The Attention Deficit Disorder Blog is a Fraud
Posted by Karoli in ADHD November 29th, 2006
I intended to post this as a comment on the Attention Deficit Disorder blog, but they limit comments to ‘team members’ only. What a crock. Anyway, here’s her incorrect statement:
Spending on ADHD drugs soared from $759 million in 2000 to $3.1 billion in 2004 yet there are no studies that prove the long-term effectiveness of amphetamine drugs in helping people adapt or adjust to life with ADHD.
Here’s my response to ‘Jeannine Virtue’, the author of the post linked above:
Jeannine, you’re incorrect. There are studies which prove that medications, combined with behavior therapy, do provide effective treatment for ADHD while minimizing the dosage of medication needed. here’s a link to an article about it. Here’s the punchline:
“It is clear that in most children with severe symptoms, behavioral therapy alone is usually not sufficient,” he says. “But children and their parents and teachers also need to learn management skills to help cope with the ADHD. Many kids have problems that medication doesn’t address.”
The actual study reference is:
Pelham, W. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, May, 2005; vol 13, issue 2. William E. Pelham Jr., PhD, University at Buffalo Distinguished Professor, department of psychology; director, Center for Children and Families, University at Buffalo. Howard Abikoff, PhD, director, Institute for ADHD and Related Disorders, New York University Child Study Center.
Jeannine’s blog is clearly anti-medication, but there’s no profile and she has no credentials listed that give special weight to what she’s writing, so if you’re reading that blog for ADHD advice, factor in the bias. I did, however, see in the description of the blog that she is associated with the so-called Attention Deficit Help Center. If you click on their “About Us” link, you find an advertisement for “Attend”, a so-called herbal remedy for ADHD that includes caffeine, Ginkgo Biloba (potentially dangerous if combined with other medications), and other easily-attainable supplements. There have been NO scientific studies proving that this supplement is effective for treating ADHD.
Frankly, creating a blog on Blogspot which gives the impression that it’s giving worthwhile advice about ADHD while really being used to covertly advertise your product by creating bias in your readers is slimy, dishonest, and speaks to the obvious weakness of the product itself. Anyone reading this blog should be aware that it’s just an expanded infomercial for this person to sell their snake oil.
Technorati Tags: Attend, ADD, Jeannine Virtue, snake oil
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…living life in 19/7 time 
This is really disturbing to me. There have always been snake oil salesmen, but the internet allows them not only to reach a wider market, but to falsely cloak themselves in the respectability of science. I’m particularly pissed at the quack doctors and sham groups who peddle false “cures” to parents of autistic children. They have their own medical “experts”, listserves where parents share their counterfeit knowledge, and lazy science writers who report every hypothesis as a fact. Thanks for writing about this.
What a crock! I hate when people try to push their agendas on other people. Parents dealing with kids who have ADHD are so vulnerable to this kind of stuff. Thanks for exposing the undisclosed conflict of interest.
What I’m curious about is why Google keeps sending it through on my Alerts. Obviously she’s gamed her page rank, but the same post keeps coming through over and over again. In the process of looking into it a bit more closely, I noticed that she runs one for arthritis pain relief, too. The snake oil sales are one of my pet peeves, because they’re always selling at the expense of proven medical treatments.
[...] Read more: here [...]
Man I am so tired of the quack “treatments” for LDs and ADHD. Because “Attend” is a class of substances classified as a “nutraceutical” it does not have to face the same sorts of regulation as medications that actually work.
So the Snake Oil Lobby can babble on about “research” and not have to actually prove anything. I doubt the research was actually performed.
Oh, yuck. Now Jeannine Virtue is flogging
“DMAE (dimethylaminoethanol), with its ability to stabilize cell membranes that contribute to increased memory and healthier brain activity, is proven to boost memory and reduce the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). That is a commonly known fact.
[snip]
To get the two-for-one benefit of DMAE, use Attend, which contains 16.7 mg of DMAE per eevery two capsules!”
By contrast, a reputable source, Dr. Richard Sogn at Web MD says,
http://blogs.webmd.com/adhd-medications-and-treatments/
“Dimethylaminoethanol (DMAE) was a prescription drug for ADHD-like symptoms until the 1980s when it was withdrawn because of lack of proof of effectiveness and safety, and it is now available as a dietary supplement. As was true in the 1980s, there still isn’t enough evidence about effectiveness or safety to recommend it.”
Uggggh. I guess I need to start reading her site more regularly if for no other reason than to debunk the crap she’s posting there.
[...] Link to Liz’s post about the site. Here’s a link to the post on Drumsnwhistles to which Liz referred. Filed under: News, Comments, ADHD, Research, Families — JohnL @ 6:02 am [...]