Portside

'The numbers make it look like an epidemic. Well, it’s not. It’s preposterous. This is a concoction to justify the giving out of medication at unprecedented and unjustifiable levels.'

Dr. Keith Conners, a psychologist

and professor emeritus at Duke

University, on  the rise of A.D.H.D.

(attention deficit hyperactivity disorder)

diagnoses and prescriptions for

stimulants over the years that has

coincided with a two-decade

campaign by pharmaceutical

companies to publicize the

syndrome and promote the pills

to doctors, educators and parents