Bornfamous

By JOAN LOWY
Scripps Howard News Service
16-DEC-03

At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. Martha Herbert is seeing younger and younger children who have been prescribed powerful drugs because their behavior is “so extreme.”

One 4-year-old was treated with Risperdol, an antipsychotic drug usually prescribed to adult schizophrenics, because she tried to kill a sibling. “I’ve had several cases like that,” said Herbert, a pediatric neurologist. “It’s scary because this kind of thing hardly ever used to happen.”

Across the nation, evidence of a growing number of children diagnosed with attention, learning, behavioral and emotional disorders have perplexed doctors and researchers and worried teachers and parents.

The disturbing conclusion some experts are reaching is that a significant share of these conditions may be caused by environmental toxins that interfere with brain development in children beginning in the womb and which may be lowering the intelligence of the population at large. Full story »