no longer have the time or the interest to take part in the responsibility of raising the children in more traditional, down to earth, common sense ways. So many children don't receive enough one on one attention by people capable of higher levels of interaction..

[TylerDurden]

Agreed.  I think part of the problem is that we have too many kids for the number of adults.  Reduce the birth rate, and we can afford to give each child more individual attention.

Hmm, then those only children inevitably become spoilt brats, like the "Little Emperors" in China. Far better to have a genuine meritocracy wherein many in the population are forbidden from breeding at all, while a worthy minority have two dozen children per couple.

[Alive]

"Increases in the reported melanoma rates are due to over diagnosis rather than an increase in the disease itself"

As written in The Lancet: “Paradoxically, outdoor workers have a decreased risk of melanoma compared with indoor workers, suggesting that chronic sunlight exposure can have a protective effect.”

http://www.davidduke.com/?p=36553