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Tracy Sherwood
October 3rd 03, 08:16 AM
Dear All,

My husband and I applied to take in a Foster Child in our beautiful
Leona Valley Home in 1999. Our combined incomes far exceeded the
minimum and I was a professional tutor, able and willing to help a
struggling foster child. We lived on an acre of land with gentle
horses and a sweet yellow Lab that loves children. We also had my 14
year old son who was also a tutor and had received his high school
dimploma at age thirteen. My husband worked for Shell Oil and taught
our visiting students to make and repair things in the barn. We both
had clean records of any and every kind. I was told by the social
worker who visited our home and filled out our application, that
everything looked perfect except for one thing: She didn't know if
they would be able to find a foster child who was not being prescribed
psychotropic medication for learning or behavioral disabilities and
said I would have a better chance if I omitted that requirement from
my application. I refused, because I feel it is not the correct
solution and is in fact dangerous to give children such medications. I
leaned more in the directory of nutrition and giving the child respect
with responsibilities. I was dismayed that she would say it would be
difficult to find a drug-free child amongst the hundreds in our
community.

Soon after, I received a letter saying that my husband and I were
disapproved as foster parentswith no explanation. The agency would not
return my calls. I should have been in disbelief, but I wasn't. I had
done my homework over the past many years. The foster care system
receives funding from special interest groups for putting these
children on drugs. Please read the following letter from a
psychiatrist. It is his 1998 letter of resignation from the American
Psychiatric Association. His letter tells it all. It's time our
citizens stand up for and protect our children - and all children.
Read on...

December 4, 1998

Rodrigo Munoz, M.D., President American Psychiatric Association
1400 K Street N. W. Washington, D.C. 20005

Dear Rod: After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture
of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of
resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major
reason for this action is my belief that I am actually resigning from
the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the
organization's true identity requires no change in the acronym.

APA reflects, and reinforces, in word and deed, our drug dependent
society. Yet, it helps wage war on "drugs". "Dual Diagnosis" clients
are a major problem for the field but not because of the "good" drugs
we prescribe. "Bad" ones are those that are obtained mostly without a
prescription. A Marxist would observe that being a good capitalist
organization, APA likes only those drugs from which it can derive a
profit--directly or indirectly. This is not a group for me. At this
point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely
bought out by the drug companies. The APA could not continue without
the pharmaceutical company support of meetings, symposia, workshops,
journal advertising, grand rounds luncheons, unrestricted educational
grants etc. etc. Psychiatrists have become the minions of drug company
promotions. APA, of course, maintains that its independence and
autonomy are not compromised in this enmeshed situation. Anyone with
the least bit of common sense attending the annual meeting would
observe how the drug company exhibits and industry sponsored symposia
draw crowds with their various enticements while the serious
scientific sessions are barely attended. Psychiatric training reflects
their influence as well; i.e., the most important part of a resident
curriculum is the art and quasi-science of dealing drugs, i.e.,
prescription writing.

These psychopharmacological limitations on our abilities to be
complete physicians also limit our intellectual horizons. No longer do
we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts, rather
we are there to realign our patients' neurotransmitters. The problem
is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a
neurotransmitter, whatever its configuration. So, our guild
organization provides a rationale, by its neurobiological tunnel
vision, for keeping our distance from the molecule conglomerates we
have come to define as patients. We condone and promote the widespread
overuse and misuse of toxic chemicals that we know have serious long
term effects: tardive dyskinesia, tardive dementia and serious
withdrawal syndromes. So, do I want to be a drug company patsy who
treats molecules with their formulary? No, thank you very much. It
saddens me that after 35 years as a psychiatrist I look forward to
being dissociated from such an organization. In no way does it
represent my interests. It is not within my capacities to buy into the
current biomedical-reductionistic model heralded by the psychiatric
leadership as once again marrying us to somatic medicine. This is a
matter of fashion, politics and, like the pharmaceutical house
connection, money.

In addition, APA has entered into an unholy alliance with NAMI (I
don't remember the members being asked if they supported such an
organization) such that the two organizations have adopted similar
public belief systems about the nature of madness. While professing
itself the champion of their clients the APA is supporting
non-clients, the parents, in their wishes to be in control, via
legally enforced dependency, of their mad/bad offspring. NAMI, with
tacit APA approval, has set out a pro-neuroleptic drug and easy
commitment-institutionalization agenda that violates the civil rights
of their offspring. For the most part we stand by and allow this
fascistic agenda to move forward. Their psychiatric god, Dr. E. Fuller
Torrey, is allowed to diagnose and recommend treatment to those in the
NAMI organization with whom he disagrees. Clearly, a violation of
medical ethics. Does APA protest? Of course not, because he is
speaking what APA agrees with but can't explicitly espouse. He is
allowed to be a foil; after all he is no longer a member of APA.
(Slick work APA!) The shortsightedness of this marriage of convenience
between APA, NAMI and the drug companies (who gleefully support both
groups because of their shared pro-drug stance) is an abomination. I
want no part of a psychiatry of oppression and social control.

Biologically based brain diseases are convenient for families and
practitioners alike. It is no fault insurance against personal
responsibility. We are just helplessly caught up in a swirl of brain
pathology for which no one, except DNA, is responsible. Now, to begin
with, anything that has an anatomically defined specific brain
pathology becomes the province of neurology (syphilis is an excellent
example). So, to be consistent with this brain disease view all the
major psychiatric disorders would become the territory of our
neurologic colleagues. Without having surveyed them I believe they
would eschew responsibility for these problematic individuals.
However, consistency would demand our giving over biologic brain
diseases to them. The fact that there is no evidence confirming the
brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are
dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of
intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to
continue to support by my membership.

I view with no surprise that psychiatric training is being
systemically disavowed by American medical school graduates. This must
give us cause for concern about the state of today's psychiatry. It
must mean at least in part that they view psychiatry as being very
limited and unchallenging. To me it seems clear that we are headed
toward a situation in which, except for academics, most psychiatric
practitioners will have no real relationships--so vital to the healing
process--with the disturbed and disturbing persons they treat. Their
sole role will be that of prescription writers: ciphers in the guise
of being "helpers".

Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM-IV is
the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in
general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific
document. To its credit it says so--although its brief apologia is
rarely noted. DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making best
seller-its major failings notwithstanding. It confines and defines
practice, some take it seriously, others more realistically. It is the
way to get paid. Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research
projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact
accurately represent the person with a problem? They don't, and can't,
because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric
diagnoses. There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions
for any major psychiatric disorder. So, where are we? APA as an
organization has implicitly (sometimes explicitly as well) bought into
a theoretical hoax.Is psychiatry a hoax-- as practiced today?
Unforunately, the answer is mostly yes.

What do I recommend to the organization upon leaving after
experiencing three decades of its history?

1. To begin with, let us be ourselves. Stop taking on unholy alliances
without the members permission.
2. Get real about science, politics and money. Label each for what it
is-that is, be honest.
3. Get out of bed with NAMI and the drug companies. APA should align
itself, if one believes its rhetoric, with the true consumer groups,
i. e., the ex-patients, psychiatric survivors etc.
4. Talk to the membership. I can't be alone in my views.

We seem to have forgotten a basic principle: the need to be
patient/client/consumer satisfaction oriented. I always remember
Manfred Bleuler's wisdom: "Loren, you must never forget that you are
your patient's employee. In the end they will determine whether or not
psychiatry survives in the service marketplace.


Sincerely, Loren R. Mosher M.D.

Fern5827
October 3rd 03, 01:02 PM
Hi, Tracey and thank you first for STEPPING UP AND TRYING TO HELP CHILDREN.

I have never questioned the necessity for some FOSTER CARE.

And thanks to the usually good folk who take on this task.

However, The *Child Abuse Industry* has good bedfellows with the
*PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY.*

Can you imagine being a 5 yo child, ripped from your family's arms.

I can testify to the ANGST the teen suffered in being placed in A GROUP HOME,
where this sensitive, intelligent child questioned me and said, "Why can't I be
placed with FAMILY?"

CPS acts a STATE SANCTIONED ABUSER IN SUCH CASES.

Thanks for your testimony. Addtl facts to follow.

http://www.familyrightsassociation.com

Great site for folks in the individual states to find *New Members* and
Contacts.


Tracy related her story as a potential FP:

>Subject: Anti-Med couple denied foster care application
>From: (Tracy Sherwood)
>Date: 10/3/2003 3:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time
>Message-id: >
>
>Dear All,
>
>My husband and I applied to take in a Foster Child in our beautiful
>Leona Valley Home in 1999. Our combined incomes far exceeded the
>minimum and I was a professional tutor, able and willing to help a
>struggling foster child. We lived on an acre of land with gentle
>horses and a sweet yellow Lab that loves children. We also had my 14
>year old son who was also a tutor and had received his high school
>dimploma at age thirteen. My husband worked for Shell Oil and taught
>our visiting students to make and repair things in the barn. We both
>had clean records of any and every kind. I was told by the social
>worker who visited our home and filled out our application, that
>everything looked perfect except for one thing: She didn't know if
>they would be able to find a foster child who was not being prescribed
>psychotropic medication for learning or behavioral disabilities and
>said I would have a better chance if I omitted that requirement from
>my application. I refused, because I feel it is not the correct
>solution and is in fact dangerous to give children such medications. I
>leaned more in the directory of nutrition and giving the child respect
>with responsibilities. I was dismayed that she would say it would be
>difficult to find a drug-free child amongst the hundreds in our
>community.
>
>Soon after, I received a letter saying that my husband and I were
>disapproved as foster parentswith no explanation. The agency would not
>return my calls. I should have been in disbelief, but I wasn't. I had
>done my homework over the past many years. The foster care system
>receives funding from special interest groups for putting these
>children on drugs. Please read the following letter from a
>psychiatrist. It is his 1998 letter of resignation from the American
>Psychiatric Association. His letter tells it all. It's time our
>citizens stand up for and protect our children - and all children.
>Read on...
>
>December 4, 1998
>
>Rodrigo Munoz, M.D., President American Psychiatric Association
>1400 K Street N. W. Washington, D.C. 20005
>
>Dear Rod: After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture
>of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of
>resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major
>reason for this action is my belief that I am actually resigning from
>the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the
>organization's true identity requires no change in the acronym.
>
>APA reflects, and reinforces, in word and deed, our drug dependent
>society. Yet, it helps wage war on "drugs". "Dual Diagnosis" clients
>are a major problem for the field but not because of the "good" drugs
>we prescribe. "Bad" ones are those that are obtained mostly without a
>prescription. A Marxist would observe that being a good capitalist
>organization, APA likes only those drugs from which it can derive a
>profit--directly or indirectly. This is not a group for me. At this
>point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely
>bought out by the drug companies. The APA could not continue without
>the pharmaceutical company support of meetings, symposia, workshops,
>journal advertising, grand rounds luncheons, unrestricted educational
>grants etc. etc. Psychiatrists have become the minions of drug company
>promotions. APA, of course, maintains that its independence and
>autonomy are not compromised in this enmeshed situation. Anyone with
>the least bit of common sense attending the annual meeting would
>observe how the drug company exhibits and industry sponsored symposia
>draw crowds with their various enticements while the serious
>scientific sessions are barely attended. Psychiatric training reflects
>their influence as well; i.e., the most important part of a resident
>curriculum is the art and quasi-science of dealing drugs, i.e.,
>prescription writing.
>
>These psychopharmacological limitations on our abilities to be
>complete physicians also limit our intellectual horizons. No longer do
>we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts, rather
>we are there to realign our patients' neurotransmitters. The problem
>is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a
>neurotransmitter, whatever its configuration. So, our guild
>organization provides a rationale, by its neurobiological tunnel
>vision, for keeping our distance from the molecule conglomerates we
>have come to define as patients. We condone and promote the widespread
>overuse and misuse of toxic chemicals that we know have serious long
>term effects: tardive dyskinesia, tardive dementia and serious
>withdrawal syndromes. So, do I want to be a drug company patsy who
>treats molecules with their formulary? No, thank you very much. It
>saddens me that after 35 years as a psychiatrist I look forward to
>being dissociated from such an organization. In no way does it
>represent my interests. It is not within my capacities to buy into the
>current biomedical-reductionistic model heralded by the psychiatric
>leadership as once again marrying us to somatic medicine. This is a
>matter of fashion, politics and, like the pharmaceutical house
>connection, money.
>
>In addition, APA has entered into an unholy alliance with NAMI (I
>don't remember the members being asked if they supported such an
>organization) such that the two organizations have adopted similar
>public belief systems about the nature of madness. While professing
>itself the champion of their clients the APA is supporting
>non-clients, the parents, in their wishes to be in control, via
>legally enforced dependency, of their mad/bad offspring. NAMI, with
>tacit APA approval, has set out a pro-neuroleptic drug and easy
>commitment-institutionalization agenda that violates the civil rights
>of their offspring. For the most part we stand by and allow this
>fascistic agenda to move forward. Their psychiatric god, Dr. E. Fuller
>Torrey, is allowed to diagnose and recommend treatment to those in the
>NAMI organization with whom he disagrees. Clearly, a violation of
>medical ethics. Does APA protest? Of course not, because he is
>speaking what APA agrees with but can't explicitly espouse. He is
>allowed to be a foil; after all he is no longer a member of APA.
>(Slick work APA!) The shortsightedness of this marriage of convenience
>between APA, NAMI and the drug companies (who gleefully support both
>groups because of their shared pro-drug stance) is an abomination. I
>want no part of a psychiatry of oppression and social control.
>
>Biologically based brain diseases are convenient for families and
>practitioners alike. It is no fault insurance against personal
>responsibility. We are just helplessly caught up in a swirl of brain
>pathology for which no one, except DNA, is responsible. Now, to begin
>with, anything that has an anatomically defined specific brain
>pathology becomes the province of neurology (syphilis is an excellent
>example). So, to be consistent with this brain disease view all the
>major psychiatric disorders would become the territory of our
>neurologic colleagues. Without having surveyed them I believe they
>would eschew responsibility for these problematic individuals.
>However, consistency would demand our giving over biologic brain
>diseases to them. The fact that there is no evidence confirming the
>brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are
>dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of
>intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to
>continue to support by my membership.
>
>I view with no surprise that psychiatric training is being
>systemically disavowed by American medical school graduates. This must
>give us cause for concern about the state of today's psychiatry. It
>must mean at least in part that they view psychiatry as being very
>limited and unchallenging. To me it seems clear that we are headed
>toward a situation in which, except for academics, most psychiatric
>practitioners will have no real relationships--so vital to the healing
>process--with the disturbed and disturbing persons they treat. Their
>sole role will be that of prescription writers: ciphers in the guise
>of being "helpers".
>
>Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM-IV is
>the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in
>general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific
>document. To its credit it says so--although its brief apologia is
>rarely noted. DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making best
>seller-its major failings notwithstanding. It confines and defines
>practice, some take it seriously, others more realistically. It is the
>way to get paid. Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research
>projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact
>accurately represent the person with a problem? They don't, and can't,
>because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric
>diagnoses. There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions
>for any major psychiatric disorder. So, where are we? APA as an
>organization has implicitly (sometimes explicitly as well) bought into
>a theoretical hoax.Is psychiatry a hoax-- as practiced today?
>Unforunately, the answer is mostly yes.
>
>What do I recommend to the organization upon leaving after
>experiencing three decades of its history?
>
>1. To begin with, let us be ourselves. Stop taking on unholy alliances
>without the members permission.
>2. Get real about science, politics and money. Label each for what it
>is-that is, be honest.
>3. Get out of bed with NAMI and the drug companies. APA should align
>itself, if one believes its rhetoric, with the true consumer groups,
>i. e., the ex-patients, psychiatric survivors etc.
>4. Talk to the membership. I can't be alone in my views.
>
>We seem to have forgotten a basic principle: the need to be
>patient/client/consumer satisfaction oriented. I always remember
>Manfred Bleuler's wisdom: "Loren, you must never forget that you are
>your patient's employee. In the end they will determine whether or not
>psychiatry survives in the service marketplace.
>
>
>Sincerely, Loren R. Mosher M.D.
>
>
>
>
>
>