Medical Establishment Greed — A Proposed New Ailment Called “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo” — More Traditionally Called Slow Wittedness or Even Stupidity — SCT Seems Designed to Pull in Big Bucks for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Quasi Quacks — Perhaps Illustrating Yet another Disorder Called “Ingrained Medical Avarice Delusion” or I-MAD

© 2014 Peter Free

 

14 April 2014

 

 

If we had drug that cured stupidity, it might be worth big bucks — but I don’t think the ones yet to be invented for (or reassigned to) Sluggish Cognitive Tempo are going to do the trick

 

From Alan Schwarz at the New York Times:

 

 

With more than six million American children having received a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, concern has been rising that the condition is being significantly misdiagnosed and overtreated with prescription medications.

 

Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems.

 

Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing.

 

By some researchers’ estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children.

 

Experts pushing for more research into sluggish cognitive tempo say it is gaining momentum toward recognition as a legitimate disorder — and, as such, a candidate for pharmacological treatment.

 

Some of the condition’s researchers have helped Eli Lilly investigate how its flagship A.D.H.D. drug might treat it.

 

© 2014 Alan Schwarz, Idea of New Attention Disorder Spurs Research, and Debate, New York Times (11 April 2014) (extracts)

 

Two million kids are “sick”?

 

That sounds more like a market than a Gaussian curve disease pool.

 

 

Modernity’s often misdirected, even occasionally asinine Medical Establishment

 

I suppose we can call anything — that distinguishes a smaller group of someone(s) from a proportionately more numerous clump of other people — a disorder, depending on cultural mindset of preference at the time.

 

Hence:

 

(a) being “big time” fat is now morbid obesity

 

(b) being hyperactive, the way a lot of kids are, qualifies as attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder

 

and

 

(c) being a consistent pain in the ass becomes borderline personality disorder (for which there is no successful treatment).

 

The newly proposed disorder, Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) — more commonly and probably accurately called slow wittedness or even stupidity — is predictably going to qualify for medical treatment.  No doubt by a bunch of drugs, which will alter the patient’s demeanor, but most probably without much altering the underlying comparatively “low” mental horsepower and thought-discipline “problem”.

 

 

Thus, I propose yet another disorder — Ingrained Medical Avarice Disorder (or I-MAD)

 

The Medical Establishment, an industry allegedly aimed at preserving people's health well-being, too often steps over into excesses of profit taking, buoyed by delusionary disease inventions and consumer brainwashing.

 

 

The moral? — I-MAD certainly meets the same rigorous standards that ADHD and SCT do

 

We could treat I-MAD with soporifics that keep the folks and corporations displaying it warehoused and silent — and away from polluting humanity’s environment with their often toxic noise and unnecessary interventions.

 

On the other hand, perhaps I suffer from “Scientific Mindedness Common Sense Disorder” or SM-CSD.  We could treat me with a bullet to the head.