House to Vote on Government Forced Child Mental Health Screening

We're trying to help Representative Ron Paul, who
also happens to be a medical doctor, do something
very important...

* Protect parental rights,
* Protect children from dangerous, mind-altering
drugs.

We call our campaign, "No Child Left Undrugged," but
the real title of the bill is HR 181 - The Parental
Consent Act of 2005. You can
send a message to Congress right now, or continue reading to obtain
more information and talking points:

As reported yesterday by the Liberty Committee, the
American tradition of parents deciding what is best
for their children is under attack. The major
pharmaceutical lobby wants universal mental screening
for every child in America, including preschool
children.

But universal screening alone is not what the
pharmaceutical lobbyists want. The real payoff for
these select drug companies is the drugging of
children that will result - as we learned tragically
with Ritalin - even when parents refuse!

The drug companies want your children to be
"screened." The psychiatric establishment wants to do
the "screening." And even a recent presidential
commission (New Freedom Commission on Mental Health)
supports it all.

These powerful groups want your children "screened"
whether or not you, as parents, give permission.

Congressman Ron Paul, an OB/GYN physician for over 30
years, is desperately trying to keep the drug
companies, politicians and federal bureaucrats from
becoming "parents" to your children. Dr. Paul will
introduce this week an amendment to the Labor, HHS,
and Education Appropriations Act for FY 2006 that
will withhold funds from being used to implement or
support any federal, mental screening program.

In a letter to his congressional colleagues, Dr. Paul
states:

"As you know, psychotropic drugs are increasingly
prescribed for children who show nothing more
than children's typical rambunctious behavior.
Many children have suffered harmful effects from
these drugs. Yet some parents have even been
charged with child abuse for refusing to drug
their children. The federal government should not
promote national mental health screening programs
that will force the use of these psychotropic
drugs such as Ritalin."

If you think this action alert is about something
that "can't happen here," think again. In 1995, the
state of Texas launched the Texas Medication
Algorithm Project and then Governor George W. Bush
signed it into law. (WorldNetDaily.com, June 21,
2004)

The state of Illinois has also approved a mental
health screening program. The Illinois legislature
passed the Children's Mental Health Act of 2003 which
will provide screening for "all children ages 0-18"
and "ensure appropriate and culturally relevant
assessment of your children's social and emotional
development with the use of standardized tools." In
addition, all pregnant women in Illinois are to be
screened for depression.

Dr. Karen R. Effrem, a pediatrician and leading
opponent of universal screening with EdAction states:

"Universal mental health screening and the drugging
of children, as recommended by the New Freedom
Commission [presidential commission], needs to be
stopped so that many thousands if not millions of
children will be saved from receiving stigmatizing
diagnoses that would follow them for the rest of
their lives. America's school children should not
be medicated by expensive, ineffective, and
dangerous medications based on vague and dubious
diagnoses."

Dr. Effrem warns:

1. Parental rights are unclear or non-existent
under these screening programs.
2. Parents are already being coerced to put their
children on psychiatric medications and some
children are dying because of it.
3. Mental health screening does not prevent
suicide.
4. Mental health diagnoses are "subjective" and
"social constructions" as admitted by the
authors of the diagnostic manuals themselves.
5. Most psychiatric medications do not work in
children.
6. The side effects of these medications in
children are severe.
7. The untoward influence by the pharmaceutical
industry, or at least the impropriety, is
abundantly clear in two important aspects of
this issue.
8. Merging screening with the academic standards
required by No Child Left Behind, as is
happening in Illinois, will lead to diagnosis
for political reasons. School mental health and
violence prevention programs funded by NCLB and
government counterterrorism operations are
already using such criteria as "homophobia" and
"defenders of the US Constitution against
federal government and the UN" to label school
children and US citizens as mentally unstable
and violent. (source: EdAction.org)

Urge your U.S. representative to vote "yes" on the
Paul amendment to stop universal mental screening of
children.

If your U.S. representative does not vote "yes" on
the Paul amendment, he or she supports screening your
children without your permission -- just as the drug
companies want.

The U.S. House will vote on the Paul amendment
Thursday or Friday.


Also, please be sure to tell others to come to
DownsizeDC.org and send a message because time is
running short.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.