Joss is right – there is no evidence over ADHD

EVERY so often, a public figure says something intelligent about the made-up non-disease ADHD.

On the basis of a vague and unscientific ‘diagnosis’ of this supposed ailment, quite small children are given powerful drugs similar to amphetamines, which would be illegal for adults to buy.

Anyone who attacks this will be hosed down with abuse, but please don’t bother trying this on me, as I am used to it, have researched the whole matter to the bitter end, and don’t care what rude things you say about me.

But I feel a bit for the singer Joss Stone, who last week had a go at the over-medication of our society. ‘Kids will run round and break things and kick things, so they [parents] take their kids to the doctor and they’ll say “Oh well, he’s got ADHD”. It’s a lot of b ******* .’

A supposed ‘expert’ is usually called in at this point to denounce the erring celebrity. And so it was. And journalists opined: ‘Medical professionals say ADHD is a neurological disorder.’ Well, they may say that if they wish. But actually it isn’t.

On November 18, 1998, the American National Institutes of Health (NIH) convened a ‘consensus conference’ on ADHD to discuss this very issue.

They concluded: ‘We do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.’ That is pretty clear and no hard experimental evidence has come in since to alter that, as far as I know.

But the really weird bit is that, although originals of that 1998 document, or references to it, can still be found in various places, these key words have vanished from the NIH’s own database.

I have spent some time trying to get an explanation of this from the NIH but I have not been able to get one. Could anyone have an interest in those inconvenient words being hard to find? I couldn’t possibly comment.