A Headache For Novartis - 2001-07-23
A Headache For Novartis July 23, 2001,
So who is he? A Wisconsin judge, ruling in 1997 on Breggin's credentials as an expert witness, described him this way: "He's a fraud, or at least approaching that." In a 1995 medical malpractice case a Maryland judge said Breggin showed "blinding bias" and called his testimony a "house of cards." His conclusion: "I find that there is no rational basis for his opinions."
In the scientific community the consensus is that Breggin is not just wrong about Ritalin, but dramatically so. The surgeon general, the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Mental Health have all recognized attention deficit as a mental disorder for years. "He takes the scientific literature and sort of twists it to make it sound very scary and very dangerous," says James Swanson, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at Irvine.