Dr. Baughman: Well, I'm saying ''real disease'' as opposed to things that modern-day biological psychiatry claims are diseases.

It's very interesting to note a little bit of history about neurology and psychiatry. Prior to the 1940s, physicians interested in neurology could not make a paid living practicing just neurology. There just weren't enough treatments available. It was largely a matter of diagnosing multiple sclerosis or MS, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease. There were no treatments, not even any to try. So in that era before the 1940s, physicians interested in neurology usually combined their practices with psychiatry. And so, when they encountered patients with life situation problems -- emotional and behavioral things -- they realized that those were not organic physical diseases of the brain. And they incorporated that bit of psychiatry into their practices.

Then in 1948, following World War II, we had entered the era of antibiotics, and suddenly, there was treatment to be had for infectious diseases, including things like meningitis, brain abscesses, and so on. The American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology declared, by mutual agreement between the two specialties, that there was enough of a knowledge base to say that neurology was a separate discipline, and that psychiatry would now become an entirely separate discipline dealing with the non-physical, non-organic problems in normal human beings. So after 1948, neurologists were dealing exclusively with actual physical diseases: strokes, brain tumors, MS, and so on.

At that juncture, psychiatry made no claims that it was treating physical diseases, and the training for psychiatrists became entirely separate than the training for neurologists. So the next question one might ask is: When did psychiatry start claiming that these things were ''biologically based'' diseases -- neurobiological, and so on -- and that they were caused by actual ''chemical imbalances'' in the brain.

Diane: Such diseases as . . .?

Dr. Baughman: Depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, ADHD, all of them. They were, they are making a blanket claim that all psychiatric disorders have a neurological basis, a chemical imbalance of the brain.

Now we have already seen that they were not saying this in 1948. So when did they start to make these claims? They began to make these claims in league with, in collaboration with, the pharmaceutical industry, as the pharmaceutical industry began to synthesize psycho-pharmaceutical drugs. Here we're talking about the late 1950s, early 1960s, first with human trials of Thorazine or Promazine for psychotic individuals in asylums, state institutions, and so on. Soon thereafter, by the late 1950s, we had Miltown or Equanil, which was mainly an anti-anxiety drug and was followed very soon thereafter by Librium or Diazepoxide, Valium or Diazepam, and other drugs of the same chemical group.

As psychiatry, in league with the pharmaceutical industry, began synthesizing, producing, and prescribing these psycho-pharmaceuticals, they began to theorize what the underlying chemical changes in the brain might be for these varied emotional disturbances: anxiety, depression, and so on. So they theorized that for depression, certain of the brain chemicals were disordered or out of balance. It was the same theory for anxiety, for mania, for hyperactivity, for ADD. Pretty quickly, by the late 1960s, it became apparent that they were not only representing these theories for scientific purposes, they were representing them to be facts for purposes of marketing these drugs to the public.

That representation of all things emotional and behavior as actual diseases due to chemical imbalances of the brain probably got its start somewhere in the 1960s. It was really a fact very much in evidence by 1970. They have become more married to the marketing strategy of representing the theory behind emotional disorders as fact to the public, when not a single one has ever been proven to be a disease that can be diagnosed by any sort of a test.

Diane: So there is no chemical imbalance.

Dr. Baughman: I believe there are no chemical imbalances, absolutely none. It's a total fraud. Not just ADHD, but the entire representation by psychiatry with the pharmaceutical industry that these are chemical imbalances of the brain. If you have an abnormality, that means disease, that's tantamount to disease.

Diane: Could you give us an example of ''real disease''?

Dr. Baughman: For instance, PKU, phenolketonuria. Do you know what that is?

Diane: No.

Dr. Baughman: PKU is an inborn, genetic defect of the way the body handles an essential amino acid called phenolalanine. In this defect, the enzyme that breaks down phenolalanine -- something we consume in our diet, something which the baby consumes in its mother's milk -- that necessary enzyme isn't there. So the chemical builds up to toxic levels in the blood. Unless diagnosed at birth, phenolketonuria invariably causes severe mental retardation. And the treatment involves starting the baby on a diet from which this amino acid has been pretty much totally removed. Now, that's a real chemical imbalance affecting the brain.

There are about fifty or a hundred so-called inborn errors of the body's chemical metabolism. These are real, bona fide, detectable chemical imbalances. When psychiatrists say that depression, ADHD, anxiety, all these things, are due to a chemical imbalance, there is no scientific evidence to back them up. There is no test available to any psychiatrist in the country that they could do to you or to me or to your child to determine whether you've got it or not. It's an article of faith.

Back in December 1997 I testified at some hearings before the Tennessee House of Representatives, hearings that were chaired by Representative Tommy Brown. Brown was a podiatrist, and the fact became apparent that he was somewhat savvy scientifically. At the hearing, Brown told this story:

He was, he said, a parent of divorce. His wife had just given up on their son and given him full custody. So he had gone to meet with the child's psychiatrist for the very first time. His son was on a psychiatric medication of some kind, I don't recall which one, and Brown asked the psychiatrist why his son was on this drug. The psychiatrist answered that his son had a psychiatric disease due to a chemical imbalance in his brain. The father asked to see the laboratory work. The psychiatrist said, ''He's got it. He's got a chemical imbalance.''

The father pressed him. ''Look,'' he said, ''I would like to see the diagnostic tests that were done.'' The psychiatrist became immediately flustered and said he didn't have them, or misplaced them, or something. The father continued to press him. The psychiatrist lost it, banished the father from his office, and fired the boy as a patient.

Because there was no chemical imbalance. There is no chemical imbalance. Patient-by-patient, child-by-child, all across the country, everyone who goes to see a ''biological psychiatrist'' is told they have brain diseases due to chemical imbalances. There is never, ever a demonstrable abnormality, a diagnosable abnormality, never. It's a fraud, a total, one-hundred-percent fraud.

Diane: So, then, what is causing the problems?

Dr. Baughman: If you are normal, and have no detectable brain disease, then your brain is a magnificent organ of incomparable complexity, capability, and potential with which to learn and adapt to your environment and circumstances. There are stresses and pressures, we all know that. We have more or less success, day in and day out, in meeting and dealing with these stresses and pressures. If we're not being very successful, our body and mind give us messages in the form of emotions. To let us know, for instance, if we've got a situation we are not confronting but rather trying to bury or deny.

We all know we can't deny things for very long. They build up. Invariably, our body tells us they're there, they're building up. Our emotions, if we are normal, do not trick us. They are very true to us. So it's an entirely normal thing to be able to become anxious if the situation is anxiety-provoking. We are entirely normal if we become increasingly depressed in response to increasingly depressing circumstances and news, with no effective response from us, no finding of allies, no effective ways of rebutting.

Going back to 1948, to the separation of psychiatry and neurology, all psychiatry, all of our emotional behavior responses, are a result of the totality of our day-in-and-day-out experiences. When they take a clinical history, psychiatrists and doctors can only begin to know everything that's happened in your everyday life, and therefore they only get a partial understanding of why you are emoting or behaving as you do. But the new human being or new child or new infant has a blank slate, and everything, every last experience and perception, is recorded and becomes ''us.'' So you don't find a definite organic disease.

Diane: I see what you're saying. You're saying that here we have psychiatrists who are actually involved in things they shouldn't be, the physical aspects.

Dr. Baughman: Their mission is just what I've described, to help in psychological ways, addressing things that have to do with human beings and their interaction with the environment. Any presumption that there is a disease is either a flat-out mistake or it's a fraud. In the case of psychiatry today, it's a fraud that defeats the normal individual in trying to understand and cope with his environment, and further defeats him by having him take an exogenous, foreign chemical substance that cannot possibly improve the functioning of the brain. All it can do is cause brain malfunction and possible injury.

Diane: So it sounds like, if there is anything noble about what they are doing, they're saying, ''I can't help you, but here, I can give you this drug and you'll feel better.''

Dr. Baughman: I don't think there's any pretense at genuine, sincere help. All they are concerned with is dollars. They make their money by labeling, which changes a normal child or person into a patient, implies that a normal person is abnormal, diseased. If that label is put in place and made indelible, the person is, in fact, made into a patient. Then, adding a drug, a prescription, makes it even more indelible. If you are on a drug that has to be monitored by the psychiatrist, and which can only be stopped by the will of the psychiatrist, you are theirs. You are captive. That's what they are about today. Frankly, there is no ethical, medical, or moral justification for what they do. Therefore, I think it's evil.

We've had a propaganda campaign coming from psychiatry, authored by psychiatry, in full financial partnership with the pharmaceutical companies, funded with the full financial resources of, probably, the seventh or eighth biggest aggregate industry in the world.

Diane: And you have proof of that?

Dr. Baughman: If you want to find out that psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry are one and the same, that is very easy to do.

Diane: How would you do that?