One of the artificial flaps du jour recently was about Tom Cruise's
comments related to psychiatry and Ritalin. What do actors know about
medicine, many of the snide TV talking heads said?
Well, in the first place, actors are human beings and can know
anything anyone else can. Just because a person is an actor doesn't mean
that he is dumb. Cruise started with nothing and has forged himself a
successful career in a viciously competitive and cutthroat business.
Dumb people can't do that.
Furthermore, psychiatry is a pseudo-science, just like so-called
social science, as Cruise said. There are several psychiatric theories
floating around, some of them contradictory. Sigmund Freud has been
thoroughly discredited. Alfred Kinsey turned out to be an entomologist,
not a psychologist, who preferred to interview convicted pedophiles, who
are hardly an objective source on normal sex habits.
Neurology is a science, but psychiatry is not. Neurology studies the
physical structure of the brain, while psychiatry purports to study the
intangible products of that physical brain, such as thought,
imagination and behavior. These are things that cannot be measured or
weighed or, with the exception of behavior, even observed.
As for Ritalin, which in my opinion is irresponsibly prescribed for
millions of children, it is a stimulant in the same family as cocaine.
Long-term studies show that it has no permanent therapeutic value.
Furthermore, there is disagreement on whether the so-called
attention-deficit disorder even exists. There are also some
negative side effects of Ritalin.
So Cruise was quite correct in admonishing NBC's Matt Lauer to read
a history of psychiatry and to study the drug Ritalin before he
superficially mouths off about their alleged benefits based on nothing
more than anecdotal evidence. Journalists don't like to be challenged,
but Lauer is the guy who brought the subject up. Cruise called him on
it, and Lauer was found lacking any real knowledge of the subject –
which, of course, is normal for talk-show hosts.
I wouldn't go to Tom Cruise for medical advice, but I wouldn't go to
Matt Lauer, either. Of the two, Cruise has clearly got the edge when it
comes to IQ. You have to remember that the gossip, entertainment and
paparazzi people are the sludge at the bottom of the journalistic tank.
They are superficial, without talent, but greedy and ambitious.
Unless they commit some heinous crime, actors can't hurt their careers
by talking. The American public knows that everyone has a right to his or
her opinion on any subject. Besides, they don't buy tickets to see
Tom Cruise; they buy tickets to see him play a character. And he's very
good at that.
There should be wider debate on psychiatry and psychiatric drugs.
Unfortunately, medicine in America is market-driven, and the big Hemi
engine in that truck is the pharmaceutical industry. The pharmaceuticals
make drugs and sell doctors on prescribing them at outrageous prices.
Most of these drugs do nothing more than alleviate symptoms. They treat;
they don't cure. And not infrequently they have serious, even deadly,
side effects.
Thanks to the pharmaceutical industry and its billions of dollars'
worth of slick advertising, we are probably the most pill-popping nation
on the face of the Earth. Small wonder we have an illegal-drug problem,
since we are bombarded with images of people restored to their smiling,
healthy lifestyles by some miraculous drug.
These pharmaceuticals have such a grip on Congress that they
succeeded in writing into law a prohibition against importing cheaper
drugs from Canada and a prohibition against Medicare bargaining with the
pharmaceuticals for lower prices.
That, to me, is a far more important point to discuss than what
Tom Cruise thinks about psychiatry. In this case, you have a naked
example of Congress putting the profits of the pharmaceuticals ahead of
the welfare of the people of the United States. In the other, you have
an entertainer offering a personal opinion. Last time I checked, that
was not a crime.
Charley Reese [send him mail]
has been a journalist for 49 years. Write to Charley Reese at
P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.
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