If you've heard Hillary Clinton's recent remarks on Ritalin and other drug use on children, you'll find the usual nauseating demagoguery. She appears to be urging Ritalin caution; but, if you listen carefully, she's calling it a miracle drug: "A Godsend for emotional and behavioral problems, for both children and their parents." She insists her efforts are not an attack on the medical treatment of children's emotional well-being because the drugs are very, very "useful."

Love is the most ethically consistent experience, because selfishness and altruism no longer seem opposed or in conflict.

The man Hillary [Clinton] introduced at the meeting goes so far as to say that no amount of trauma to children - or poor parenting or anything in their lives - causes them mental disorders. He says it's all biological and genetic and should be treated by drugs.

Hillary [Clinton] even said that, whether or not teenagers want treatment, they have to get it. So it's involuntary treatment.

I was asked by the National Institute of Health to be their scientific discussant on the effects of these drug [Ritalin] at a big conference they held. Beforehand, I reviewed all of the important literature on the issue. Even with experiments on animals. When they're given these drugs they stop playing; they stop being curious; they stop socializing; they stop trying to escape. We make good caged animals with these drugs. And we make good caged kids by knocking their spontaneity out of them. And, Michael, the other thing is that these drugs enforce obsessive behavior.

I think that's a major reason. Instead of turning in their own lives to philosophy, religion, love, family life, or nature, they think of psychiatry; and today that means the "pill" as an ultimate answer. Also, if you have a desire for social control, "benevolent" control and "benevolent" authority, then again biological psychiatry offers a tremendous opportunity.

I think the first thing parents need to start doing is absolutely refuse to cooperate with any psychological evaluation of children in school. Schools should not be mental hospitals. Parents should say that the only tests they want their children to have are those respecting their academic subjects and nothing else.