Wonder what people think of this one, today's lead story in the Telegraph:
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Boys convicted of attempted rape: branded criminals for 'playing doctors and nurses'
Telegraph
24 May 2010
Two boys have been convicted of the attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl even though she admitted in court that she lied about her ordeal. The defendants, who were both 10 at the time, are the youngest people ever to be convicted of the sex offence.
Their case immediately provoked a debate over whether juveniles should appear in a Crown Court, either as defendants or witnesses, especially in a sex offence case where they may be too immature to understand the allegations involved.
The jury was not told that the trial judge had admitted to having misgivings about allowing the case to go ahead. Mr Justice Saunders conceded that the Old Bailey case would have been dropped if the victim had been an adult, because the evidence the girl gave via videolink was so contradictory. The judge also admitted that the system involving child witnesses was far from “ideal”, noting that the victim had been subjected to a string of leading questions which she may not have understood. He said he would write to the Lord Chief Justice suggesting “lessons” should be learned from the way the case was handled.
The girl had told her mother and police that the boys had “done sex” with her in a field near her home in Hayes, west London, last October. Under cross-examination, she denied that either boy had raped her, agreeing that they had just been playing a game.
One of the boys’ barristers suggested that they had been playing ''you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’’, or ''that age-old game, doctors and nurses’’.
After two days of deliberations, the jury cleared the boys, now 10 and 11, of rape but found each guilty of two counts of attempted rape by a majority verdict. The defendants, who both denied the charges, could face lengthy custodial sentences and will be put on the sex offenders’ register, though the judge conceded: “I am not quite sure how it applies to children of this age.”
Senior lawyers and children’s charities described the trial as “horrific and absurd”. Felicity Gerry, a barrister and author of the Sexual Offences Handbook, questioned the decision to take the boys to court, saying sex offences were different from crimes of violence, such as the murder of James Bulger by two schoolboys.
“A lot of children may know that to kill a three-year-old with an iron bar or to drop concrete on a child is wrong, but proper sexual awareness only comes with greater maturity,” she said. “One might think [these defendants] would benefit from good social intervention rather than prosecution.”
...
The jury was not told that, after the girl had given evidence, the judge expressed misgivings about the process, saying: “I don’t think anyone who has sat through this trial would think for a moment that the system that we employ is ideal. However, the reality remains that we have a witness who said one thing and has now said completely the opposite ... if you had an adult witness who said what this girl said the Crown would not be proceeding.”
The judge rejected an attempt by the defence to have the case stopped, ruling that it was up to the jury to decide whether the girl had told the truth. At the end of the trial he said: “I will at some stage be sending my views about the procedure to those who are most concerned with it.’’
The Ministry of Justice said it would examine the case and any communication from the judge to see if there were issues which needed to be resolved. Both defendants, who cannot be named, were released on bail for psychological reports to be compiled before they are sentenced.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Smelly Little Orthodoxies - Peter Hitchens on winning the Orwell Award for Journalism
Hitchens reflects on winning the George Orwell Award for Journalism:
"In the meantime, I'd like to indulge myself and post a few mildly controversial thoughts on the Orwell Prize for Journalism, which I am proud to say I won last week. This was the one prize I had always wanted, as someone who has steeped himself in Orwell since the age of 15 and regards him as the pattern of honest writing. Because Orwell was of the Left (though a very troubled and troublesome member of that movement) he is regarded by many on the modern left as their perpetual property. I disagree. I think Orwell belongs to the truth, not to the left. And I think the judges recognised this crucial fact when they chose to quote from Orwell's essay on Charles Dickens in their citation (this was the moment when I, having pretty much assumed that it would be awarded to someone else, began to hope that I might win after all).
By the way, I really do have to thank the judges, Peter Kellner and Roger Graef, for their magnanimity in giving me the award when they must have known that so many of their friends would strongly disapprove. I can hear the aggrieved cries of ‘How could you give it to him?’, which they will now have to endure. By showing that magnanimity, they showed that they - and the Prize in general - understand the spirit of Orwell better than do many of those who resent my getting it.
Orwell wrote of Dickens as ‘a man who is always fighting against something but who fights in the open and is not frightened...a man who is generously angry...a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’
No, it's not that I presume to compare myself with Dickens (though I would cite 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' as among the greatest books ever written). But I do think it's the case that - if you do your job properly - you will be loathed by the smelly little orthodoxies of your own age.
My thanks to those who sent kind wishes on my winning it. My thanks also to those who didn't. One of the delights of winning this award, for which I have entered unsuccessfully several times, is that quite a lot of the right, or left sort of people will be annoyed that I have got it. I even like to think that Orwell himself might have enjoyed the sharp intake of breath among London's left-wing mediocracy when they were reminded last Wednesday night that I was on the short-list. (They behaved impeccably when the actual award was announced, I should add). He might also have enjoyed the tiny, tiny mention of my name in the Guardian's report on the award, which dwelt mainly on the Blog Prize given to the pseudonymous social worker 'Winston Smith'.
Soon afterwards there was the comment by Roy Greenslade on his blog: ‘I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism. The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting. Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable. “Never”, he replied, “they'll hate me even more for this.” ’
The reported conversation did take place exactly as described, by the way, and I stand by it.
And I will always treasure another Guardian blog comment by legal expert Afua Hirsch, the closest anyone has come to saying openly that they disagree with the judges. Under the headline ‘Some wins more surprising than others’, Ms Hirsch wrote: ‘This year's Orwell prize steered close, as ever, to the most current political issues of the moment. Despite having nominated an array of journalists feted for their coverage of issues including protest rights or social breakdown, the award for journalism went to the Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens. The audience – comprised of liberal, political writers and bloggers – struggled to express an informed view on that choice of award because so few of them read the Mail on Sunday.’
And no doubt they're all proud of that, that so few of them read the MoS. And yet I read 'The Guardian' and 'The Observer' and I would be ashamed to be a member of my trade and admit that I didn't.
I think that 'despite' and the tortured grammar that follows it, speak volumes. Oddly enough, I do write about protest rights (on this blog particularly but elsewhere too, see the posting 'It's not debatable') and incessantly about social breakdown, but not perhaps in a way that Ms Hirsch would want me to.
What is it that I like about Orwell? Above all it is the good, clear English and the desire to be truthful even at some cost. Orwell ran into a great deal of trouble with the left (especially over 'Homage to Catalonia') because he refused to be an orthodox servant of his own cause. He once wrote (in a preface to 'Animal Farm' which was then itself not published):
‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
The paradox in this is that 'Animal Farm' itself was very nearly not published, not least thanks to the disgraceful behaviour of T.S.Eliot, a man who really should have known better.
I have explained (well, to some people, anyway) how this orthodoxy works in some ways in an earlier posting on bias in the publishing industry. But I know that Orwell never had a column in a national Sunday newspaper. So again, I am not in any way claiming a martyr's crown here, merely pointing out that I meet hostility and obstruction where a more orthodox writer would not. It is also the case that, in these times, conservative newspapers and magazines are more likely to foster and project unorthodox voices than are the journals of the left, which are bland and smug, while imagining themselves to be exciting and radical.
It's pointless to speculate on what Orwell would have made of the post Cold War world, of the 1960s cultural revolution, or of the controversies of today. We cannot know, and nobody should claim him as their own. But I have absolutely no doubt that, had he lived, he would have continued to annoy people by telling truths they did not wish to hear. There's a quotation I can't properly remember in which he said that a genuinely controversial opinion would always be a dangerous thing, because it would arouse serious fury (any Orwellians out there who can identify this? It was much better put).
And I wouldn't dare claim that I am somehow the inheritor of his mantle. That would be absurd. The point is, the Guardian isn't the inheritor of his mantle either.
But I do think that his extraordinary attempt to combine fierce patriotism with radical politics, in 'The Lion and the Unicorn' is in many ways as upsetting to the radical orthodoxy, who are never patriotic, as is his hostility to Stalinist totalitarianism (which they all excoriate now it's safe to do so, but would have apologised for when it was still powerful and fashionable, as they prove with their attitude towards Cuba).
I would also point to a strong cultural conservatism and dislike for crass modernity in much of his writings, especially in my favourite among his light novels, 'Coming up for Air'. And I always like to tease his modern partisans by pointing out that he specified in his Will that he should be buried (as I hope to be) according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England as set out in the 1662 Prayer Book, about the most uncompromising, raw, earthy and traditional religious service anywhere in any language. He'd also expressed a wish, granted thanks to his friend David Astor, to be laid in an English country churchyard.
And last Saturday evening, partly because there were no trains between Didcot and Oxford, I took the opportunity to bicycle through Sutton Courtenay, the rather lovely village where he is buried, and to pay my respects at his properly modest grave, six feet of English earth (no metres for him), under a Yew tree, near the Thames."
"In the meantime, I'd like to indulge myself and post a few mildly controversial thoughts on the Orwell Prize for Journalism, which I am proud to say I won last week. This was the one prize I had always wanted, as someone who has steeped himself in Orwell since the age of 15 and regards him as the pattern of honest writing. Because Orwell was of the Left (though a very troubled and troublesome member of that movement) he is regarded by many on the modern left as their perpetual property. I disagree. I think Orwell belongs to the truth, not to the left. And I think the judges recognised this crucial fact when they chose to quote from Orwell's essay on Charles Dickens in their citation (this was the moment when I, having pretty much assumed that it would be awarded to someone else, began to hope that I might win after all).
By the way, I really do have to thank the judges, Peter Kellner and Roger Graef, for their magnanimity in giving me the award when they must have known that so many of their friends would strongly disapprove. I can hear the aggrieved cries of ‘How could you give it to him?’, which they will now have to endure. By showing that magnanimity, they showed that they - and the Prize in general - understand the spirit of Orwell better than do many of those who resent my getting it.
Orwell wrote of Dickens as ‘a man who is always fighting against something but who fights in the open and is not frightened...a man who is generously angry...a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.’
No, it's not that I presume to compare myself with Dickens (though I would cite 'Great Expectations', 'David Copperfield' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' as among the greatest books ever written). But I do think it's the case that - if you do your job properly - you will be loathed by the smelly little orthodoxies of your own age.
My thanks to those who sent kind wishes on my winning it. My thanks also to those who didn't. One of the delights of winning this award, for which I have entered unsuccessfully several times, is that quite a lot of the right, or left sort of people will be annoyed that I have got it. I even like to think that Orwell himself might have enjoyed the sharp intake of breath among London's left-wing mediocracy when they were reminded last Wednesday night that I was on the short-list. (They behaved impeccably when the actual award was announced, I should add). He might also have enjoyed the tiny, tiny mention of my name in the Guardian's report on the award, which dwelt mainly on the Blog Prize given to the pseudonymous social worker 'Winston Smith'.
Soon afterwards there was the comment by Roy Greenslade on his blog: ‘I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism. The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting. Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable. “Never”, he replied, “they'll hate me even more for this.” ’
The reported conversation did take place exactly as described, by the way, and I stand by it.
And I will always treasure another Guardian blog comment by legal expert Afua Hirsch, the closest anyone has come to saying openly that they disagree with the judges. Under the headline ‘Some wins more surprising than others’, Ms Hirsch wrote: ‘This year's Orwell prize steered close, as ever, to the most current political issues of the moment. Despite having nominated an array of journalists feted for their coverage of issues including protest rights or social breakdown, the award for journalism went to the Mail on Sunday's Peter Hitchens. The audience – comprised of liberal, political writers and bloggers – struggled to express an informed view on that choice of award because so few of them read the Mail on Sunday.’
And no doubt they're all proud of that, that so few of them read the MoS. And yet I read 'The Guardian' and 'The Observer' and I would be ashamed to be a member of my trade and admit that I didn't.
I think that 'despite' and the tortured grammar that follows it, speak volumes. Oddly enough, I do write about protest rights (on this blog particularly but elsewhere too, see the posting 'It's not debatable') and incessantly about social breakdown, but not perhaps in a way that Ms Hirsch would want me to.
What is it that I like about Orwell? Above all it is the good, clear English and the desire to be truthful even at some cost. Orwell ran into a great deal of trouble with the left (especially over 'Homage to Catalonia') because he refused to be an orthodox servant of his own cause. He once wrote (in a preface to 'Animal Farm' which was then itself not published):
‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals ... If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’
The paradox in this is that 'Animal Farm' itself was very nearly not published, not least thanks to the disgraceful behaviour of T.S.Eliot, a man who really should have known better.
I have explained (well, to some people, anyway) how this orthodoxy works in some ways in an earlier posting on bias in the publishing industry. But I know that Orwell never had a column in a national Sunday newspaper. So again, I am not in any way claiming a martyr's crown here, merely pointing out that I meet hostility and obstruction where a more orthodox writer would not. It is also the case that, in these times, conservative newspapers and magazines are more likely to foster and project unorthodox voices than are the journals of the left, which are bland and smug, while imagining themselves to be exciting and radical.
It's pointless to speculate on what Orwell would have made of the post Cold War world, of the 1960s cultural revolution, or of the controversies of today. We cannot know, and nobody should claim him as their own. But I have absolutely no doubt that, had he lived, he would have continued to annoy people by telling truths they did not wish to hear. There's a quotation I can't properly remember in which he said that a genuinely controversial opinion would always be a dangerous thing, because it would arouse serious fury (any Orwellians out there who can identify this? It was much better put).
And I wouldn't dare claim that I am somehow the inheritor of his mantle. That would be absurd. The point is, the Guardian isn't the inheritor of his mantle either.
But I do think that his extraordinary attempt to combine fierce patriotism with radical politics, in 'The Lion and the Unicorn' is in many ways as upsetting to the radical orthodoxy, who are never patriotic, as is his hostility to Stalinist totalitarianism (which they all excoriate now it's safe to do so, but would have apologised for when it was still powerful and fashionable, as they prove with their attitude towards Cuba).
I would also point to a strong cultural conservatism and dislike for crass modernity in much of his writings, especially in my favourite among his light novels, 'Coming up for Air'. And I always like to tease his modern partisans by pointing out that he specified in his Will that he should be buried (as I hope to be) according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England as set out in the 1662 Prayer Book, about the most uncompromising, raw, earthy and traditional religious service anywhere in any language. He'd also expressed a wish, granted thanks to his friend David Astor, to be laid in an English country churchyard.
And last Saturday evening, partly because there were no trains between Didcot and Oxford, I took the opportunity to bicycle through Sutton Courtenay, the rather lovely village where he is buried, and to pay my respects at his properly modest grave, six feet of English earth (no metres for him), under a Yew tree, near the Thames."
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Peter Hitchens wins the Orwell Award for Journalism
Nominated three times, Peter Hitchens wins the George Orwell Award for his foreign reporting on China, Canada, Eastern Europe and Africa.
Guardian's Roy Greenslade writes:
I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism.
The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting.
Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable.
"Never", he replied, "they'll hate me even more for this."
Guardian's Roy Greenslade writes:
I would guess that some, more than some, leftish-inclined journalists were a little put out by Peter Hitchens having been awarded the Orwell Prize for journalism.
The iconoclastic Mail on Sunday columnist picked up the award for his foreign reporting.
Evidently, a friend warned Hitchens afterwards to be careful because people would now think he was respectable.
"Never", he replied, "they'll hate me even more for this."
Friday, May 21, 2010
The ADHD Fantasy
Peter Hitchens claims that ADHD doesn't really exist.
The Hitch takes apart the 5 most common angry responses he receives when he writes about ADHD. Here are two of them (the full list and his answers is available by following the link above):
"1. "Dear Mr Hitchens, I feel utterly insulted by your gratuitous claim that there is no such thing as ADHD'. You are obviously an ignorant moron. You should do some research on this, and then you would know that it was a real problem."
A. An insult can only be offered to a person, directly, and concern his personal failings or faults. It is not possible to be 'insulted' by a statement of fact, or by an argument you disagree with. If the statement isn't true, then you are well placed to prove that. If you disagree with the argument, then you can say so. To say that you have been 'insulted' is to refuse to accept that there may be some truth in what I say, possibly because you have some doubts about the matter yourself. In fact I often find that angry, personal vehemence in an argument is a sign that the person involved has serious doubts about his or her position. Let us begin as we mean to go on, and treat this as a matter of facts and logic. Also, as it so happens, I have done a great deal of research on this matter, not least as a result of dealing with several waves of correspondence on the subject. And the more research I have done, the more alarmed I have become at the great numbers of children and teenagers being drugged because they are supposed to be suffering from a complaint for which there is no established, objective test.
The question here is one of scientific fact, which - let us agree here to accept Karl Popper's view - has to be proved by experiment, and in such a way that it could later be disproved by new discoveries. Anything else is speculation, not fact or knowledge. If someone wants to say that there is something called 'ADHD', and prescribe actual drugs for it, the burden is on him to prove it by experiment, and to present a proof which could be exploded by new discoveries. I say no such proof has ever been produced. There are, it is true, some attempts to produce it. But one has been pretty thoroughly knocked down, and the other is tentative. Crucially, neither is generally used to diagnose 'ADHD', which is generally done by a subjective assessment.
I must also stress that, if you have been told that your child is suffering from a 'disorder', that does not actually mean that this must be so. Sceptics and doubters may be right. Doctors, regrettably, are often mistaken. Medical practice, even in physical medicine, undergoes fashions and fads just like every other field of human activity. Some examples: To my own knowledge, 23 years ago parents were told that the best way to avoid cot death was to lie babies face down. Five years later, the advice was the exact opposite. Putting them face down was likely to be fatal, and they must be laid on their backs. In the mid-20th century many psychiatrists believed that pre-frontal lobotomy was a miracle treatment. It is now universally decried as a barbaric and destructive operation.
Fashions in psychiatry have changed even more completely than fashions in ordinary physical medicine and surgery, during the short period of psychiatry's existence, with many of Sigmund Freud's original theories now regarded as wrong or flawed. As for neurology, the discipline which deals with the human brain, neurologists themselves admit that we know startlingly little about this complex, delicate and vulnerable organ. Undoubtedly, drugs can affect the brain. But neurologists are often extremely vague about how they operate and why they have the effects that they do have. Many drugs prescribed for neurological complaints, or for complaints which are assumed to be neurological, also have severe side-effects, and long-term consequences which are often discovered after some time. Some physical treatments for allegedly neurological complaints, such as electro-convulsive therapy, have been described to me by doctors as the medical equivalent of thumping a TV set that has gone on the blink.
In my childhood, operations for tonsillectomy were routinely given to children with nothing seriously wrong with them. Shoe shops provided machines in which you could X-ray your own feet, machines which were believed to be wholly safe and advertised as such. Most first-aid textbooks recommended treating burns by putting greasy creams on them, now acknowledged to be one of the worst things you can possibly do. When I first became a blood donor, in the 1970s, I was given iron pills by the nurse and told to take them without fail. This is now considered unnecessary, and possibly harmful. And so on. Many of us have also been misdiagnosed by doctors at one time or another. I certainly have, and once ended up in hospital being prepared for a wholly needless operation because I had been prescribed the wrong antibiotic. The mistake was discovered just before I went under the anaesthetic. It is perfectly reasonable for informed laymen to question the wisdom of doctors, and often wise to do so.
2. "You plainly have no idea of what you are talking about. If you came and spent a week at our house, then you would know that ADHD existed."
A. I did once respond to such an offer, asking the writer to name a date. I warned that I spent rather a long time in the bathroom in the morning, but promised to bring my own wine and do my own laundry and ironing. But I heard nothing more, perhaps because I added . "I can assure you that, even if I spent a year in your home, I should still not be persuaded that 'ADHD' exists." How can I be so sure? Why wouldn't I be influenced by daily contact with a badly-behaved or uncontrollable child?
First, because the fact that there are such children is not in doubt. There are many. I wouldn't have to spend a week watching them misbehave to be convinced of that. Many modern British and American children, especially young boys, cause their parents and their teachers great difficulty. They defy authority, they run wild, they break things, they yell and shout and are horrible to their brothers and sisters. But their existence does not prove that 'ADHD' exists. That is a separate issue. It just proves that in modern Western societies there are a lot of ill-behaved boys. The question is not "do children behave badly in increasing numbers, especially at school?" Everyone knows this is the case. The question is "what is causing their bad behaviour?" Is there one simple reason, that can be cured by giving them all a drug? Or are there many reasons, some of which might be curable by drugs (I am suspicious of this method under all circumstances, but don't rule out the possibility that there might be cases where drugs could help), some of which can be cured by sleep, exercise, diet, the rationing of TV watching, a different pattern of family life, a better school, and some of which have actual physical causes and may or may not be treatable?
One of the problems with the diagnosis of 'ADHD' is that it covers such an extraordinarily broad range of behaviours including -in my experience - children who may actually suffer from birth trauma or brain damage, and children who are merely wilful and obstinate, or are driven to distraction by dull schools and bad teachers. Worse, it closes the subject. If they are all suffering from a treatable physical disorder, then we need not worry about our debased family life and our useless schools. And the small minority of children who do actually have something physically wrong with them are dosed with drugs that pacify them, and their real problems are ignored and go uninvestigated This means firstly they are not treated, and secondly that medical knowledge ceases to advance. The 'diagnosis' of 'ADHD' helps none of those to whom it is applied. But it gets a lot of adults off the hook of responsibility and closes off scientific inquiry.
Even if some of these children do actually have a physical defect curable by drugs, they cannot conceivably all be the same - six or seven million children now in the USA, hundreds of thousands in Britain.
Among the 'ADHD' children are those who have been exposed to an enormous amount of TV from early infancy, or to violent computer games. There are those who suffer from an almost total absence of physical exercise, and those who have never been introduced to a routine of mealtimes and bedtimes, and so are unwilling to adapt to any environment in which there are routines and timetables. There are those who have never been taught to read, and so would find school a constant frustration. There are those whose schools are unbearably dull test-factories, in which they are compelled to spend hours at uncongenial, repetitive and maddening tasks. There are those whose diet is packed with sugar and unhealthy chemicals, and those who suffer from a grave lack of sleep. there are combinations of some or all of these factors. There are what I refer to as 'spirited ' children ( who are well described by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka in her book on this subject) who are simply very bright and rebel against being treated as normal children. Others are seeking attention because they feel neglected by absent, busy parents or are angry about divorces or separations or the unwelcome appearance of step-parents in the home. Some are just plain badly brought up.
Surely a proper, medically-defined complaint couldn't encompass so many different sorts of child, and still mean anything? Also, if it's a physical manifestation, why does it affect boys so very much more than it affects girls? No other medical complaint - except those involving reproductive organs - discriminates between the sexes in this way. Yet the very name "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" is - or appears to be - highly precise and specific. It is intended to sound scientific and exact. It cannot be both precise and vague. Yet, if it exists, it is. Year by year, especially in Britain and the USA, thousands of children damaged, disadvantaged or neglected in hundreds of different ways - or with nothing wrong with them at all - are alleged to be suffering from it, on the basis of a sketchy, subjective assessment - which I'll come to later.
This wouldn't matter so much if the 'treatment' for 'ADHD' were as vague and variable as the thing itself. But it isn't. In most cases, some of them involving very young children indeed, the medical response is a highly specific one. It is to prescribe powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs - notably ones containing the chemical methylphenidate ( most commonly marketed as the pill called Ritalin). In the USA (though not, so far as I know, in Britain), it is also often 'treated' with Adderall, an actual amphetamine which I believe was once marketed as Obetrol, an appetite suppressing diet drug ( among whose users was Andy Warhol). It is a controversial substance. Look it up on Google for more information, and see if you think it is a good idea to give it to children.
And what about Methylphenidate? Unlike Adderall, it isn't technically an amphetamine, but it is very similar to amphetamines, which are generally strictly controlled by law in most civilised countries. It is claimed that it 'treats' 'ADHD', but there is a major problem here. First, there is no recognised objective chemical, physical or biological test for the existence of 'ADHD'. Secondly, nobody actually knows what effect methylphenidate has upon the human brain. It is said to 'aid concentration' ( as are amphetamines) and anyone who took it would certainly find it was easier to concentrate on dull, repetitive tasks and unwanted duties such as last-minute exam revision. If you worked in a call centre, you would probably find it helped you get through the day. But why? And at what cost?
One theory, unproven by research, is that 'ADHD' is caused by a dopamine imbalance in the brain. Since Methylphenidate increases dopamine levels in the brain's synapses, this would, if proven, at least justify its use in this case. But it isn't proven, a point I'll address in more detail. Another theory is that Methylphenidate affects the action of serotonin in the brain, the chemical that provides feelings of well-being. Personally, I think it's amazing that even an adult should swallow a substance about which so little is known, which affects an organ so sensitive, valuable and little understood. It is even more amazing that it should be given to children with unformed brains. Methylphenidate is sold on the black market as a stimulant, as amphetamines are, both in Britain and the USA. It has recognised side-effects, including stomach-ache, sleeplessness, headaches, dry mouth and - more rarely - palpitations and high blood pressure. Anti-Ritalin campaigners in the USA allege that it has even greater problems, and some American websites suggest that it may actually be dangerous to some users. In the US, there have allegedly been cases of cardiac arrest in children taking methylphenidate, and the US authorities have been divided about whether to place health warnings on the labels of Methylphenidate-based medications. Some experts have strongly urged that such warnings should be displayed, but so far the authorities have declined to do so."
The Hitch takes apart the 5 most common angry responses he receives when he writes about ADHD. Here are two of them (the full list and his answers is available by following the link above):
"1. "Dear Mr Hitchens, I feel utterly insulted by your gratuitous claim that there is no such thing as ADHD'. You are obviously an ignorant moron. You should do some research on this, and then you would know that it was a real problem."
A. An insult can only be offered to a person, directly, and concern his personal failings or faults. It is not possible to be 'insulted' by a statement of fact, or by an argument you disagree with. If the statement isn't true, then you are well placed to prove that. If you disagree with the argument, then you can say so. To say that you have been 'insulted' is to refuse to accept that there may be some truth in what I say, possibly because you have some doubts about the matter yourself. In fact I often find that angry, personal vehemence in an argument is a sign that the person involved has serious doubts about his or her position. Let us begin as we mean to go on, and treat this as a matter of facts and logic. Also, as it so happens, I have done a great deal of research on this matter, not least as a result of dealing with several waves of correspondence on the subject. And the more research I have done, the more alarmed I have become at the great numbers of children and teenagers being drugged because they are supposed to be suffering from a complaint for which there is no established, objective test.
The question here is one of scientific fact, which - let us agree here to accept Karl Popper's view - has to be proved by experiment, and in such a way that it could later be disproved by new discoveries. Anything else is speculation, not fact or knowledge. If someone wants to say that there is something called 'ADHD', and prescribe actual drugs for it, the burden is on him to prove it by experiment, and to present a proof which could be exploded by new discoveries. I say no such proof has ever been produced. There are, it is true, some attempts to produce it. But one has been pretty thoroughly knocked down, and the other is tentative. Crucially, neither is generally used to diagnose 'ADHD', which is generally done by a subjective assessment.
I must also stress that, if you have been told that your child is suffering from a 'disorder', that does not actually mean that this must be so. Sceptics and doubters may be right. Doctors, regrettably, are often mistaken. Medical practice, even in physical medicine, undergoes fashions and fads just like every other field of human activity. Some examples: To my own knowledge, 23 years ago parents were told that the best way to avoid cot death was to lie babies face down. Five years later, the advice was the exact opposite. Putting them face down was likely to be fatal, and they must be laid on their backs. In the mid-20th century many psychiatrists believed that pre-frontal lobotomy was a miracle treatment. It is now universally decried as a barbaric and destructive operation.
Fashions in psychiatry have changed even more completely than fashions in ordinary physical medicine and surgery, during the short period of psychiatry's existence, with many of Sigmund Freud's original theories now regarded as wrong or flawed. As for neurology, the discipline which deals with the human brain, neurologists themselves admit that we know startlingly little about this complex, delicate and vulnerable organ. Undoubtedly, drugs can affect the brain. But neurologists are often extremely vague about how they operate and why they have the effects that they do have. Many drugs prescribed for neurological complaints, or for complaints which are assumed to be neurological, also have severe side-effects, and long-term consequences which are often discovered after some time. Some physical treatments for allegedly neurological complaints, such as electro-convulsive therapy, have been described to me by doctors as the medical equivalent of thumping a TV set that has gone on the blink.
In my childhood, operations for tonsillectomy were routinely given to children with nothing seriously wrong with them. Shoe shops provided machines in which you could X-ray your own feet, machines which were believed to be wholly safe and advertised as such. Most first-aid textbooks recommended treating burns by putting greasy creams on them, now acknowledged to be one of the worst things you can possibly do. When I first became a blood donor, in the 1970s, I was given iron pills by the nurse and told to take them without fail. This is now considered unnecessary, and possibly harmful. And so on. Many of us have also been misdiagnosed by doctors at one time or another. I certainly have, and once ended up in hospital being prepared for a wholly needless operation because I had been prescribed the wrong antibiotic. The mistake was discovered just before I went under the anaesthetic. It is perfectly reasonable for informed laymen to question the wisdom of doctors, and often wise to do so.
2. "You plainly have no idea of what you are talking about. If you came and spent a week at our house, then you would know that ADHD existed."
A. I did once respond to such an offer, asking the writer to name a date. I warned that I spent rather a long time in the bathroom in the morning, but promised to bring my own wine and do my own laundry and ironing. But I heard nothing more, perhaps because I added . "I can assure you that, even if I spent a year in your home, I should still not be persuaded that 'ADHD' exists." How can I be so sure? Why wouldn't I be influenced by daily contact with a badly-behaved or uncontrollable child?
First, because the fact that there are such children is not in doubt. There are many. I wouldn't have to spend a week watching them misbehave to be convinced of that. Many modern British and American children, especially young boys, cause their parents and their teachers great difficulty. They defy authority, they run wild, they break things, they yell and shout and are horrible to their brothers and sisters. But their existence does not prove that 'ADHD' exists. That is a separate issue. It just proves that in modern Western societies there are a lot of ill-behaved boys. The question is not "do children behave badly in increasing numbers, especially at school?" Everyone knows this is the case. The question is "what is causing their bad behaviour?" Is there one simple reason, that can be cured by giving them all a drug? Or are there many reasons, some of which might be curable by drugs (I am suspicious of this method under all circumstances, but don't rule out the possibility that there might be cases where drugs could help), some of which can be cured by sleep, exercise, diet, the rationing of TV watching, a different pattern of family life, a better school, and some of which have actual physical causes and may or may not be treatable?
One of the problems with the diagnosis of 'ADHD' is that it covers such an extraordinarily broad range of behaviours including -in my experience - children who may actually suffer from birth trauma or brain damage, and children who are merely wilful and obstinate, or are driven to distraction by dull schools and bad teachers. Worse, it closes the subject. If they are all suffering from a treatable physical disorder, then we need not worry about our debased family life and our useless schools. And the small minority of children who do actually have something physically wrong with them are dosed with drugs that pacify them, and their real problems are ignored and go uninvestigated This means firstly they are not treated, and secondly that medical knowledge ceases to advance. The 'diagnosis' of 'ADHD' helps none of those to whom it is applied. But it gets a lot of adults off the hook of responsibility and closes off scientific inquiry.
Even if some of these children do actually have a physical defect curable by drugs, they cannot conceivably all be the same - six or seven million children now in the USA, hundreds of thousands in Britain.
Among the 'ADHD' children are those who have been exposed to an enormous amount of TV from early infancy, or to violent computer games. There are those who suffer from an almost total absence of physical exercise, and those who have never been introduced to a routine of mealtimes and bedtimes, and so are unwilling to adapt to any environment in which there are routines and timetables. There are those who have never been taught to read, and so would find school a constant frustration. There are those whose schools are unbearably dull test-factories, in which they are compelled to spend hours at uncongenial, repetitive and maddening tasks. There are those whose diet is packed with sugar and unhealthy chemicals, and those who suffer from a grave lack of sleep. there are combinations of some or all of these factors. There are what I refer to as 'spirited ' children ( who are well described by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka in her book on this subject) who are simply very bright and rebel against being treated as normal children. Others are seeking attention because they feel neglected by absent, busy parents or are angry about divorces or separations or the unwelcome appearance of step-parents in the home. Some are just plain badly brought up.
Surely a proper, medically-defined complaint couldn't encompass so many different sorts of child, and still mean anything? Also, if it's a physical manifestation, why does it affect boys so very much more than it affects girls? No other medical complaint - except those involving reproductive organs - discriminates between the sexes in this way. Yet the very name "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" is - or appears to be - highly precise and specific. It is intended to sound scientific and exact. It cannot be both precise and vague. Yet, if it exists, it is. Year by year, especially in Britain and the USA, thousands of children damaged, disadvantaged or neglected in hundreds of different ways - or with nothing wrong with them at all - are alleged to be suffering from it, on the basis of a sketchy, subjective assessment - which I'll come to later.
This wouldn't matter so much if the 'treatment' for 'ADHD' were as vague and variable as the thing itself. But it isn't. In most cases, some of them involving very young children indeed, the medical response is a highly specific one. It is to prescribe powerful psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs - notably ones containing the chemical methylphenidate ( most commonly marketed as the pill called Ritalin). In the USA (though not, so far as I know, in Britain), it is also often 'treated' with Adderall, an actual amphetamine which I believe was once marketed as Obetrol, an appetite suppressing diet drug ( among whose users was Andy Warhol). It is a controversial substance. Look it up on Google for more information, and see if you think it is a good idea to give it to children.
And what about Methylphenidate? Unlike Adderall, it isn't technically an amphetamine, but it is very similar to amphetamines, which are generally strictly controlled by law in most civilised countries. It is claimed that it 'treats' 'ADHD', but there is a major problem here. First, there is no recognised objective chemical, physical or biological test for the existence of 'ADHD'. Secondly, nobody actually knows what effect methylphenidate has upon the human brain. It is said to 'aid concentration' ( as are amphetamines) and anyone who took it would certainly find it was easier to concentrate on dull, repetitive tasks and unwanted duties such as last-minute exam revision. If you worked in a call centre, you would probably find it helped you get through the day. But why? And at what cost?
One theory, unproven by research, is that 'ADHD' is caused by a dopamine imbalance in the brain. Since Methylphenidate increases dopamine levels in the brain's synapses, this would, if proven, at least justify its use in this case. But it isn't proven, a point I'll address in more detail. Another theory is that Methylphenidate affects the action of serotonin in the brain, the chemical that provides feelings of well-being. Personally, I think it's amazing that even an adult should swallow a substance about which so little is known, which affects an organ so sensitive, valuable and little understood. It is even more amazing that it should be given to children with unformed brains. Methylphenidate is sold on the black market as a stimulant, as amphetamines are, both in Britain and the USA. It has recognised side-effects, including stomach-ache, sleeplessness, headaches, dry mouth and - more rarely - palpitations and high blood pressure. Anti-Ritalin campaigners in the USA allege that it has even greater problems, and some American websites suggest that it may actually be dangerous to some users. In the US, there have allegedly been cases of cardiac arrest in children taking methylphenidate, and the US authorities have been divided about whether to place health warnings on the labels of Methylphenidate-based medications. Some experts have strongly urged that such warnings should be displayed, but so far the authorities have declined to do so."
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