Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD—Neurologist—
Fellow, American Academy of Neurology,
Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. 

Discoverer of Real Diseases

On a recent Charlie Rose show, The Mentally Ill Brain, June 22, 2010, Columbia University psychiatrist, Jeffrey Lieberman showed the public brain scans of a patient diagnosed “schizophrenic,” showing enlarged ventricles (spaces filled with cerebrospinal fluid within the brain), and said, honestly enough, that this shows a “loss of brain gray matter” all the while implying that such a scan was diagnostic of schizophrenia, proving schizophrenia a disease/disorder//sickness/physical abnormality. 

How does this square with the DSM-IV, page 280, under “Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders” where we read: “No laboratory findings have been identified that are diagnostic of Schizophrenia.”  Might the reason be, as in every psychiatric entity/diagnosis described in the DSM- that none–not a single one–have been proved to be/to be due to a physical abnormality, confirmed and confirmable by demonstration of that abnormality microscopically (as with Huntington’s, Kreutzfeldt-Jakob, Wilson’s, or Alzheimer’s disease), or chemically (as with phenylketonuria (PKU), galactosemia or Wilson’s disease).  So it is throughout psychiatry—one psychiatric disorder after the other that they have to confess:” “No laboratory findings have been identified that are diagnostic of ” any psychiatric disorder you wish to name—not for want of a test, but for want of a physical abnormality (microscopic, electron microscopic or chemical) for which to do a physical examination or any test of any kind.  Under ADHD, Associated Laboratory Findings, page 81, we read: “There are no laboratory tests that have been established as diagnostic in the clinical assessment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder” Under Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, page 419, we read the same disclaimer: “No laboratory finding have been identified that are diagnostic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.”  And yet there is not single psychiatric entry in the DSM-IV for which they have not claimed at one time or another chemical or brain scan abnormalities, creating illusions of disease where no disease, disorder, chemical imbalance, sickness, illness or abnormality exists.  What’s more Dr. Lieberman, all of the psychiatrists on the Charlie Rose show and all in psychiatry, having gone to medical school, knowing what disease is and what it isn’t, know perfectly well that their claims to the public and the world that they diagnose and “treat” diseases/physical abnormalities of the brain, is entirely, one hundred percent fraudulent—the greatest health care fraud in history.  In 1948 the conjoint specialty of neuro-psychiatry was split in two by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology into “psychiatry,” dealing with all thing emotional and behavioral—none of them diseases, and “neurology” handling the diagnosis and treatment of all physical abnormalities of the nervous system—diseases. 

Without a doubt, brain atrophy marked by enlargement of the subarachnoid space over the convexity of the brain and/or enlargement of the lateral and third ventricles is an abnormality, but a wholly non-specific one, with many possible underlying/causal pathologies/diseases, the definition of which would require microscopic examination of the brain from biopsy (not always possible or justifiable), or at autopsy, or the demonstration of a chemical abnormality proven to have caused established patterns of brain and/or body malfunction as in Wilson’s disease, with the deposition of copper in the liver and brain secondary to diminished serum ceruloplasmin (an autosomal recessive genetic trait). 

Back to brain atrophy—the enlargement of intracranial cerebro-spinal fluid spaces at the expense of brain tissue–white and gray matter.  From WrongDiagnosis.com we read: “Brain atrophy Symptom Checker:”

Brain atrophy and Neurological symptoms (89 causes), Brain atrophy and Head symptoms (88 causes), Brain atrophy and Brain symptoms (84 causes), Brain atrophy and Movement symptoms (73 causes), Brain atrophy and Musculoskeletal symptoms (71 causes), Brain atrophy and Behavioral symptoms (67 causes), Brain atrophy and Face symptoms (64 causes), Brain atrophy and Cognitive impairment (61 causes), Brain atrophy and Developmental problems (61 causes), Brain atrophy and Personality symptoms (61 causes), Brain atrophy and Nerve symptoms (60 causes), Brain atrophy and Mental problems (59 causes), Brain atrophy and Eye symptoms (55 causes), Brain atrophy and Mouth symptoms (45 causes), Brain atrophy and Mental retardation (44 causes),Brain atrophy and Coordination problems (43 causes), Brain atrophy and Infant symptoms (42 causes)

What we don’t see in this list is mention of psychotropic drugs, all of which are brain damaging, all of which, at one time or another, have been associated with brain atrophy such as is evident on CT and MRI scans.  Brain atrophy can be caused by just about any neurological disease including Huntington’s disease, meningitis, encephalitis, Wilson’s disease, head injuries, phenylketonuria, and any of the more than a hundred real inborn errors of metabolism (most with associated mental subnormality) multiple sclerosis or anoxic encephalopathy (as from a complicated birth, near drowning or carbon monoxide poisoning). 

Only psychiatric entities—none actual diseases do nothing to cause brain atrophy—nothing, that is, other than to serve as a “marker” for chronic, often lifelong, psychotropic drug treatment, often as polypharmacy–giving as many as 10 to 15 drugs at a time—targeting symptoms—but never an actual disease.   In all such cases the psychotropic drug treatment, intoxication, poisoning, is the first and only real disease.

From the Eli Lilly, Zyprexa Global Marketing, Plan of 16 July 2002: ‘Since no definitive laboratory tests or other diagnostic technology exists, the psychiatrist must rely on family history, physical examinations, in-depth interviews with the patient and family and friends.’  What findings, pray tell, are there on physical examination that establish the presence of a psychiatric disorder/disease/chemical imbalance?

I testified at FDA hearings of 3/22/06 and 3/23/06 on ADHD and the addictive, dangerous, Schedule II psychostimulants/amphetamines used to treat it: 

Throughout psychiatry, including in deliberations of the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Drug Committee of the FDA–ADHD and all “mental illnesses” are spoken of as if actual diseases when computing risk (of disease) vs. benefit (of medication) estimations.  In psychiatry/mental health, potent medications are often used assuming the benefits (of the medication) outweigh risks (of the disease).  Without objective proof of a disease, patient-by-patient, or in research subject-by-research subject, how can risk vs. benefit assessments be made?  In fact, they can never be valid.  What proof is there that (1) ADHD, (2) bipolar disorder, (3) conduct disorder, (4) oppositional-defiant disorder, (5) schizophrenia, or, any psychiatric entry in the DSM-IV is an actual disease/abnormality?  When anyone (a physician, or researcher) speaks of a disease they must provide the reference-citation from the medical-scientific literature that proved/established that that entity/diagnosis is an actual disease with a confirmatory gross, microscopic or chemical abnormality.  For example:

1.        Maple Syrup Urine Disease. Menkes JH, Hurst PL, and Craig JM.  A new syndrome: Progressive familial infantile cerebral dysfunction associated with an unusual urinary substance, Pediatrics 14: 462, 1954. 

2.        Baughman, F. A., Jr., Benda, C. E.:  Unusual Morphologic Anomalies of Chromosomes (with thalidomide), Journal of Mount Sinai Hospital 32:546, 1965.

3.        Baughman, F. A., Jr., Vanderkolk, K. J., Mann, J. D., Valdmanis, A.:  Two Cases of Primary Amenorrhea with Deletion of the Long Arm of the X-Chromosome (46, XXq), American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 102:1065-1069, 1968

4.        Baughman, F. A., Jr., List, C. F., Williams, J. R., Muldoon, J. P., Segarra, J. M.:  The Glioma-Polyposis Syndrome.  New England Journal of Medicine, 281:1345-1346, 1969.

This is how medical-scientific communication is carried out.  The diagnosis and treatment of all such psychiatric entities was recently assured by the passage of “parity” legislation.   Are psychiatric diagnoses on a par with medical diagnoses?  Are they actual diseases as the patients, parents and the public-at-large is told, as on the Charley Rose show and wherever Big Pharma buys air-time for psychiatric diagnosis with all of it leading to drugs—five million children with ADHD at last count—none of it real, none of it scientific—enslaved drug receptacles. 

In November 10, 2008, Brian Verbeek, father of a multiply “diagnosed,” (psychiatrically), multiply “drugged,” (psychiatrically) 12 year-old boy, received the following statement from Health Canada:

“For mental/psychiatric disorders in general, including depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and ADHD, there are no confirmatory gross, microscopic or chemical abnormalities that have been validated for objective physical diagnosis.  Rather, diagnoses of possible mental conditions are described strictly in terms of patterns of symptoms that tend to cluster together; the symptoms can be observed by the clinician or reported by the patient or family members.” 

On March 12, 2009, I (Fred A. Baughman, Jr, MD) received the following from the US Food & Drug Administration:

“Dear Dr. Baughman, Thank you for writing to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  This is in response to your letter dated December 19, 2008, requesting the reference/citation from the scientific/medical literature that the five psychiatric disorders listed in your letter are actual diseases.  Your letter was forwarded to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) for a response. I consulted with the FDA new drug review division responsible for approving psychiatric drug products and they concurred with the response you enclosed from Health Canada.   Psychiatric disorders (as Health Canada refers) are diagnosed based on a patient’s presentation of symptoms that the larger psychiatric community has come to accept as real and responsive to treatment.  We have nothing more to add to Health Canada’s response.  Thank you again for writing.  Sincerely, Donald Dobbs, Consumer Safety Officer, Division of Drug Information, Office of Training and Communications, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. .  Please feel free to provide my response to whoever you wish.  Don.”

Saying “diagnoses of possible mental conditions are described strictly in terms of patterns of symptoms” is a clear admission that such diagnoses “described strictly in terms of patterns of symptoms” are wholly subjective and cannot be diseases..  Saying “patterns of symptoms that tend to cluster together” they suggest a biological or natural phenomenon of “clustering” when all component symptoms of mental disorders (In the DSM and ICD) are authored and voted into existence by appointed expert psychiatrists– virtually all of them paid by the pharmaceutical industry.  When “treatments” are spoken of such treatments are thus wholly symptomatic, meant only to alleviate or erase target behavioral or emotional symptoms.  Nowhere in psychiatry or psychology are there objective brain or body abnormalities (abnormality = disease) for the physical, biological or chemical treatment of psychiatry to make normal or more nearly normal. 

That two publications–the DSM-IV and the ICD-10, are “recognized” in no way makes actual diseases of the psychiatric/mental “disorders” therein.  Comprised wholly of symptoms such diagnostic entities are neither “disorders” nor “diseases” (objective abnormality = disorder = disease = sickness = illness = medical syndrome = abnormal phenotype = “chemical imbalance”).

The above should make clear why no psychiatric diagnosis is an actual disease (with disease = disorder = phenotype = physical abnormality) and why no psychiatric drug—with every drug an exogenous compound—a toxin. poison—can possibly have a positive risk vs benefit ratio.  Consider the proven association between antipsychotics, antidepressants (both TCAs and SSRIs), psychostimulants and sudden cardiac death—never a risk of the their psychiatric “disease”—not one is an actual disease. 

Nor can Lieberman or any psychiatrist credibly state that an antipsychotic or any psychiatric drug or drugs “stabilize,” cure or alleviate a mental illness,”  Theirs is a “house of cards,” a “shell game,” a pack of lies”—a multi-trillion dollar industry made up wholly of contrived illusions of disease.  Their’s is the greatest health care fraud in history. 

Nor should critics of psychiatry inadvertently legitimize what they say and do by referring to any mental/psychiatric diagnosis as a “disease” without trying first to find and reference the article that proves that it is a disease.  Looking for such proof and not finding it, they will not likely make the same error again.