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ADHD, your child, drugs, corruption… are words that should not be in the same sentence – or same conversation for that matter. Last month, a study was published that makes it questionable whether this generation of children stands even a remote fighting chance against the pharmaceutical companies…. They do if their parents are informed…

Let us start with the conclusion of the study: “Later start of stimulant drug treatment of attention/hyperactivity disorder is associated with academic decline in mathematics.” Translation: if you want your kids to do well in school you need to get them on stimulant drugs as early as possible, hopefully while still in the womb.

The fact that one of the researchers on the study received funding from a pharmaceutical company that makes drugs to treat ADHD is more than wrong; it should be outright illegal to have such a conflict of interest – but that’s another conversation.

The statistics are out of control and climbing: almost one in ten children in America are diagnosed with ADHD and over 65 percent of them are currently on prescription medication. Medications that have dozens of side effects. Medications that can cause irreversible damage, trigger auto-immune disorders, cause insomnia, stomach disorders… And yet, we see quotes like this: “There are obvious benefits of getting started sooner rather than later,” J. Russell Ramsay says to Reuters Health; he studies ADHD at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.