by Jerry Wiener

About the author: Jerry Wiener, a physician, is on the faculty of George Washington University Medical School in Washington, D.C.

In defending the current use of Ritalin for treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it’s important first to emphasize that the disorder really exists.

Telling whether a child has ADHD is more complicated than a diagnosis of the mumps or chickenpox, but the diagnosis of ADHD can still be as valid as any in medicine. An analogous health problem would be multiple sclerosis: As with ADHD it’s a distinct disease, yet we don’t know what causes the problem and have no laboratory test for diagnosing it.

Is ADHD a Biological Problem"

Since the 1950’s, what we now call ADHD has been...