Current Letters to Editors 7/23/09

Send me your comments. If they're helpful I will post them under the emails.

This is a long and complex article and although it has heart it has no courage or brain. Because if this it hurts both the layman reading it and the addicts suffering because of it. It exposes the need for effective treatment, but there's absolutely no science in it or tough questions about the science of so-called addiction treatment. The "experts" are allowed to state their opinions absent any science behind them. And the fact is that the reason they leave out the science is that there is no science backing their opinions. The science of addiction treatment clearly shows treatment doesn't work any better than chance, whether it's done in "world class" rehabs or other kinds. The experts say medications "work" but there's not a single non-addictive medication that has been shown to cause abstinence from any drug or behavior any better than placebo. The addictive medications are not medications. They are merely switching addictive drugs that the experts say are better for addicts than their "street" drugs. This too is a lie. Otherwise why would a whole country, Switzerland, give out heroin to its heroin addicts? And why does Switzerland's harm reduction program (over 15 years old) drastically reduce crime, incarceration, disease, unemployment, and homelessness while ours increases all of these? Because our country defines addiction as a moral entity thanks to the use of the proven wrong NIDA theory of addictions known as the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), "Often, a drug is taken the first time by choice to feel pleasure or to relieve depression or stress." Then the drug changes the brain into an addicted brain. http://www.hbo.com/addiction/understanding_addiction/index.html?current=0 [Both these sentences are absolutely wrong, by the way.] The key phrase here is "by choice." That's the first sentence of the hijacked brain hypothesis and it ensures that what follows, addiction, is caused by a willful and free willed choice. That makes addiction a moral issue and whatever happens to addicts in response to this moral choice is his valid punishment, no matter how many times these same experts say addicts should not be punished. This the paradox of today's "scientific" view of addiction. They make it a moral issue by its theory and then say addicts should get treatment instead of punishment. Which one of these views should the public take? Of course, they take the moral view because that's what the HBH theory (defined by Volkow, the goddess of addictionology, herself) says. No matter how many times she then says, "this is a disease," people always remember it's a disease caused by an immoral and bad choice. The HBH has been around since 1997 when Leshner wrote his article defining it as an immoral choice in Science. The only problem with the HBH is that it's been proven wrong by many scientists in many different ways. Too bad NIDA and the rest of the addiction establishment ignore this scientific disproof. Read about this in my current paper: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and even my old (1996) book, Hypoic's Handbook.

The fact is that today's article is one sided as most addiction articles are. It's completely presented by the addiction establishment. Not a single dissenting sentence is in it. This is the reason the addiction field has made no progress over the last 50 years. The field is a fraud. Otherwise they'd be referencing their opinions with real science. However, as I've pointed out, they don't. They don't because there is none. Their opinions are just that, opinions. Stated as fact makes them lies. And that's why the country has no valid addiction policy and has no idea what to do with addicts. That's why it's still illegal and immoral to be an addict. That's why there's no harm reduction that would end all the crime that puts addicts in jail. Because the field is based on lies, wrong theory, pseudoscience, religion, and opinions. The scientific truth needs to be told. When will that happen? Not as long as we allow the "experts" to say they are experts without proof. The media helps keep it this way because it lacks integrity, brains and courage.

This article is a good example of what happens when the reporter gets only one side of the story. Marquez takes it for granted that Volkow knows everything about addictions and is 100% correct as well. Because of this she doesn't go outside the loop for critiques of the concepts pushed by the article. True, drugs of addiction do change the brain (the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) of addiction causation) but this is not what causes addiction, it is an after the fact occurrence. The HBH has been proven wrong many times and in many ways. And, since policy follows theory, wrong theory results in wrong policies. Thus, the title of this article should be "Bad theory creates revolving door of addicts." What causes addictions is a before the fact genetic disease of the part of the brain that causes addictions, Hypoism (low activity of the reward system). In fact, Volkow helped prove this theory with her recent paper - Evaluating Dopamine Reward Pathway in ADHD, by Volkow and Wang, et al., JAMA. 2009;302(10):1084-1091. This paper proves Hypoism (genetic low reward activity) correct and the HBH wrong even though Volkow won't admit it. If you read my paper on addiction causation, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , you will see the many other ways the HBH has been disproven and Hypoism proven.

Because these two theories are diametrically opposite there is a great disparity in the policies derived from them. The HBH is a moral paradigm and therefore maintains stigma, punishment, and the drug war. Hypoism is a genetic paradigm and destigmatizes addiction, removes morality, takes the emphasis off the drug and puts it on the hypoic, the person who is going to get addicted, and allows real prevention by treating kids (adhd and others) who have been born with Hypoism as kids, long before they get addicted. To the anti-drug warriors I wrote this paper, The Drug War War, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/ , which explain a lot of this. Read my blog as well.

The point of this letter to Myriam Marquez is that Volkow is biased in favor of a wrong addiction theory and because of maintaining this theory our policies are wrong, ineffective, and harmful. I suggest Myriam interview me and read my suggested papers and book, Hypoic's Handbook, and write a new article about all this after doing so. The science clearly proves Volkow wrong in all aspects of her theory and policy, and this is why addicts are still suffering and dying.

What William Cope Moyers is going to talk about in Hawaii is an example of the problem rather than the solution. If you read his book you will see that he advocates the hijacked brain hypothesis as the cause of addictions. The addiction epidemic is based on the belief and use of this proven wrong theory which he will support in his speech. The fact is that he knows nothing about addiction science and only parrots what the addiction establishment tells him like a good little boy. He's a tool of the addiction establishment which is raking in the money caused by the suffering of addicts caused by the hijacked brain hypothesis. The proven wrong hijacked brain hypothesis is what is stigmatizing and killing addicts. Read my paper on this and the replacement theory based on the real science of addiction causation: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

Until the public learns about this and demands change we will continue to experience the worsening of the addiction epidemic, exactly what has happened since the hijacked brain hypothesis was introduced in 1997.

The drug war was begun to counter the scourge of drug addiction. Despite being ineffective in accomplishing this it has grown into a massive monster. The less effective it is the larger it becomes. Why is it such a failure? Because of how it sees drug addiction - its view of the cause of addiction - the theory of drug addiction. Addiction can only be solved and cured by a detailed understanding of its cause. This only makes rational sense, no? What is the role of addiction theory in today's drug war? It uses the wrong theory of addiction, whatever that theory may be, and there are many. It doesn't use Hypoism.

If you read the program of this conference you will see there is nothing, zero, on addiction theory! How is this possible that they don't realize addiction theory is the key to ending the addiction scourge? I wrote the anti-drug warriors a letter, a paper, many years ago and handed it out at a similar conference. It was called, The Drug War War. #4 at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/

This paper shows how to end the drug addiction scourge as well as the drug war. It, as is the rest of the Hypoism paradigm, has been ignored and censored. However, if ever used it has all the answers. Similarly for my book, Hypoic's Handbook. But, they don't want this. They want what they want, not what they need, assuming they want to end the addiction epidemic which would end the drug war. Why do they ignore this rational tactic? Why do they focus only on policy rather than the theory that perpetuates the drug war (the moral theory of addictions - the hijacked brain hypothesis)? For whatever reason, they will not succeed in their goals until they address the theory issue right up front and use the Hypoism paradigm, a theory they know about but ignore. Who suffers for this? Hypoics of course. What's new?

I sent this letter to the sponsor of this conference. Maybe she has a brain. We'll see.

It's ironic that Natalie Angier wrote this article because she refused to write my book on addictions caused by genetic deficiency in reward (dopamine) activity, Hypoism, in 1996. Not being a writer I was looking for a professional science writer to write Hypoic's Handbook. I called Angier but she said she was too busy. She also didn't buy my hypothesis. Ha Ha. Now, 13 years later, here she is writing about it not even remembering my call. She doesn't know Nora Volkow, much quoted in this article, just recently proved the Hypoism theory correct. Angier could have been a hero. She could have been a contender.

I opened this article to see who these people ("those who know it best") are. I couldn't figure out who they were, but I did read about some stuff that I want to comment on.

They do a lot of good ancillary stuff that Hypoism recovery does such as support for health care, education, and vocation. Public recovery is also a good idea. However, the basic model is still the 12 step model, a model which is baseless scientifically and not proven to work. And I didn't see that they were searching for a better model. The reason for this is that they are supported by faces and voices of recovery, a closed minded 12 step oriented religious group who believes in the hijacked brain hypothesis and AA, period. Nothing changes if nothing changes. Thus, what we have here is the same old same old "old wine in a new bottle" claiming it has better results without actually showing us the numbers or the urine tests. This is the addiction establishment backed by big money and big names doing the same old stuff, though their social programs are a good idea.

My question is how do you recover from something when you don't know what it is? These people still call addiction a disease when in fact it is a symptom of a disease. And these people, the leaders, know about the disease, Hypoism, but they ignore and reject it just to make sure these addicts in Philadelphia don't learn about it. Hypoism was just proven correct by Nora Volkow herself. Doesn't anyone know this? Of course, the reporter doesn't now about this either. The reporter just wrote what they told him, par for the course with the NY Times. So, what's the future for this program? The same as the last 70 years under the 12 step regime - 5% recovery and 0% prevention. Why should it be different?

The whole point is to make sure they never know about or use the science-based principles of Hypoism, the godless program. Why does religion always have to ruin everything it gets its hands on? Is there any integrity anywhere? All I can say is good luck to the addicts of Philadelphia. Hope you get what you need.

This is the major reason for the continued addiction epidemic which should have been over 17 years ago after my first paper on the Hypoism Paradigm of addictions: Hypoism - A Real Disease. Stuck in the old hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), the addiction field had nothing to offer hypoics in regards to addiction prevention, recovery, treatment, and public policies.

My book, Hypoic's Handbook, goes through the entire paradigm, deals with and solves all Hypoism and all addiction issues thoroughly.

As I said, Kathy, I wrote about all this years before the others, particularly before Volkow. I deserve to have my story told to the public rather than having Volkow take credit for it years after I wrote about it and even having given a lecture on it (invited by jack wang) at Brookhaven labs in 2000. I have the lecture on tape. It's not right that volkow should get the credit for my work. my first paper on genetic low reward activity as the cause of addictions was in 1992, many years before anyone else except for Ken Blum's work called "reward deficiency syndrome." however he claimed this was due to one and only one gene, a wrong claim. my hypothesis, hypoism, said it was due to many genes (polygenetic) and their alleles as it turned out to be the case. the hypoism paradigm of addictions as delineated in my 1996 book (which was on the web for free in 1996) is a complete and global theory that explains cause as well as delineating the methods for addiction prevention, recovery, and public policies which are diametrically opposite to those of Volkow at the time when Volkow's methods have all been shown to be ineffective and useless besides theoretically incorrect. It's not right that I have been ignored and censored while Volkow is getting the credit for this theory and its applications which she has no understanding of and uses them wrongly to the detriment of the country and all addicts. Volkow's methods and policies don't work and actually help maintain the current ineffective and harmful paradigm that currently runs all things related to addictions while the addiction epidemic grows, not lessens. the country needs a journalist like you to document this and tell its story. it's the right and ethical thing to do. I will help you document the concepts and the dates which predated volkow's taking them as her own. this is important stuff and the story deserves to be told. Eliot L. Gardner, M.D. is also well aware of this timing of ideas and should help you do this story objectively. the country deserves this. I deserve this. it will be a Pulitzer prize for you. it's that important. I implore you to do the right thing. It will help all addicts with all their different addictions - and their families.

It's nice to see someone trying to figure all this out. I did the same thing beginning in 1990, and by 1992 I had accomplished it and wrote my first paper about the genetic disease that causes all addictions, Hypoism, a word I had to invent because all previous words about addictions were based on misunderstandings of the cause of addictions. [Hypoism is for "the disease of LOW reward activity (low dopamine) in the instinct regulatory apparatus of the brain's unconscious decision-making mechanism that causes all addictions."] A new vocabulary was therefore required to encompass the new pathophysiology. That 1992 paper evolved into the Hypoism Hypothesis paper: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

My 1996 book that describes all aspects of this disease is called Hypoic's Handbook. It details the science as well as the methods for addiction prevention, recovery, and public policy changes derived from this science.

I gave a lecture on Hypoism at Brookhaven Labs in 2000 while Nora Volkow was still chief there, before becoming chief of NIDA. Nonetheless, and despite herself having recently proven my theory correct [See my blog from 9/9/09 to the present, and to the past as well.] she still censors Hypoism from the public and the government's health oversight committees. Although I had solved the addiction theory problem (and along with it the problems of addiction prevention, recovery, and related public policies as early as 1992) and didn't keep it to myself, Hypoism was and continues to be ignored and censored by the addiction field for conflict of interest, not scientific, reasons. Thus, for purely selfish and politicized reasons (to maintain the drug war), the public has been kept from the knowledge of the actual cause of addictions and how to solve the addiction epidemic by the exact people to whom they have given their trust to solve this deadly and socially expensive problem. [Ask Eliot L. Gardner, M.D., a world class addiction researcher and writer at NIDA, to confirm all this for you. He read and agreed with my book in 1998.]

This article exudes the disgusting and unethical bias of the science media for the already disproven and murderous hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) and the publication of anything Volkow wants published. Why only I write about this issue makes it all the more clearer that the whole addiction field is biased and could care less about addicts. Why addicts allow this by not supporting the proven Hypoism paradigm and the N4A is another very disturbing issue. This whole business is just too much to fathom because of the mass destruction of hypoics and their families, a true genocide, it allows. And addicts and their families are supporting it no less. Of course, they know not what they do because they've been so misinformed by the media and the addiction field.

What's wrong with this article? First, the original article proved nothing about whether this methodology helps cocaine addicts in the short or long run, yet it comes off as a miracle of addiction treatment. It's merely a preliminary study showing it's worth further study. There have been many similar kinds of "positive" preliminary studies in various addictions in the past which never panned out and even harmed addicts in the long term. Next, although the concept of interference of drug action seems to make sense in addiction treatment (if the HBH were true), it actually ignores the true pathophysiology of addiction causation and has never been shown to decrease numbers of addicts overall. Addicts who might happen to get off cocaine without dealing with the underlying disease just switch or add other addictions. Addiction is not caused by the drug but by the underlying genetic disease of low reward activity. That disease isn't touched by this treatment. We've discussed this issue too many times already. Yes, it would be nice if we could stop cocaine addiction in cocaine addicts, admittedly, and they lived happily ever after. That, however, has not been shown to be the case; never, in any addiction. These subjects are still being manipulated and harmed against their will by the underlying disease which isn't touched by this treatment. However, more rationally, what difference does it make if we stop cocaine addiction while the addict is addicted to ten other similar or worse addictions simultaneously, or picks up a new addiction or two after dropping the coke addiction; which we all know they do? It refuses to acknowledge the fact that the underlying disease that causes the addiction to begin with is being ignored. The entire methodology ignores this and gives the public (and all addicts) the misimpression that the disease, some disease, is being treated. The public doesn't know about any of this because my letters about it have been censored. So, the public is being misinformed as usual. This mess has been going on for twenty years and is one of the main reasons no progress has been made in this field. Volkow believes this kind of methodology is bringing addictionology into the future and will help people to see addiction as a medical issue - "transformative." The HBH doesn't do this already so why would it do that now? It's actually keeping it in the past. Chasing drugs and addicts (the drug war mentality and methodology) has only led to dead and incarcerated addicts for the most part and a field that continues to go nowhere. Someone's going to make a lot of money from this methodology but addicts and their families will continue to be devastated. Used wisely under the Hypoism paradigm it could have some benefits, but under today's HBH paradigm it will be a weapon of the drug war, not a treatment. And it's wasting more time and money that could be used better to promote the Hypoism paradigm and its pathophysiologically-based prevention and recovery methodology. Of course, that's the last thing the field wants.

Being ignored and censored is quite frustrating as I daily watch the deadly results of this censorship on millions of addicts and their families. As you all know, only the right theory can do what we need for addicts and their families. So, continue to let them know about it.

To my email list: I appreciate all your support in our attempts to help in this endeavor. Keep up your good work. All this will pay off one day.

To recover you need to know what you're recovering from.

This is a very serious problem and issue for all of AA. What's clear here is that no one in AA knows what they're recovering from so they have no idea what to do to recover. Not one got it right, including the expert himself. The simple answer is "do what your sponsor says to do...period." Addiction or "the addiction" is not the disease. Hypoism is the disease and addictions are but symptoms. Recovery must be from Hypoism, not the addiction(s). This is why AA fails. AA doesn't know this and refuses to know this. That's why there is no definitive recovery program, just suggestions and, of course, whatever god says, cough cough. Hypoism, the cause of all addictions, has a definite pathophysiology, and from this comes a definite recovery program mandated by the disease itself, as it should be. The scientific basis of Hypoism is that it's an unconscious genetic disease of the decision-making apparatus and its recovery depends on knowing and using this science. We are incapable of making decisions in our own best interest. Hypoic's Handbook explains all this as well as what this recovery process is, why we need to use sponsors and why they need to use their sponsors too, down the line. It's time we began using science rather than superstition and guessing. Hypoism has been available to AA since 1996 and could have been revised to use this science if it chose to. It has chosen not to. It's time we made this change to a coherent and science-based program. Learn about it. Tell AA you want it incorporated into the program so we can have real prevention for our kids and a definitive recovery program based on the science of the disease that causes the addictions and its other symptoms - misuse and misevaluation of instinctive behavior - all at an unconscious decision-making level.

Funny thing. I haven't been saying the same thing for 17 years have I? I don't call the debate the creationism/evolution debate for nothing, do I? And psychologists have been ignoring and censoring my complaints about psychobabble superstition and pseudoscience bullshit (re: prevention and treatment) to the point of murderous and lying censorship of Hypoism while I get blamed for being angry at them. Ha Ha. Now, even laymen know what I've been writing about and are complaining about it. However, even the methods the scientists say work, don't work. They're all still full of shit. The people need to know this and demand changing administration of this field to honest and real scientists who can say, "Yes, this doesn't work." "Because it is wrong." "We need correct theory and effective prevention and treatment based on science, as in proven Hypoism for all addictions. And get rid of the experts and pundits who claim they know something about addictions and their clinical prognostications. They're all liars and immorally bad people - these administrators and panel members who screw addicts daily as part of their jobs. Read my book. Join the N4A so we can fight the "assholes with power" and take care of ourselves. Ha Ha. We let them take care of us; we're dead.

What's all this fuss over the ten commandments? Is there some kind of point to them? What can we actually learn from this discussion that we aren't. Everything; about human nature anyway.

As you all [don't] know, humans have hundreds of genetically-based hardwired behavioral repertoires called instincts handed down from evolution. These instincts are meant for their survival value and tend to pit one person against another and one family against another (of different tribes). For the most part they are selfish and dangerous leading to death and destruction of someone. Early on in evolution they were great at separating the survivors from the losers. Later, they became particularly annoying, a common characteristic of successful adaptations - they interfere with social progress and playing well with each other. Thus the need to get rid of them - make a list of the big ten and say that god was against them being acted out. Didn't work. Nor did laws against them. Humans turned out to be quite resistant to "thou shalt not act out your instincts." The big question is why is this and what can we do about it if it actually turns out to be a good idea, which it is?

Having people speculate about all this is a waste of time as evidenced by this series on ABC News, both web and TV. These people haven't a clue as to what is going on and why. Sex, food, religion, money, natural resources, racism, xenophopia, altruism, envy, stealing, lying, adultery, coveting, violence, etc. A large part of the brain is organized to successfully deal with these instincts. The seven deadly sins and the ten commandments are all built-in instincts and there is a big part of the brain set aside to use them under the right evolutionary circumstances. I call this the instinct regulatory apparatus. It is in the limbic system of the brain and therefore under unconscious control by the brain itself via genetic regulation. Like it or not we can't participate in this system until we acknowledge we have no control over it. Only by ceding control over it can we begin to have any influence over it; not by believing we have control over it. Genetic diversity of the regulatory genes (particularly the dopamine regulatory genes) cause the differences in instinctive behaviors we see among different people. I explain this in my book. It's called Hypoism recovery.

All this is the genetic and neurobiological basis for the Hypoism paradigm of addictions. The instinct regulatory apparatus is the genetically altered brain machine that manufactures addictions from instincts and drugs. The genetic disease of low reward activity of this system is called Hypoism, hypo for genetic low reward activity. The lower the activity the more is the drug or behavior used. If too low we get addiction. This system explains the whole range (bellcurve) of instinctive behaviors as well as the non-additive use and addictive use of addictive (dopamine raising) drugs and instincts. My book on this is called Hypoic's Handbook. The paper proving this theory is: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ The evolutionary basis for this is explained here: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/

If you understand this stuff you can then understand the range of all human behaviors, something today's article doesn't.

First, just because one thinks something is the "reason" one does something doesn't make it so. Humans don't realize that 99.99999999+/-% of all behavior on earth is unconsciously motivated and determined. In general, no other animals have consciousness. Thus all non-human behavior is unconsciously motivated. The only question that remains is how much human behavior is consciously motivated, or actually caused by what the individual "thinks" is the motivation for it. In otherwords, if we had a way to determine what causes behavior (the actual brain sequences) how often would the person's opinion about the cause actually be the cause? This kind of question is the crux of this cute and compelling little article. The answer is very hard (impossible) to determine while simultaneously being one of the most important questions we have about human nature. It's hard to even find the right question. Thus we should be very wary of answers to the questions. "Why did so and so do what he/she did?" "Why do you have sex?" "Why did I get addicted and you didn't?" Is it because of some conscious "reason," some unconscious reason, a gene or its mutation, multiple genes and their mutations, some environmental issue(s), or hundreds of other "things" conscious or unconscious or both? Think about the mechanism. Think about the brain machine involved. It's been there for hundreds of millions of years, not just yesterday.

This is an important development. It validates yet another one of my Hypoism paradigm principles, the autonomous thinking belief - ATB. It further validates the decision-making apparatus machinery; the mechanism. It shows that the human brain doesn't differentiate on its own between a belief and a piece of derived knowledge. That doesn't mean that the human can't do that, however. Of course, the individual making that assessment certainly knows how the belief is derived, whether through pure fictionalizing or through a logical process based on evidence; the scientific method. Thus, people can decide how to use these differently derived bits of information. Humans can decide to treat them differently because they are different even if they "feel" like they are the same. If we as a society choose, we can decide to place less emphasis on belief-based beliefs and more emphasis on evidence-based beliefs such as a validly derived scientific theory - emphasis on validly derived, the critical issue. Of course, we do it everday, many times a day - when we want to. We can make rules for this caveat and live by them if we decide we want to be rational beings and avoid irrational wars based on pure belief - superstition. I discuss all this in my paper on the superstition instinct, an instinct only I speak about. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/10thesuperstitioninstinct3100/ These kinds of decisions can lead to harmony between humans of different beliefs if they decide that's what they want. The other kinds of beliefs, the irrationally (evidence baseless) derived ones, can still exist and be fun, whatever, but for the individual, not the society; never the two mixed up as equal or even similar in the same argument.

This is how rumors get started. Ha Ha. And these rumors are not healthy ones.

How many things are wrong with this study that even a layman can spot just from this article? In what journal was it published? Journal of Irreproducible Results?

So, how does this nonsense get a headline or even an article? Someone tell me. Nonetheless, people will start quoting it. Ha Ha. What does this do for addicts? Kills and destroys them in a host of ways with unwarranted expectations. "Treatment works. What did you do wrong? If 50% of addicts kick in 6 months, why didn't you? There must be something really wrong with you." What's new?

I think these people need to be very careful about attributing mental illness to environmental causation (except for some specific drugs, poisons, and toxins) and they should stick to the very real genetic causation information. The environment (parental misbehavior) has always been used to blame for mental illness particularly when charlatans, like Freud, ran the mysterious and superstitious-based psychiatric agendas. Because I'm not an expert in the entire mental health field, I can't speak to whether for sure environment has little or no effect on direct causation of all mental illnesses, I believe it to be the same as in addictions, that environment has some influences on mental illness outcome but for the most part no direct causative role absent the required genetic alterations. (Psychobabble is not causative - even to the point of the fact that "addictive drugs" themselves are not the cause addictions! the oldest and wrongest belief about addictions. Aviel Goldman recently validated this concept in his review of addiction neurobiology. see my blog on this paper for the date 8/28/09) For addictions this is clearly very much the case. The only reason environment has been perpetuated as a cause of addictions is because of the faulty heritability studies on specific addictions which have shown less than 100% heritability - all of which will have to be redone using the correct methodology as well as the correct underlying disease, Hypoism. I review this argument in detail in my book and in my paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . When heritability studies are done for a specific addiction like "alcoholism" for example we get heritability numbers of around 60%. These studies are all done by questionnaire and they compare answers at a specific point in time of the presence or absence of "alcoholism" in identical and fraternal twins, other siblings and adoptees. It is assumed in these calculations that the answers to the questionnaires are correct and true. They are never correlated with real life data or forensic testing. It is also believed that identical twins are 100% genetically identical and that fraternal twins are 50% identical. None of these assumptions are true. The questionnaire answers can be lies (or denial) and it is well known by now that epigenetics causes genome functionality in twins to be quite non-identical, falsely lowering the heritability numbers. There are at least 4 or 5 or more reasons why heritability numbers are falsely lowered by the methodology that determines them. So, it's not hard to see that 60% heritability may very well actually be much higher, even 100% if all this is taken into account, something the biased addictionologists (biased for environment) routinely don't do. When was the last time you heard an addictionologist qualify their heritability numbers using these reasons? I have yet to hear it once. In fact, they usually give low ball heritability numbers from the distant past to even lower them more because they make their money off the environmental theory of addiction causation and other environmental conflicts of interest. Heritability numbers for all mental illnesses are done the same way so they are also falsely lowered by this same methodology, and for the same biased reasons, the psychobabble theory of mental illness which must be treated with psychobabble psychotherapy, a conflict of interest.

Clearly for addictions I have found that the prevention and treatment methods must be derived from the actual pathophysiology of the disease itself that causes addictions, the symptoms, not the other way around, where addiction is believed and used as the disease itself - it is not. This mistake in and of itself has ruined all the studies of addictionology because specific addictions have been studied rather than the underlying genetic disease that actually causes them. Addictions are symptoms and not diseases. There is only one disease that causes all addictions, Hypoism, low reward activity in the instinct regulating apparatus of the brain. And this disease can be manifest as a hundred or so different addictions depending on other issues, some genetic and some environmental - the only place environment has a causative role in this matter, not in causation of addiction but only in which addiction results. I've written this since 1992 and to my knowledge the data still bears this out.

Thus, it is quite important for these future parents to be informed correctly about this material much of which has already been warped out of control and way off base. The whole arena of heritability needs to be redone.

Here's another of the hundred or more issues discussed in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, validated by scientific study : Harm Reduction. Of course, this had already been proven by the Switzerland PROVE study (on my web page). Everything discussed and so far tested in my 1996 book on the Hypoism addiction theory and policy derived from that theory has been proven correct. This suggests that the rest of my predictions on addiction prevention, treatment, and policies, based on Hypoism theory, will also be validated if they are ever used and studied. The last great prediction validated by Volkow no less, was the most important, that ADHD is caused by low activity genetic alleles of the reward system. Since ADHD is Hypoism (by definition), Hypoism is caused by low activity genetic alleles, proving the pathophysiological basis of my entire paradigm. All that remains is to use it to get its benefits. Other papers and studies have validated many other aspects of Hypoism, many of them on my blog recently including important reviews on addiction causation.

Nonetheless, and despite my informing the science and lay media about this complete and full paradigm since 1992, there's not been a single one of my letters published or my paper, or my book reviewed, leaving the world in ignorance about this most important proven paradigm change that will fix the addiction epidemic and all its consequences once used. Is there an explanation for this dishonesty and censorship? I ask Time to explain. They've certainly censored numerous of my letters and supported the wrong side of this issue (Volkow and the hijacked brain hypothesis) helping to maintain this wrong theory and all its deadly manifestations.

I sit here knowing that writing this letter to the Times is a complete waste of time. I've written them and other media outlets thousands of letters since 1995, many of which are on my web site, about the addiction epidemic and the reasons why we are failing to deal with it successfully. Not one has been published. The addiction epidemic continues unabated, even worse day after deadly day. Prevention is still 0% and recovery 5%, same as in 1900. The addiction paradigm running our policies on addictions is still the same, the hijacked brain hypothesis or one of its standard variations. Same with prevention techniques and recovery methods. Many addiction experts are still saying addiction is a choice not a disease. Their books and articles still get press space. Articles like today's get published daily despite their heat but no light characteristics. The same experts are running the same paradigm despite their proven failures. Absolutely nothing has changed. Volkow, head of NIDA, just published a study proving my theory of addiction causation, Hypoism, the genetic disease of low brain reward activity, correct. Does anyone remember that my first letter to the Times named this disease and mentioned its cause as genetic [reward, dopamine] deficiencies in the decision-making apparatus? I wrote many further letters saying the same things and explaining them in more and more detail repeatedly. I was ignored and told to stop bothering them; Newsday too. They told me this despite their never having read my papers and eventually my book. They still haven't read them but continue to censor them. They did this despite no improvement in the addiction epidemic and failure of all addiction related policies. I told them only the correct theory can cure the epidemic and that successful policies will only result from using this theory. No matter, they insisted on using the same old proven wrong experts, their theory, and their derived prevention and recovery methodology; none of which work.

So, now we have the umpteenth article about the same old same old addiction problem (addiction in the suburbs is not news) and not a word is mentioned about the possibility of the current paradigm being the problem rather than the standard cheap availability of heroin as the problem. Kendler proved availability has little to nothing to do with addiction years ago, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/139socalledavailabilitydebunkedascontributorofaddictions/ , but obviously no one cared to read that bit of science because it interfered with their beliefs and ruined their paradigm. Same with the old gateway theory and the hijacked brain hypothesis, all of which are long ago proven wrong. If this nonsense were happening in any other area of medicine these experts would have been tarred and feathered and thrown out of town long ago. But because addictions are blamed on the addicts themselves, no one thinks the continued epidemic is the expert's fault. But it is, completely. Why?

Their theories are wrong. Proven wrong. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . Their prevention and recovery methods, based on these theories, are therefore wrong, the reason why they don't work. But don't read this paper or my book. They might change everything for the better at the cost of kicking out the experts who have maintained the wrong paradigm. The experts refuse to be kicked out, so they continue to insist they are correct and successful and censor Hypoism despite having proven it correct just a few weeks ago. Do you believe them at the Times? Where's the evidence for this? The only evidence is that the addiction field is wrong and ineffective but you keep believing them anyway because of your own biases about addicts causing their own addictions; therefore it can't be the expert's fault.

Well, here it is in a nutshell. The reason the epidemic continues is because the wrong theory is running it instead of Hypoism. From Hypoism comes workable and potentially effective policies for all addictions and all their aspects. Until the complete paradigm is changed the epidemic will continue to grow and worsen as this article shows. I suggest publishing this letter so the public can make its own determination of its veracity and usefulness. Don't let the experts monopolize the debate and continue to kill our kids with their pet theory that turns out to be scientifically wrong and murderous. Otherwise, you're just continuing to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution, and using censorship to do that is quite unethical journalism to boot.

This interview was shocking. Your "expert" has no clue about the cause or treatment of stalking. In fact, he is typical of all experts in this field. The only thing that he said, probably by accident because he didn't really understand the connection or importance of this statement, was at the very end of the interview when he said that stalking has something to do with a problem in attachment. It is way more than a "problem in attachment." Stalking is a complete and real addiction to the attachment instinct, one of the strongest human instincts, what I call people addiction. The reason other addictions are usually also associated with this addiction is that all addictions are caused by an underlying genetic disease of low reward activity I named Hypoism 17 years ago and discuss in my book, Hypoic's Handbook. It's also discussed on my web site and specifically the paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , but best in the book. People with Hypoism are the people who get addicted to the hundred or so addictors and usually have more than one addiction. Thus, one addiction is frequently associated with other addictions, usually to substances such as alcohol or other drugs. Thus, his statement that a risk factor for stalking is substance abuse is absolutely true, but he has no clue for why this is true, and therefore misses the whole understanding of what stalking is derived from and the physiology behind it.

For your background about Hypoism, although there was plenty of data to support the pathophysiology (biological cause) of Hypoism as genetic low reward activity since the 1980's, the basis of my 1992 paper about this disease, recently this has been proven by Volkow et al when she showed that ADHD is caused by low reward activity. ADHD is just another name for Hypoism, a name related to symptoms rather than to its pathophysiology. I discuss this and other recent papers showing the same thing in my Hypoism Hypothesis paper (linked above), the paper that evolved over the years from my 1992 paper. My blog goes through this recent work starting at 7/27/09.

Thus, Hypoism is the underlying genetic disease that causes all addictions including people (attachment) addiction, the most common unrealized and misunderstood addiction usually called co-dependency because of its symptomatology, again a mistaken name.

So, so-called stalking, a symptom, is actually a symptom of people addiction, a real behavioral addiction which is caused by the underlying genetic disease of Hypoism. This addiction explains all the symptoms your expert and you discussed in the interview and their basis. Lastly, there is a prevention and treatment regimen for this disease, Hypoism recovery, detailed and explained in my book. This methodology works for the prevention and treatment of all addictions and needs to be used for this one as well. The unique situation for people addiction, however, is that usually both participants (one plays the role of the addict and one of the drug though both are addicted to each other) are involved in this addiction, the so-called "lousy relationship." OJ and Nicole Simpson typify this usual case. Thus, for resolution of this lousy relationship both require Hypoism recovery because both are maintaining the addiction. This is why we frequently see frequent relapses (for both participants) in this addiction just as we see them in all other addictions. Your expert never touched on this because he had no explanation for it, even though it's the usual case.

Thus, if you want your listeners to understand this problem and free themselves from its dangerous tentacles you must give them the correct understanding of it, not what your expert did. The entire problem of domestic abuse and spousal abuse as well as stalking is about Hypoism and addiction and can be dealt with by using the Hypoism recovery methodology. Your listeners need to know about it so they can learn about it and help themselves.

By the way, except for the book sales, I make no money from any of this. All my work on this theory and its use is free of charge.

The topic today is human behavior. The question isn't "are humans selfish?" but rather what are humans? and what makes them act the way they do? Why is this important? Because we can't evaluate our own behavior (or anyone else's) unless we understand how our brains make behavioral decisions. What Frans de Waal doesn't do here is explain the brain mechanism behind these questions. The closest he comes to this is in the paragraph where he says after the question, Q: "There's an example in the book where you talk about apes sharing food as a demonstration of empathy. What's in it for the apes who already have food � why do they choose to give it away? A: In biology, we usually make a sharp distinction between why things evolved and why animals do things (my concept of "cortico-limbic dissociation"). For example, sex evolved for reproduction. But if you ask people why they have sex, reproduction is not always mentioned. So there's a separation between why the behavior evolved and why the actors actually engage in it. The same is true for altruistic tendencies. You share food with your kin; you share food with individuals who may repay the favor. So the sharing behavior evolved for self-interested reasons. But that doesn't mean that the individual actor, at the moment that he does it, is thinking of the potential benefits."

Sex evolved for reproduction, but when people are asked about why they have sex they don't say reproduction. What do they say? and why? Though that's the essence of the article, he doesn't answer that. The answer is and always has been, because something made me do it; because it feels good; because I wanted to. It's only pretty recent that humans even knew sex had anything to do with reproduction. As we all know, for the most part, we all have sex pretty much the same way and we do this without going to sex school. Humans have been acting this way since day one of humanhood; since the first modern human had sex. Similarly for empathy and altruism, and ostracism (mentioned in the article), and religion, and eating, and approval, and love, and xenophobia (mentioned in the article), and all other hundreds of instincts. Where do these instincts come from and what regulates their behavioral activity? That's what this article is about but doesn't ever mention it. How do we know some behavior is instinctive and others not? What does "instinctive" mean anyway? Read my book, Hypoic's Handbook.

In my review of the news today in the 50 or so newspapers and journals I observe every morning, there are several articles about this kind of stuff - what makes people think, feel, and act the way they do? But there's not a single one of these articles that even mentions the Instinct Regulating Apparatus. In fact, the word instinct isn't used. Intuition is used instead but without defining even what that word means. The reason for this is that humans hate seeing themselves as machines. They want to have free will. [See "Born to Cheat? Tempers Meet Testimony at Debate on Adultery" at http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/10Commandments/affairs-cheating-nightline-face-off-debate-adultery-infidelity/story?id=8645026 ] and read the comments! This is how humans want to see themselves. This is why adultery is out of control as are all instinctive behaviors - because people want to believe wrong theories about behavioral control and decision-making. They want to be able to blame and punish people for their behaviors rather than define some way to prevent the unwanted behaviors. They also want to believe that we all have the same brain and the only differences in our behaviors are due to "choices" and whether people read the bible enough. There's no mention of genetic diversity having anything to do with any of this stuff because there's no brain mechanism, in their minds, that has anything to do with genes. As I say all the time, wrong theory - wrong policies. Thus, how can we deal effectively with instinctive behavior dysregulation (instincts out of control) when we use such stupid theories for their origin and regulation? We can't.

These people have no idea, and they don't want to either, that all addictions originate from genetic diversity of this instinct regulating apparatus derived from evolution - http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/

All the hundreds of the human instincts and all the problems caused by them could be so easily overcome by their correct understanding - loss of cortico-limbic dissociation. But they don't want to hear about it; know about it. They want their superstitious beliefs instead. They are willing to sacrifice their kid's lives to these ignorant beliefs because they feel good rather than help their kids with ideas that don't feel so good but would work.

Of course, they will never read this paper either. It's been kept from them by the media who wants to keep humans as stupid as possible so they will keep buying what they want them to buy, either commercially or conceptually. Stupid people are more controllable that enlightened people, so the media does its best to keep people stupid. There are about ten articles about this same stuff in the newspapers I read this morning, all by experts who know nothing about the real cause of human behavior and their instinctive origins and control. Thus, from day to day we don't learn anything new and have no way to correct the behaviors that are killing us and our kids. Ha Ha. Thanks Time.com.

Of course, the current thinking about this issue and its resultant policies are both scientifically wrong and inhumane. And, we all need to acknowledge this, it is wrong from both sides of the policy debate, theirs and "ours." The policy "debate" has been wrong headed from the beginning, from all sides of the debate; from both the drug warrior side and the anti-drug warrior side. The reason for this wrong headedness is that the critical issue in this "debate" is not the policy issue but the addiction causation issue. The current debate is warped and ruined by the assumption that the current addiction causation theory, the hijacked brain hypothesis, the moral (not scientific) theory we use as a basis for deriving the drug war policy, is irrelevant to the policy decision-making process when, in fact, it is the most relevant issue. The principle being that the wrong theory leads to wrong policy. And this is true even if the policy seems to be right, as in our anti-drug war stance. Thus, if we continue on the tract we are currently taking, fighting the policy war rather than the theory war, leaving the HBH out of the argument, we will make no progress turning this mess around. I wrote a paper on this long ago when I made my first inroad into helping correct his issue, The Drug War War: (#4 at) http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/ . Read the paper to see what I mean. Too bad it was ignored.

In a nut shell, this means that until we begin using the correct theory of addiction causation as the basis of our argument for policy change, we will continue going around in circles and never get the policy changes we want or the policy changes that are effectively correct; correct scientifically, correct humanely, and correct functionally. If we allow the hijacked brain hypothesis, a proven wrong theory of addiction causation as disproved here, ( http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ ) remain the ruling theory paradigm, there's no way we can move forward to the effective and humane policies we need and deserve. [My blog discusses this many times as well.] The proof of the genetic paradigm of addiction- Hypoism - causation has, for this reason, been my primary goal, and this has been completed in the last several months. The HBH has definitively been proven wrong and Hypoism proven correct. This theory change must be relayed to the public so they can turn around their thinking on the actual cause of addictions, from the moral paradigm (HBH) to the involuntary genetic/biological (Hypoism) paradigm. Once the "immorality" of addiction and drugs is removed and once it is realized that only hypoics get addicted, not just anyone, then the public will be able to see the need to change their fears and beliefs to an understanding that the policy changes we suggest not only make sense but also are the only policies that can cure the addiction epidemic, our main goal, and the reason the drug war was begun in the first place. But they must be made under the aegis of the Hypoism paradigm, otherwise they will be done wrong and won't work. If, on the other hand, we let the HBH stand, the public has no rational reason to change their thinking and attitudes that will allow change to the correct policies. As I say in the #4 paper, the choice to let the theory stand or make the change to the correct theory is your choice. If you choose to let the HBH stand as the ruling paradigm, as the government and the addiction establishment want, then you are responsible for the continued results of that theory on policies. I've done all the leg work to help you do this. It's now your responsibility to take the bull by the horns and do it. Otherwise it will remain a drug war war and all the murderous and inhumane behaviors that stem from this are your responsibility. This is your choice.

Much like in addictions, these experts think anyone can get PTSD. Because of this belief, they haven't studied these soldiers for their "pre-PTSD" state. The Hypoism hypothesis, however, has postulated that only hypoics get PTSD. Or, that PTSD only happens to hypoics, not anyone. Hypoism defines PTSD as an addiction, an addiction to the revenge instinct, and only hypoics get addicted. This holds for all addictions, drugs and instincts (behavioral addictions). As we already know quite well also, PTSDer's have a very high incidence of other addictions, particularly to alcohol and other drugs (the totality of these additional addictions has never been studied to date, but this needs to be done too.) This is one of the many reasons no one understands PTSD. They don't understand the pathophysiology. Recently, Volkow et al have found that ADHD is caused by low reward genetic alleles. This pathophysiology, genetic low reward activity, is the pathophysiologic definition of Hypoism. Thus, ADHD is Hypoism as I've said for many years. This has now been proved by Volkow. Wasn't that nice of her. I predict this will also be the pathophysiology of PTSD.

Now they're also saying that PTSD patients have attention deficits (after the fact). This sounds like ADHD, which means, if anyone is listening, that PTSD is a symptom of ADHD following trauma. And, since ADHD is Hypoism, PTSD is hypoism, as I've said. But what about before the fact? The only thing that has been left out of this equation is making the diagnosis of ADHD in those who get PTSD before they get PTSD. So, the study that needs to be done is to test a large group of soldiers for ADHD, send them out into battle, and see who gets PTSD, anyone or just the ADHDer's. I'm willing to stick my neck out and be wrong for the sake of understanding PTSD better. But I don't think I will be wrong. My hypothesis has predicted for many years that PTSD is seen in only highly traumatized hypoics, not anyone. It's always been my prediction. So, let's do the experiment and see what happens. This is no different from making the diagnosis of hypoism in kids (with PET scan or genetically), sending them out into life, and seeing who gets addicted. Of course, we already know that ADHDer's (hypoics) get addicted, so this experiment has already been done. However, it needs to be done prospectively rather than retrospectively as it always has been in the past. So, lets do both of these experiments, something I told Volkow and Wang at Brookhaven years ago when I gave my Hypoism lecture there in March of 2000. Then, after this is proven, we can begin to use Hypoism recovery methodology to prevent and treat these diagnoses, something that has never been done. But I predict, when it is done, we will finally have some success in prevention and treatment of PTSD. The prevention and treatment regimes are in my book, Hypoic's Handbook.

Velez raises the issue of people dying from prescription drug overdoses and gives us her solutions based on her expertise. On 8/13/09 I commented on "recovering addicts" writing articles on addiction issues as if they were experts, and the deadly consequences of this. Well, here's an example of that. At the end there's this disclaimer, "The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jane Velez-Mitchell." But CNN published it nonetheless. CNN has to take responsibility for this publishing behavior and be held accountable for misleading the public. Velez bases her expertise on being an admitted addict and having gotten sober. I ask you, are these valid credentials for expertise in additions? No. So, why does CNN publish this article? Because they like her plea. "Hey, we have an epidemic on our hands and we need to do something about it?" OK. What are we supposed to do about it according to her?

"Effective and affordable treatment has to be available to all." -- What are they and how have they been proven effective? No answer. It's implied though. It's implied that there is effective treatment. Implied but no proof. The actual science of addiction treatment shows there is no effective treatment.

"It's vital that we're able to reach out for help when we need it." -- Where is this help and how has it been proven effective? No answer. It's implied though. But again, no proof.

"Addiction in America has a new face: prescription drugs." This statement , that addictions are caused by drugs, is the mainstay of the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH). "But no matter how self disciplined we are or how controlled medicines are, there will be those who become addicted." Same thing; addiction caused by lack of self-discipline and drug availability. All three of these statements have been proven wrong, yet here they are again as part of the hijacked brain hypothesis, the addiction theory pushed by the addiction establishment and AA that runs everything about addictions today including all prevention, treatment, and public policies. Hey Jane, where's your proof for the veracity of the HBH? There is none. She just says it as if it were true. In fact, the whole HBH has been proven wrong in many ways. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ This paper of mine proves every one of these statements wrong and documents the disproof. So, how are we going to solve the addiction epidemic with a wrong theory and its derived wrong policies? Because Jane says so? Because she's an expert? She's all that just because she says so and CNN publishes her article? Besides my paper disproving the HBH you can read Aviel Goldman's article showing the same thing. See my blog about that paper at my addiction blog on 8/28/09. "The Neurobiological Development of Addiction. An Overview." http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1444777?verify=0 Goldman states as clearly as he possibly can the truth about addiction causation: 1) "A wealth of neuroscience research has converged to provide a neurobiological foundation for the theory that all addictive disorders share an underlying biological vulnerability." 2) "Drug addiction is not caused by exposure to drugs." (which is the HBH in a nut shell.) Also read: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/25biscocaineaddictioncausedbycocaine/ In other words, addictions are not caused by drugs but by an underlying genetic neurobiological disease. I've been writing about this and its implications since 1992. This turns the entire field of addictions on its head and demands that in order to stop the addiction epidemic we must deal correctly with this underlying disease, the disease I named Hypoism for genetic low (hypo) activity of the reward system. This pathophysiology has been proven. In fact, Volkow, the Queen of the HBH, just proved it. See my blog 9/9/09 - 9/13/09. If you don't understand this, read my papers and book or even call me to help explain it. My number's on my web site. It's all there. It's been there since 1996.

The fact is that the HBH is the theory that maintains the addiction epidemic, by being wrong. Wrong theory - Wrong policies. And, if you ignore and censor this letter and the science behind it you are responsible for doing exactly the opposite of what you say you want to do - stop the addiction epidemic. Instead, you are maintaining the epidemic.

So, her plea is a good one but her solution is wrong because the wrong theory, the HBH, is making policies that don't work. What do we do about this? Simple. Publish this letter. Tell Jane and CNN about this, tell them about the correct theory and the policies based on that so we can implement truly effective policies based on the correct theory. The correct theory is Hypoism and the effective policies is Hypoism recovery methodology as discussed in my paper and book, Hypoic's Handbook. This theory has been around since 1992 and has been proven correct. But, it's been ignored and censored by the same people who say they want to stop the epidemic. I've written CNN and Jane about this, informed them about this, but instead of publishing an article about this they publish an article about the wrong theory and push ineffective policies that maintain the epidemic. How is that supposed to stop the addiction epidemic? Only Hypoism can stop the addiction epidemic. How about letting the public know this?

The main advantage to knowing and having the correct theory about the cause of any problem is that all questions related to the issue which the theory explains are answerable with policies that both make sense and will work derived from that theory. That's the basis for modern medicine, the pathophysiological basis of modern medicine. It took many years of using stupid and harmful superstitious answers and policies to deal with various medical issues for humans to find this out. One realm that has yet to achieve this principle is the field of addictions and its policies. Remember, the drug war is a policy that was meant to answer a question related to addictions? - Q. "How do we stop addictions to drugs and all their consequences?" A. The Drug War. That question is still the question that we need to find an answer to. We have forgotten that the drug war is a policy solution to that question and not an issue in itself. However, the drug war has gone on so long it has become an issue in itself. Thus, we have "debates" about the drug war instead of going back to the original question, "What causes addictions?" and trying to answer that first, then when we have that answer, using that theory to derive policies. This is how we have 5 "experts" on drug policy in today's debate rather than 5 real experts in addiction theory debating addiction causation theories. Or maybe, that's the problem to begin with. without even acknowledging it we are already assuming we have the right addiction causation theory, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), and are using that theory to derive policies without even realizing that's the theory we're using. I think that's the case. We're all assuming the HBH is the correct addiction causation theory and we're just debating the policies based on it, the drug war being one of those, believing this is using the principle I mentioned in the first sentence. The only problem with this assumption is that the HBH has been proven wrong many times and in many ways from even before it was codified by Leshner in 1997. The HBH is a good example of the politicization of science rather than good science. It was derived to be a political justification of a political policy rather than as a scientific answer to a scientific question. Because no one, except me, over these 12 years of its existence has nullified it scientifically, it has achieved the position of being "right." The addiction establishment has given the HBH its seal of approval even though it was known to be wrong as hell from day one as I say in my 1998 book, Hypoic's Handbook. The reason the HBH got their seal of approval is not that it is correct but that they make all their money from it. They don't like it when I say that, but it's true nevertheless. Thus, we're using a wrong theory, believing it's right, to make policy about addictions. That doesn't work.

In the past few years it has been made very clear that addictions are not caused by the HBH but by genetics, the exact opposite theory from the HBH. We knew that long before this, as I said in my book, but the evidence has been made increasingly clear in the last 4 years as discussed in my paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ It was just proved with a vengeance by two recent papers by Stice and Volkow herself, the queen of the HBH herself. See my blog from 7/28 through today. It is now indisputable that the genetic theory is the correct theory of addiction causation, and specifically the Hypoism (genetic low reward activity) theory of addiction causation, my theory dating back to 1992 when it was first delineated, ignored, and censored by the addiction field.

Thus, according to sentence 1 of this letter, we need to stop the drug war debate and revisit the addiction theory debate to settle the theory issue. Once this issue is settled and we all begin to use the Hypoism theory of addiction causation to derive policies, we will have a completely different debate because the emphasis of Hypoism theory is on the Hypoic not the drugs. We will move the debate and our resources to how we can best prevent and treat addictions by utilizing Hypoism recovery methodology, the so-called demand side of the equation. I've been saying this for many years, but now it's infinitely more clear why this is so. My article on this is "the Drug War War" at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/

According to sentence 1 of this letter, if you buy it, the debate moves from the drug war to policies based on Hypoism recovery methodology, a new debate, the correct debate. How best to implement Hypoism recovery methodology is the new debate. Until we make this change, as I've said a million times before, we will never get to the solution of the original question, "How do we deal with the addiction epidemic?" Forget about Mexico. Ha Ha.

OK. So, they stole my idea. But did they? Of course not. Their study only showed ADHD is caused by Hypoism. I thank them for that. More ammo for Hypoism. Validation is sweet. However, does this little piece of information prevent a single addiction? Treat a single addiction? No. Knowing that addictions are caused by genetic low reward activity is just one tiny part of the Hypoism paradigm. My Hypoism Hypothesis paper and my book, in particular, Hypoic's Handbook, detail a much larger and more thorough neurobiology involving the instinct regulating apparatus, the decision-making mechanism, and the FOKS, the Feel OK System, the places in the brain where the low reward activity has its effects and how they work. Thus, these interlopers may have stolen the thunder but are impotent to change anything for the better with it because they haven't a clue about how the brain works to cause addictions and the other symptoms of Hypoism and adhd. It's like stealing the key to a deposit box but not being able to get into the bank. Hypoism, as discussed in my book, is a complete paradigm and only the complete paradigm can fix hypoics and the addiction epidemic. What they claim will be the usefulness of the low reward activity is not how Hypoism works and will fail to solve anything. If the addictionology community and the media let them get away with this they will not see any benefit from it because they haven't a clue as to how it all works and what needs to be done to use it in a way that will change addictions for the better. So, now, they will have to steal the whole book and all its hundreds of principles and implications. They might even name it something else. Ha Ha. People who have read my book know about the massive amount of insight into the disease process that exists in the book that is all necessary to use Hypoism. Hypoism is not just about low reward activity. Without using this information correctly they will continue to waste the time and money of the whole country, not to mention all the dead people they will leave in their wake by their unethical behavior. How are they going to manage that without mentioning me and the 18 years of work I have sweated over to give birth to this whole paradigm in the only way that will ever help a single addict? Let's see the media and the legal system let them get away with that? Hypoism needs to be acknowledged and used. anything other than that will not help anyone. In fact, it will continue to hurt the entire country big time as they have over the last 10 years of ignoring and censoring Hypoism. What they have done by not acknowledging my work is unconscionable. But the unethical media is letting them do this. Geez!

This letter regards the interview with Nora Volkow this morning on talk of the nation about adhd and brain low reward activity and the fact that she didn�t mention that I was the first addiction theorist to write about what she is claiming is her idea. She has confirmed my 1992 theory, a theory that has been confirmed in numerous ways including Volkow�s study, but she has not invented it. I wrote my first paper on this exact issue, genetic low reward activity as the cause of addictions, in 1992 called �Hypoism � A Real Disease.� That paper was rejected back then because of conflict of interest reasons by the addictionology community and the �peer reviewers� who rejected it. That paper has evolved over the years to the Hypoism Hypothesis which is on my web site at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , and also became my book, Hypoic�s Handbook in 1996. Another important paper explaining where this disease originated is: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ . I was the first scientist to fully describe this disease. Hypoism is the name for the disease of genetic low reward activity that causes all addictions. Anyone with genetic brain low reward activity has Hypoism and many different alleles of genes are involved. Some of these people have been called adhd but this is a misleading name because it is named from the symptoms rather than the pathophysiology, the low activity genetic alleles in the reward system. NIDA and ASAM ignored and censored this theory in favor of the hijacked brain hypothesis for conflict of interest reasons and withheld from the public the important implications of Hypoism and its pathophysiology. When the whole story comes out, this will be the biggest scandal in the history of medicine because of the massive damage its censorship caused. My 1996 book, Hypoic�s Handbook, defined and detailed the entire Hypoism paradigm from addiction prevention to treatment (based on the pathophysiology rather than superstition) to public policy and public attitudes. Hypoism is the only addiction theory that is both scientifically correct and capable of preventing addictions by using its recovery program in youngsters before they ever have any contact with drugs, the best time to assert prevention methods. Also treatment similarly. ADHD is merely a part of this overarching paradigm, not a separate disease. Many addiction experts have supported this theory in private, Eliot Gardner, M.D. at NIDA for one, but not in public for fear of being retaliated against by Volkow who was politically appointed to maintain the HBH because it theoretically supports the drug war, a war important to the government but anathema to the public. I wrote Bill Moyers about this following his 4 part show on addiction causation on NPR which touted the hijacked brain hypothesis � HBH - (by Volkow and her colleagues) a paradigm diametrically opposite to the genetic theory, Hypoism. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/28alettertobillmoyersclosetohomeandpbs/ . He completely ignored this letter because of the support he was getting from NIDA for the HBH, the theory his series was based on. The HBH is the reason why the addiction epidemic remains out of control and worsening. Volkow and NIDA continue to push the HBH on the unsuspecting public who is ignorant of all this behind the scenes theory war. In fact, NIDA and Volkow have gone out of their way to censor the Hypoism paradigm from the public because that is the reason she was appointed by Bush. The genetic low reward activity theory of addiction ends the basis for the drug war because a genetic paradigm means addictions can no longer be viewed as voluntary, immoral, and consciously psychological, and caused by drugs rather than by the brain of a certain group of people with low reward activity, Hypoism, the basis for the drug war. Hypoism ends the drug war and changes the emphasis for addiction prevention to the disease of Hypoism in the individual. This would be real prevention as the way to end the addiction epidemic if this paradigm is used. The implications of all this are much larger than you realize and they are all discussed in my book and in many places on my web site, particularly my blog in the web site section called �addiction blog.�. This theory of addictions, not just a theory of adhd, changes the entire field of addictionology and the basis of prevention, treatment, and public policy concerning addictions.

My web site, Hypoism.com, discusses all the ramifications of this theory change. It�s not just about adhd which will change also but is an entire revolution in the whole field of addictionology. The public needs to be informed about this so they can demand the necessary changes that need to be made in the prevailing addiction theory and paradigm our country uses to save a million lives a year in just this country alone. This is not just an interesting theory change but is vital in turning around the addiction epidemic; the only thing that can do this. It will cause the demise of this epidemic, end the drug war, and save a million lives a year as well as half a trillion dollars in wasted cash as it should have when I first detailed it but was unconscionably censored by the addiction establishment which made all its money on the wrong theory which perpetuated the epidemic and failed prevention and treatment methods, a fact. This change is 17 years late and will only happen by your informing the public about this now proven theory and its implications.

I sent my book to Diane Rheam many years ago but she too ignored it. I�ve written many NPR shows about this but have been repeatedly ignored and censored. You can�t repeat that. You have the journalistic obligation to let the public know about this theory and the book so they can be allowed to use it. Continued censorship of this paradigm by the media is tantamount to murder because its lack is truly killing addicts in droves. Addicts and their families deserve to know about this now, not one second more can they wait!

Lastly, I must tell you that I gave a lecture on Hypoism to the medical grand rounds at Brookhaven Labs in 2000; invited by Jack Wang, Volkow�s right hand man there. I have it on tape. At the time I suggested doing the study they just published as well as other studies they haven�t yet done to both prove Hypoism and to show how it works in people with low reward activity. I was not invited to participate despite my now proven theory which they heard about for the first time in my lecture. Nor have they referenced me and my work in order to claim this was their idea when in fact it was mine many years before they ever thought of it, going back to 1992. They are taking credit for my ideas without referencing me or my ideas. The public needs to know the whole story so they can know how they�ve been injured and will continue to be injured because though Volkow now has to admit low reward activity is the cause, she hasn�t a clue as to how this disease works or how it needs to be intervened on, things only my book discusses.

I sent a copy to Eliot Gardner, a world-class addiction scientist, who wrote me back after reading it, "To Dan Umanoff, M.D.: "I think you know (from previous exchanges between us) that I have been - and continue to be - receptive to your concept. I think it has much merit, as I have said previously." ---ELIOT L. GARDNER, M.D., PhD, NIDA/IRP

He agreed with all aspects of Hypoism in private but wouldn't say so in public for fear of losing his job at NIDA. So, he kept quiet about Hypoism despite knowing, "It has much merit," (he meant scientific merit) and that it would help save the lives of millions of addicts and their families. At least that letter showed my I was scientifically correct even though I could garner no support for it by scientists who were scared stiff to say so publicly. In fact, he was going to help me, using his expertise in getting papers published, write a paper about it but that never happened. I have his emails documenting that.

In March of 2000 I was invited to give medical grand rounds at Brookhaven Labs by Jack Wang, Volkow's right hand man there, on Hypoism. We videotaped it. Wang received a copy of my book that day. He agreed with it in private. In fact, they had already done several studies proving low reward activity was involved in addiction causation. They are referenced in My Hypoism Hypothesis paper - http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ which was an paper that had evolved out of my 1992 paper and was the basis for my grand rounds. The brain mechanism is discussed here: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ These papers and many of my letters to editors over the past many years have discussed the connection between Hypoism and ADHD, actually pediatric Hypoism. I asked Volkow who ran Brookhaven Labs at that time before she moved to NIDA to collaborate with me on some studies that only could be done there because of their PET scan technology meant to show the role of low reward activity in ADHD kids resulting in addictions (predicting addictions) later in life. She told me she was going to do them herself and that I wasn't invited to participate. In the meantime, she continued to push the HBH publicly, the exact opposite to the Hypoism paradigm and the basis for the worst public policy in the history of medicine, the drug war, which will turn out to the biggest medical scandal of all time when this story gets investigated by an investigative journalist someday. Why? Because the addiction field "knows" the HBH is wrong and hurting the country medically and financially but still pushes it on the unsuspecting public for political reasons. As a whistleblower I want to sue NIDA for this under the whistleblower law, but can't find a lawyer to do the case. The public knows nothing about any of this because the media has unanimously helped NIDA to censor it. My web site, which I started in 1996, is the only way for the public to know about Hypoism except they don't know to Google either my name or the word Hypoism, an unknown person and an unknown word. I've continued trying to get my paper, Hypoism Hypothesis, published to no avail, not because the science is wrong, which is not the case, but for unknown "administrative" reasons, reasons that are hurting the public by keeping them in the dark and ignorant of the real science about addiction causation and its implications on prevention, treatment, and public policies. The only way the public has to find any of this out is to stumble on one of my pages by chance. The word Hypoism has never seen the light of day in any real media outlet despite numerous letters to editors. Its censorship has been perfect.

In the last few weeks, we have seen published several studies that both support and prove Hypoism and its connection to ADHD. Volkow and Wang's paper today is one example of this. No mention of my work is made in their paper. No references to Hypoism even though I gave a lecture about it at their place. Other work by Hiroi, showing HBH wrong and the genetic theory correct, Stice, who showed that obesity in women is caused by low reward activity and low activity genetic alleles, Hypoism exactly, Tarter, and several others connecting drug and behavioral addictions and now, finally, ADHD and low reward activity (Hypoism) and addictions, all proving the HBH wrong and Hypoism correct. There's no more need for debate. The paradigm is Hypoism and its implications are already developed in my book. all the work is done. All it needs is to get to the public so they can use it. The methods are fully developed and can be used today if people know about it. Publish this letter and get the information out already. It's 17 years overdue!

Of course, I've been writing this journal, healthday, for years about Hypoism and that ADHD is Hypoism in kids. Too bad they've ignored and censored my letters about this.

Thus, the hypoism paradigm can be used to treat ADHD as well. This will, and it's the only thing that will, prevent and treat addictions in kids and adults with ADHD, otherwise known as Hypoism - new name for ADHD.

As I've been saying for 10 years, this is called Hypoism. Nice that they finally admitted it although they still need to acknowledge it as Hypoism first discovered and, connecting the dots, first connected to HYPOISM by UMANOFF. Now they can read my book, Hypoic's Handbook, and learn how to deal with it. Or, of course, they could just ignore everything I've been writing about for the last 17 years about Hypoism (and ADHD) as they have been. So, what's their excuse now? Maybe it's just that I really don't exist and therefore all my work is just a dream. And, dreams can be ignored. Dreams don't count even if they're copyrighted and published in book form. How can they deny this?

One thing this study did not measure was "numbers of kids addicted." Drug use does not equal addiction. A study like this may well have stopped non-addictive drug use in kids who were never going to be addicts. From the study there's no way of knowing this because they didn't measure it. So, except for delinquency in the eighth grade, a questionable result in isolation, there is no proven effectiveness of this study on anything worthwhile. There's no evidence it prevents addictions in the long run.

Theoretically, there's not going to be any effect on addiction in the long run because addictions are caused by an unconscious genetic disease, Hypoism. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ As an unconscious disease, conscious methods will not prevent addictions. This is why nothing has ever worked to reduce addictions in the past, and I doubt, if they had measured them over a longer time frame, that these programs would have succeeded in this either. However, I have an addiction recovery program that when used in kids before they ever use a drug can theoretically prevent addictions. This is the Hypoism recovery program as discussed in my book, Hypoic's Handbook available from my web site. I quote the book, "All this results in the recovery program for the disease of Hypoism. And, this is where we need to deal with the issue of real prevention of addictions. The same recovery program used to recover from existing addictions is also used to prevent addictions in children with the disease of Hypoism who have never had an addiction. This lowers the bottom for recognition of and recovery from this disease to day one. Once we learn how to diagnose kids born with this disease, either through genetics or behavioral manifestations specific for Hypoism, such as ADHD and ADD, these kids enter Hypoism recovery and use the recovery program exactly in the same way as addicts with this disease. We can�t and don�t want to prevent the disease itself because of all the positive characteristics of this disease (the two edged sword of Hypoism) but we do want to be able to prevent the negative aspects of it. This happens through the use of the Hypoism recovery methodology in hypoic youngsters. One day there will be a recovery program called, �Hypoics Not-Anonymous,� (unless the current 12-step programs all unite under the flag of Hypoism) where all hypoics will do their recovery. All hypoics will attend these meetings much like AA meetings today except that the membership will be based on the presence of Hypoism rather than addictions. This will be an all inclusive program and deal with all aspects of this disease, including those youngsters who have yet to get addicted. This is real prevention and the only means of prevention, actual recovery from the disease in those with and without addictions, but all with the disease of Hypoism. Hopefully, eventually, we will no longer have to deal with addictions, only pre-addictions, the disease before addictions have occurred. This, of course, is the goal of the Hypoism paradigm."

This methodology is based on the actual cause of addictions and deals with the unconscious nature of addiction causation, the genetic disease itself. You've never heard of this model because the addiction field has censored it, but it's the "underlying disease model" that everyone is now talking about. I discovered this model in 1992 and developed it over the years. The above linked paper details the scientific argument for it. And the recovery program for it specifically is derived from this theory, a proven theory of addiction causation, not from a vacuum, as today's article is. Moreover, the program is free and run by the recovering people themselves.

The Times ignores and censors anything and everything about Hypoism, the theory, the addiction paradigm based on actual science. In other words, I not only describe the free of charge Hypoism recovery methodology but also define exactly what this disease, Hypoism, is, how it actually causes addictions, and why, the pathophysiology, it needs to be treated the way I say it needs to. FREE http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ FREE and in my book, Hypoic's Handbook. Complete transparency, no treatment profit or any other kind of gain, and no conflicts of interest, right from the beginning, back in 1992. ReStart has no equivalent paper or book. My work is available for open public debate by everyone who has access to a computer or copy machine.

That's pretty bad behavior on the part of the Times. But it gets even worse. While the Times ignores and censors the only proven correct addiction theory it also supports many proven wrong theories and treatment methods based on these wrong theories, like today's article. If this same behavior were done by the Times about, let's say, leukemia, the public would be burning the Times newspapers in bonfires around the world in protest of this despicable behavior. But somehow this behavior is OK for addictions. Supporting (by publishing a story about it - free advertising) what this "internet addiction" rehab is doing if it were free and under some valid experimental research protocol might be valid behavior, but that's not the case. The rehab has no valid theory of internet addiction causation or valid basis for its treatment regime. Where is it? Mine's there. Where's theirs? Nonetheless, here's a story about it so the world can know about it. The Times never did that for Hypoism though I've asked them to since 1995, notwithstanding Hypoism having since been proven correct.

What's wrong with what the Times is doing? Well, what would the Times do about someone claiming they had a cure for leukemia when, in fact, it was bogus? Wouldn't the Times write a story saying that this kind of claim actually hurts people with leukemia because it keeps them away from legitimate and effective treatments, besides the fact that it would be stealing patient's money? Of course. The Times does this kind of thing all the time. They wouldn't allow it for leukemia or any other "real" medical disease.

So, why is this (support of bogus theory, bogus treatment, extracting money from patients without proof of efficacy) OK for addictions? I say we should ask the Times for an answer, but my guess is that the Times would say something like this: "Addicts do this to themselves, so they get what they deserve." Otherwise, what could the possible explanation be? That they support other bogus theories and treatments when, in fact, they don't? They don't. The current theory of addiction causation, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) says addictions are caused by "voluntary drug use behavior" followed by the drug changing the brain into an addicted brain. That means, "they do it to themselves." That's the theory pushed by NIDA and ASAM. The experts from NIDA and ASAM are always being quoted in NY Time's articles about this theory and its implications even though it has been proven wrong, something no one knows about because I'm essentially the only one writing about this (until recently, see Hiroi's paper in the above linked paper, and my blog for A. Goldman and E. Stice's work). Recent publications (other than my papers and book) proving Hypoism correct and the HBH wrong have clarified this issue but have been ignored by the times despite my writing them about it. Instead of this work being front page in every newspaper across the country, it has been ignored while today's nonsensical article gets published as if it were real and backed by science, which it's not. Where is NY Time's articles about Stice's and Goldman's work and their implications, the diametrically opposite implications from the HBH?

Why is this deadly behavior being done? This same kind of behavior has been killing addicts and ruining their families for decades while the truth about addictions has been censored. Besides being stupid and ignorant, this is unconscionable behavior by the Times. Of course, I've been writing this same complaint since 1996 but not a single letter of mine to them has ever been published. A perfect record of censorship.

In summary, he said, he wanted clinicians to remember that �alcohol use disorders are genetically influenced.� This genetic component should be communicated to patients with AUDs and to their family members. �You may have the ability to do a bit of prevention by educating the patient's family about the genetic risk factors that they may carry,� he suggested. Furthermore, like most psychiatric disorders, �alcoholism relates to a whole range of risk factors, and very few if any of them relate to a person's moral fiber. I'm hoping that five years from now, with the help of my friends,I will be able to start identifying kids based on their genotypes,before their first drink... and find out whether they have oneof the risk factors for alcoholism," said Schuckit. "Dependingon their age, we can determine which interventions will makesense to try to diminish the impact of those genes."

This is a very good idea. In fact, I thought it was such a good idea 17 years ago I wrote my first paper, Hypoism - A Real Disease, about this so that we could start a grass roots movement (because psychiatrists were against it at that time) to begin this kind of prevention methodology (based on genetic diagnosis and before addictions begin in at-risk youngsters) known as preventative Hypoism recovery, where Hypoism is the genetic disease that causes all addictions, not just alcohol addiction. Too bad that paper was censored and rejected for non-scientific reasons. Then I wrote the book about this genetic disease in 1996 and even wrote Psychiatry Online about it but they and the rest of the science and addiction media ignored it. My book describes the specific prevention methodology based on the pathophysiology of the disease and how it works in the brain. This was ignored and censored. Now, Dr. Schuckit suggests doing this same thing though without knowing anything about the pathophysiology of the disease or the genetic disease, Hypoism, itself, or even knowing anything about the prevention methodology (which interventions?), and his paper gets published willy nilly. This, of course, makes no sense because Schuckit is ignorant of the intervention method required by Hypoism. In fact, the whole addiction field is ignorant of this methodology, the reason there's no effective treatment or prevention today. My book details this methodology but people like Schuckit won't read my book. Yes, they all know about Hypoism but have censored and ignored it for at least 11 years when I wrote 3000 emails about Hypoism and my book, Hypoic's Handbook, to all the members of ASAM, The American Society of Addiction Medicine.

Ask any doctor, except for psychiatrists, what is the most important issue about understanding and treating any disease. They will tell you it is the theory of the disease's causation. Once the pathophysiology (what actually goes wrong, the actual biology, to cause the disease) is detailed, then the treatment can be discovered based on that. For that reason, to help solve the addiction enigma, from a theory point of view, Alan Leshner wrote an article in Science magazine on what he said was the "real" theory of addiction causation. He called this theory the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH). He said it was important that it was placed in the brain. I don't know where else it would be, in the hand? the mouth? the vein? Whatever. Then he said science had shown the biology of this disease was that the addictive drug, ingested voluntarily, goes to the brain and hijacked the reward system, changes the reward system in such an addictive way as to make it take over the body and force it to continue taking the drug compulsively and out of control despite negative consequences to the person. Thus, addiction. So, in this theory, the critical pathophysiology was in 1) taking the drug on a voluntary basis, 2) the drug changes the brain into an addicted brain. 3) the rest is history - addiction. This theory was not earthshaking because all past theories of addiction have said basically the same things. Stupid and immoral people take the drug and the drug then causes the addiction. Simple. Accordingly, we can detail the prevention and treatment of addiction: Prevention: Educate these stupid people not to take drugs, and if they do punish them. Intensify the drug war to keep drugs away from these stupid and immoral people. Treatment: Give them drugs that interfere with them from getting high or make them so sick when they take the drugs that they decide not to take the drug anymore. And some kind of psychotherapy to cure the stupid and immoral reasons they have for taking the drug to begin with. And, if they don't willingly cooperate with this we force them to. That's fair enough. Lastly, ostracism, addictophobia, society's way to let them know they are being bad. The HBH theory also mentions that genetics has something to do with some of this but this doesn't really matter because genetics is no excuse for taking drugs, a voluntary behavior wrong no matter why you take the drug, and if you just didn't take the drug to begin with you never would have gotten addicted. That's simple enough for anyone to understand. That was the definition of the HBH and it is the theory used today by NIDA and ASAM (private sector addictionologists) to run addiction prevention, treatment, and public policies across the country and around the world.

At the same time the HBH was published there had already been much science going back many years in both animals and humans to contradict every part of this theory. Critically, most people who take addictive drugs don't get addicted, and, depending on the drug, that's anywhere from 70-98 percent. 70 is cigarettes. Alcohol is 90. 92 for opiates. 92 for marijuana. 89 for stimulants other than cocaine. 83 for cocaine. That's really not anyone. It's just the people who on their own take these drugs for whatever reason. If studies were done forcing everyone to take these drugs experimentally, the numbers of people who wouldn't get addicted would be even higher, much higher. So clearly the vast majority of drug users who take these "very addictive" drugs don't get addicted. And when you study the ones who do get addicted and their families, there is a very high incidence of addiction there. The opposite occurs in those who don't get addicted. This was all known before Leshner wrote his paper and Science published it! In other words, at the time this paper was published, it was well known to be wrong. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

At the same time Leshner's paper was being published I was writing my book on the genetic pathophysiology of addictions, Hypoic's Handbook (1998). My theory called Hypoism took into account the above information that disproved the HBH and discussed that in the book along side the proof of Hypoism. It also presented the science in favor of the genetic theory, and specifically, the genetics of low reward activity in the brain of people who are going to get addicted one way or another. In other words, only a certain percentage of people, 10-15%, have the right genetics of the reward system to even get addicted. The rest of the population don't. Moreover, from animal and human studies, the reason for this is low activity alleles (mutations) of reward system genes that are inherited and already exist in the brains of people who get addicted cause them to both initially use addictive drugs and get addicted. This is the genetic underlying disease model of addictions. This is reviewed on my book and in my paper http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , a paper I attempted to get published many times but never could find a journal to publish it. I couldn't get my book reviewed anywhere either. In fact, except for a few people interested in this, no one would even read my book even though it had proven the HBH wrong and Hypoism pretty much right at that time. Since that time, Hypoism has been totally proven correct, by Hiroi's paper embedded in the above link, and see my blog http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/currentletterstoeditors72309/ under 7/28/09 (Stice) and Goldman 8/28/09, and still I can't get my paper or book reviewed or published, or get a story in any media outlet about this "addiction theory debate," despite the fact that the addiction epidemic and the drug war are still completely out of control as run by the experts at NIDA and ASAM.

The implications of Hypoism are the exact opposite of the HBH. Initial drug use by people who are going to get addicted, not those who aren't going to get addicted, is not involuntary but inexorable. Moreover, these people also get addicted inexorably, either to drugs or behaviors, not just drugs. These behaviors relate to human instincts and are a hundred different "behavioral addictions." There's nothing immoral about any of this. And coercion and punishment are ruled completely out as discussed in Aviel Goldman's paper, "The Neurobiological Development of Addiction. An Overview." Everything we do today is completely turned around. Prevention, treatment, and public policies are diametrically opposite from what they are today because of the actual pathophysiology of addictions, their cause. What this means is that unless we switch addiction theories, we will never solve the addiction epidemic or the drug war. Is this what we want? I've been writing this for 17 years. Look at all the consequences of this in that period of time!

What is the one issue the Kennedy family can teach us about that wasn't mentioned in this Kennedy love fest? Hypoism. The Kennedy family is the prototypical hypoic family (but don't tell anyone). http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/13thekennedycurseorkennedyhypoism/

I didn't just make this up. I wrote about Kennedy Hypoism in my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook. If today someone had done a Kennedy family tree and listed all the addictions present for each of them we could see the true genetic nature of their disease. Don't tell me addiction is caused by stress and bad childhoods. The Kennedy family tree is weighed down with one addiction after another but no stress, child abuse, sexual abuse, or any other abuse. The psychobabble issue in addiction causation is laid to rest by studying this massively addicted family. They aren't trailor trash brought up with crazy parents who didn't love them, care for them, or abuse them. They had every advantage anyone could have but addictions of all kinds run rife through them. Oh, maybe just being a Kennedy was the stress that caused all their addictions. Ha Ha. Don't think so. What they had is genetics, period.

So, in the face of all the recent medical reviews about the genetics of addictions why isn't the Kennedy family the poster family for the genetic paradigm of addictions and the implications of that, as listed in A. Goodman's recent review discussed yesterday in my blog. In fact, Hypoism, the two edged sword, is most likely the reason for both the massive success and the massive addiction in this family. My book discusses this. There's no reason to be ashamed of being hypoic. Overall, it's a major plus, and for this family is the cause of its terrific charisma.

If there's one thing that needs a famous family to advertise it's Hypoism. Look at all the good it could do if it admitted it was the prototype hypoic family and supported my work and foundation. Look at all the good it could do for the 30 million hypoics running around this crazy country. That's where their money and energy needs to go. That's what they need to be known for - turning around the addiction crisis, not the health care crisis.

Yesterday an earthshaking paper was published about the "underlying disease" that causes addictions written by Aviel Goodman. My review of that paper is in my blog yesterday. Though it was 17 years behind my first paper on this issue, it was better late than never. The paper concluded that "drugs don't cause drug addiction any more than gambling causes gambling addiction." That sentence drives another stake through the heart of the hijacked brain hypothesis, the current ruling theory of addiction causation that is the basis of all our country's addiction policies. Well, I wrote that 17 years ago but my paper was rejected by the addiction establishment because of that statement. Now, it's been said again but by a known addiction expert. Still, that's not enough to stimulate the media which has ignored and censored my writings and book to do a story on my work and book. There's been nothing in today's press about Goodman's review article. The same thing happened when N. Hiroi's paper came out in 2005. No press for the genetic theory of addictions. Only for the hijacked brain hypothesis, like Moyer's book. The Moyers, Bill and Cope, wrote a book about the hijacked brain hypothesis a few years ago - NIDA's theory; the addiction treatment establishment's theory. It got press up the wazoo. They were all over the media while yelled and screamed about the hijacked brain hypothesis killing addicts. My book has been flushed down the toilet and ignored, even by the Moyers boys, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/28alettertobillmoyersclosetohomeandpbs/ (to which I got no response), even though my book has been proven correct and theirs proven wrong - a good example of medicine run by people instead of by science. Of course, the Moyers are just PR tools for the addiction treatment industry, not scientists or doctors, but no one cares about their lack of credentials or conflicts of interest. So, how about we get the Kennedy's to do the same thing, but this time for Hypoism, the proven correct theory?

In the meantime the addiction crisis remains out of control and the press establishment sits there with their heads up their wazoo pushing the hijacked brain hypothesis ensuring hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by addictions when they could have been prevented and treated effectively by the Hypoism paradigm.

This article is a very comprehensive and almost endless list of things associated with addictions from genetics through a variety of environmental issues. There's such a variety of suggested causative factors, and remember, these environmental issues are mostly speculations, associations, that it makes one think that almost anything can cause addictions. The one thing it doesn't do, and this is the most critical, is that it doesn't pinpoint which of these things are necessary, sufficient, or both for the causation of addiction. In fact, this article raises so many issues that it confuses the issue more than clarifying it. Basically, almost anything out of the ordinary and "stressful" can be associated with addiction. This isn't helpful as long as they never get ruled out in some way by further studies. My strong opinion about what is causal versus what is mere association comes from the science of animal addictions such as all the genetic rodent studies. As a group, these studies show conclusively that genetics is the key to addiction causation, not environment, because by just manipulating the genetics can we alter whether the animal is addictable or not. Moreover, all the environmental issues could be caused by the same genetics listed under "genetic causes" which would then mean that genetics is the cause, not the environmental issues themselves, the most likely case. Also, there are so many things involved that it's almost like throwing a thousand things against the wall and seeing what sticks for any particular person. This general mess of a theory is not helpful for lending specificity to the understanding of understanding causation. My strong feeling is that one thing is necessary and sufficient for addictions to be caused, low reward activity in the instinct regulatory apparatus. Thus, changing the name of this "underlying biological vulnerability" to Hypoism is important for a variety of conceptual reasons and treatment reasons as discussed in my book and web papers.

Thankfully, at the end of this endless list, there are some conclusions based on the characteristics of this myriad of causations. Not one of them is conscious, willful, volitional, or immoral on the part of the future addict. - thus ruling out again the issue of choice and immorality in the occurrence of addictions in any particular person. The author states specifically that: 1) "A wealth of neuroscience research has converged to provide a neurobiological foundation for the theory that all addictive disorders share an underlying biological vulnerability." In other words, Hypoism is the disease and addictions are some of its symptoms. I've been saying this since 1992 in my first paper on "Hypoism - A Real Disease." 2) "Recognizing them to be addictive disorders identifies them as medical syndromes rather than moral failings." 3) "It directs attention and energy toward treatment, collaborative fostering of health, and prophylaxis, rather than toward exhortation, punishment, and fostering of guilt and shame." The Hypoism recovery methodology is used for both prevention of addictions in early diagnosed hypoics (children) and treatment. 4) "Drug addiction is not caused by exposure to drugs, any more than pathological gambling is caused by exposure to gambling." - thus again ruling out the damaging hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), NIDA's theory, as a viable addiction theory. The HBH must be finally dumped for us to move forward as I have argued for the past 13 years. These implications must be used immediately to change the addiction paradigm!

The article states, "Fatness has always been seen as a slight on the American character. Ours is a nation that values hard work and discipline, and it's hard for us to accept that weight could be not just a struggle of will, even when the bulk of the research�and often our own personal experience�shows that the factors leading to weight gain are much more than just simple gluttony."

This statement shows the paradox between belief/opinion and science. This is the old superstition (belief without an iota of proof) vs. science issue. "People believe what they want to believe." This thinking paradox runs riot in the field of addictions where obesity is just one of a hundred or so addictions, a "behavioral" addiction with its basis in a human instinct regulated by the instinct regulating apparatus, as discussed in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, and my major paper: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ The paper concerning the evolutionary origin of this brain mechanism is: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/

This science-based theory has been around since 1992 and would have dispelled the stigma of addiction long ago had it not been for its censorship by, guess who, the addiction establishment headed by NIDA itself. Yes, although the science clearly and simply shows all addictions have their physiological basis in the instinct regulating apparatus which is unconscious and involuntary, as discussed in my writings above, the beliefs and opinions (bullshit) of the addictionology consensus, a non-scientific entity, 3000 biased and mindless robots are no more and no different from one robot and thus don't truly represent a real consensus, overrule the reality by their numbers and power not their intellect. The actual American value here is, "Bullshit sells." Headed by the three stooges, the chiefs of NIDA, NIAAA, and NIMH, this consensus has maintained by pure numbers and pseudoscience, the hijacked brain hypothesis, the moral basis of addictions, the paradigm of character critiqued in this article by merely stating it absent any allowed dissent either by them or the kissass media whose motto is, "I see nothing. I know nothing. I say nothing." And the American people go right along with it because they love this paradigm as much as the experts in addictions do. In fact, they go along with this paradigm for all the addictions. I call this the "Hypoic Genocide," defined and discussed here: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/entitledtoyouropinionnotanymore/

Yes, as the article states, people love hating addicts and in order to maintain that loving feeling they deliberately lie and misinterpret the science to suit their hateful biases ensuring the immorality and stigma of "willful character deficiency" rather than genetic dopamine deficiency as the actual cause of these entities. Read the AA literature. It's all about psychobabble, character defects, morality, and godly redemption rather than genetics and the brain and dealing somehow with that issue as I do in my book. AA, OA, and all the A's have stuck to their guns on this crap despite it killing millions of addicts. AA comes first. Bill Wilson next. Addicts last. All for the sake of this moral paradigm that has no real place in any addiction. In fact, their paradigm is the one thing that maintains the addiction epidemic by brainwashing and making useless the exact people needed to fight the paradigm war, addicts themselves.

Despite all the damage this moral paradigm has done to this country no one will read my papers and book for the fear that they will have to admit their theory wrong and change their murderous attitudes and beliefs to one that is slightly more understanding and humane, even the addicts themselves! Go to any AA meeting and listen to the "recovering" people talk about their kids dying from addictions, and the one thing they never discuss is the need for the right theory to replace their theory. They are so brainwashed and made into cult followers as to sacrifice their own children to their cult's beliefs. This is directly caused by the hijacked brain hypothesis and the power of NIDA which justify their own similar theory. And that goes for every one of the 100 or so anonymous groups for each individual addiction following the lead of AA.

AA could change the world of addictions infinitely for the better if they just re-evaluated the science of addiction causation and used the proven Hypoism paradigm instead of Bill W's psychobabble, superstitious, and moralistic paradigm that dates to the 1930's. The funny thing is that Hypoism was just recently proved by studies by Eric Stice (on my blog 7/28/09 http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/currentletterstoeditors72309/) in female obesity shown to be caused by genetic low reward system activity as discussed in my continuously updated paper, the Hypoism Hypothesis paper linked above. When I informed him of the Hypoism theory which he had never heard of because of its censorship, and its papers, he wrote me, "Sounds like you figured this all out much earlier than the rest of us!" So, why is Hypoism censored? Because of addict hatred, addictophobia. Exactly what today's article discusses.

What exactly are they worried about? The addiction problem can't get any worse under the laws we have today. In fact, a study done by WHO showed that there is a direct correlation between the strength of anti-drug laws and increased use of and addiction to drugs, just the opposite of what these people say and believe. Why wasn't that mentioned in the article?

Maybe these anti-drug (pro drug-war) people can site the benefits of the drug war. I'd like to see that. There is no list like that. There's not a single benefit of the drug war. Not a single policy does what they want it to do. In fact, the drug war has not touched the addiction side of the equation but made everything else worse. The drug war has only made everything worse. So, what are they talking about? The fact is that their main argument for the drug war is that drugs, drug use, and addictions are immoral and have to be fought at any cost to the public, just like a real stupid war. It's all about morality, nothing about saving addict's lives. The drug war mostly hurts addicts lives. There's no evidence the drug war helps addicts whatsoever unless you believe jail is a nice place to live. I don't see the drug warriors moving into jails. And they say the drug war must be won for this moral reason. The drug war must be won, not that addictions need to be reduced but the drug war must be won.

You know that the drug war was started for one supposed reason, as a solution to the addiction epidemic. They could think of no other way to stop addictions because the demand side of the issue was a lost cause. They had no way to stop people from using drugs so they decided the drug war was the only solution to stop the addiction epidemic. That was 1970. The addiction problem is worse today than then and the drug war only hurts people, not helps people. So, we need to admit this and stop the drug war so we can move our brains and resources to solutions that actually might work to stop the addiction epidemic, the main reason for all this to begin with.

We know the current demand side policies also don't work to stem addictions. But is there another demand side addiction theory that might actually work? Should we look into whether something like this exists? Well, if we keep putting all our eggs in the current addiction and policy theory and methods, there are no eggs available for anything new. The first thing we have to do is admit the current theory and policies don't work. That's about honesty. There wasn't a single word about this in the article. I read Portugal's policy white paper and wrote about it in this blog. It's a joke and is as bad as what we are doing here today. Besides it has nothing in it about needing a new addiction paradigm. It uses the same wrong and ineffective paradigm we use here which we know doesn't work. They're just kidding themselves. It's a complicated mess that screws eveything up so bad it's uselss and does nothing about prevention and treatment.

The main reason none of these things work is because they're all based on a theory that is scientifically wrong. And wrong theory results in wrong policies, no matter what the policies are. So, changing policies without changing theories is stupid and ridiculous. That's what the anti-drug war people want to do. That's as bad as the drug war. They both hurt addicts. What we need as I said is the correct theory to fix this mess and no one's looking for that except me. I seem to be the only person in the world who is willing to admit the current mess is caused by the wrong theory and that the correct theory will fix the mess. Let's find the right theory and it should fix the mess. Well, that's the way it is for the rest of the field of medicine, so why wouldn't it be right in this part of the medical arena? Of course it is. So, I looked into the science of addiction causation in 1990 and after about two years of reading discovered the actual cause of addictions, and it wasn't what the experts then or today were saying. It wasn't about stupidity or immorality or about the drugs themselves but about genetics, period, the genetics of the regulation of the instinct regulating apparatus by genetically diverse genetic alleles of genes that regulate this brain machine turning a normal non-addicting machine into and addiction producing machine, all unconsciously and against the will of the person with this disease. It's as simple as that even though it is diametrically opposite to the current theory, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH). I've written about this a million times in the past so there's no need for me to go into the science behind this. The science is discussed in my paper and book, Hypoic's Handbook. The paper is at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ It not only proves the HBH wrong but proves Hypoism correct. So, there's the theory. It exists and is detailed in my book and paper. All we need to do is teach the world about it and begin to use it. What's the problem? Huh? I've done all the leg work on the theory and policies derived from this theory. All you need to do is tell the world about it so they can begin to use it for prevention, treatment, and public policies. No need to worry about the morality because there is no morality involved. Just learn the theory and use it. It will fix the addiction mess and by doing so solves the drug cartel mess. It fixes everything without a war against anything. There's no more drug war so you don't have to worry about if the war is being fought correctly or not. Hypoism ends the drug war without a single shot fired. It's all packaged and ready to go. All you need to do is tell the world about it.

On 6/30/09 I commented on an article: From Excess to Exercise: Group Helps Men and Women Live Sober Through Sweat , http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2009/06/29/from-excess-to-exercise-group-helps-men-and-women-live-sober-through-sweat.aspx You can read that comment on my blog under the date 6/30/09. Now we have an article confirming my comment saying exercise, "runner's high," can "turn into a real addiction." Nonetheless, they still suggest using it as a way to improve recovery, the old replace a "worse" addiction with a "good" addiction as if it is accepted that addicts will always be addicted to something, so they may as well be addicted to a good addiction instead of their primary bad addictions. Thus, Methadone. And morphine was used to treat alcohol addiction in the 1900's. Etc. This kind of thinking has been killing addicts for over a hundred years. Irrespective of this side effect, addiction "experts" and people who think they are experts keep repeating this nonsense. It's because they know nothing about the cause of addictions nor the implications of that cause.

Why do I call it nonsense? First, even though it sounds good, there's no evidence that exchanging a "good" addiction for a "bad" addiction, as compared to real abstinence in the process of real recovery, actually helps long term with the "bad" addiction or the person's life in general as they say it should. More importantly is that this particular kind of "treatment" has no basis in fact or in any correct addiction causation theory. What is the theory of addictions used by these experts that compels them to treat addictions with addictions? In real medicine we have a disease and a theory of causation of this disease and treatment is derived from this theory. Pneumonia is caused by bacteria, so antibiotics specific for the causal bacteria is used for treatment. That's diagnosis, pathophysiological theory, followed by treatment based on the theory. This is how medicine works. I go through this thinking method in my paper on addiction causation, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . The biggest problem we have faced in the field of addictions is that we don't use this thinking method. We have skipped the pathophysiology of addiction causation and go from what we think (not proved) the disease is right to the treatment. That's how AA got started. That's how morphine got to be used to treat alcoholism. But, as we all know or should know by now if we're being honest about addiction science, addictions are as much out of control today as they were a hundred years ago and there is no current treatment that has been proved to actually work better than pure chance or even nothing.

So, even though the authors don't specify the pathophysiology of addiction in this article, they suggest that opiate addiction is caused by some kind of opiate deficiency for which there is absolutely no evidence. In fact, they used normal rats to test their theory about exercise, not opiate deficient rats. So, their rat experiments are out of context from the start. They also mentioned dopamine but don't say how dopamine is involved in addiction causation and they don't use dopamine deficient rats to test their hypothesis. They merely imply that somehow opiate addiction is caused by some kind of endogenous opiate or dopamine, reward system, problem in these addicts, but, again, they used normal rats, not opiate or dopamine deficient rats. They say that rats can be used to simulate human problems, true, but they used normal rats, not opiate or dopamine deficient rats. Normal humans do not get addicted but apparently these experts think they do, thus justifying why normal rats were used. Big mistake. In other words, they have no theory of addiction causation to test in this experiment. They are doing the same thing that has been done for a hundred years in addictionology, go from disease to treatment with no pathophysiological theory to dictate either the experiment or the treatment implications. But they say so nonetheless. This is crap science which is why they come up with crappy suggestions for treatment of addiction.

However, there does exist a proven theory of addiction causation that does have to do with reward deficiency. That paper I linked above is a paper about this theory called Hypoism, hypo for low, genetic low reward activity causes addictions. This includes so-called "low dopamine" and even low endorphins. Thus, addictions are caused by neurotransmitter deficiencies in the reward system. But that doesn't mean raising dopamine will cure this cause. How do we know this? In reality, raising dopamine actually is what causes addictions, not what cures them. All addictors (things hypoics get addicted to) raise dopamine (that's why they are addictors) and cause addiction in people with Hypoism. This is why running (a dopamine raising behavior) causes addiction to running, not curing Hypoism but just causing another addiction. This is discussed in detail in my paper and book, Hypoic's Handbook. This is why we don't use dopamine raisers as treatment, but people who don't understand this still make this anti-scientific suggestion. They don't know Hypoism is the cause of addictions and don't understand what to use for treatment, even suggesting using other addictions to treat primary addictions such as opiate addiction.

The problem with using one addiction to treat another is that they remain addicted and will continue to bounce back and forth from one to another, relapsing indefinitely. That's why we use hypoism recovery only to allow for recovery. This methodology is derived from the pathophysiology of the disease of Hypoism and is specific for this disease. It is discussed at length in my book Hypoic's Handbook. Using the wrong treatment, as suggested in this article, will just cause relapses, not prevent them because the addict is still seeking to do what they initially did when they first got addicted, raise dopamine levels. Using Hypoism recovery which is all about acceptance of low dopamine, not raising dopamine, as explained in the book leads to real recovery and maintained abstinence. The wrong paradigm is all about changing feelings and chemistry. The correct paradigm, Hypoism, is about acceptance of this, a diametrically opposite treatment method based on the actual science of addiction causation, not on what the experts want it to be. Treatment based on change is exactly what caused the addictions to begin with. Only acceptance can allow recovery. And even the word recovery is wrongly used. Their "recovery" is about the addictor while real recovery, Hypoism recovery, is about the disease. Two completely different and important things. Hypoism recovery is based on how the genetic defects in the instinct regulating apparatus actually work, not how we wish they work. This is why we avoid like the plague dopamine raising in its treatment, the exact opposite of what "experts" who don't know about this pathophysiology suggest and with which they screw up these addict's recovery. I used to say "well meaning experts" since they didn't know about Hypoism, but now, because they DO know about Hypoism, or should, I delete the "well meaning" part. They are not well meaning. They are conflicted and biased and put the addicts last, not first. They continue to do this stuff because they refuse to acknowledge the truth about the cause of addictions for personal conflicted reasons. Not good. This is why I had to make another comment on this particular issue - to finish my first commentary.

Here's a quote from a commenter on a NY Times article by Morris about lying: "I was just thinking, for some strange reason, that it is easier to deceive than convince another of the truth� Why is that? Properly considered, a good lie doesn�t involve �proof of any kind.� But an assertion of �the truth,� often requires proof of many kinds."

Instead of health-care reform, let's apply these statements to the addiction debate. Not only do ordinary laypeople make the thinking mistakes discussed in Begley's article but so do the health and science journalists across the entire media. For 14 years I've been debating several areas of the addiction arena which I know are causing the mess in addiction policy, from prevention to treatment to the drug war. Despite the addiction epidemic being the number one health problem facing our country for the last 25 years at least and our complete failure to fix it, we have continued to believe the same "experts," their theory of addiction causation, and the policies derived from that theory. The fact is that they have never proved this theory (as the above quote about lying says), the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), but merely stated it in a Science article by Alan Leshner: Leshner A.: Addiction is a Brain Disease, and it Matters, Science; 278, 45-70, 10/3/07. If you look at NIDA's web site, again there is no proof of the HBH, but it nevertheless dictates everything said on the web site. In medicine theory dictates policy, and if we have a wrong theory we invariably have wrong and ineffective policy. In fact, you can bet your bottom dollar that if policies aren't working it's because the theory is wrong. That's the nice thing about medicine as opposed to politics where opinions, not theory, are used for policy determination. The problem with the addiction crisis, mess, epidemic, is that the HBH is an opinion and not a proven theory, even when it was first delineated by Leshner in 1997. The HBH runs everything in addictions but has never been proved. There are many reasons for this, particularly because of conflicts of interest, the old cognitive dissonance thing.

So, I come along for the sake of addicts and their families and prove the HBH wrong and show that it is this reason why addictions are the mess they are using real science and real logic and replace this proven wrong theory with a proven correct theory: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ , the same people who say they want to fix the addiction mess ignore and censor from the public this information including 100% of the media, and this includes Begley, the author of today's article which is against that kind of behavior. They won't acknowledge it, read it or debate it, a very good strategy for keeping it from the public as long as I have no other way to inform the public about it. The addiction scientists supporting the HBH know about my article and book, Hypoic's Handbook, know they're correct yet they continue to push the wrong, ineffective, and harmful HBH theory and paradigm on the country ensuring the addiction epidemic continues. This confirms the above quotes about how lies work. The public knows nothing about all this.

But here I am writing the author of today's article about this addictionology lie and the perpetuation of this lie which maintains the mess in addictions, something I've done many times in the past, and she will again ignore this letter and its implications despite writing an article about how wrong this kind of behavior is. How does she sleep at night and the Newsweek editors too? What is this other than massive hypocrisy and unethical journalism at its worst.

As you can see, this book is getting quite a lot of press time and space. It deserves none. I'm trying to comment on this book and the author's interviews but most of them are closed to comments by now. I've commented on it recently (7/29/09) but feel compelled to do another blog about it because of the massive amount of press it has received while simultaneously not getting a single scientifically correct argument against it. The main problem with all this press is that the reviewers and interviewers know nothing about addictions, so their attempts at argument fail because they haven't a clue what to argue about. They all miss the crucial issue. I'm the only commenter I could find that raises the correct issues and critique but no one has interviewed me. Thus, Heyman gets away with intellectual murder.

Heyman happens to be correct about one thing and only one thing that he says - addiction is not a disease. That's true. Hypoism says that's true. Addiction is not a disease. And that's the problem. Heyman's argument that proves addiction is not a disease is completely wrong and even irrelevant (that addicts can on their own for non-biological reasons stop what they are addicted to. all diseases require biological methods to cure them.) That's his proof that addiction is not a disease - "because no other diseases work this way." That may well be true, but that's not proof that addiction isn't a disease. In truth, he doesn't define the word disease and in my opinion doesn't know what the word disease means as don't all the rest of the commenters and interviewers. I wrote a discussion of the word disease on my web site so anyone can read it, understand it, and use it to discuss this issue. No one else has done this because they all assume they know what the word means. Here's my discussion on that word: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/diseaseconcept1aperspective/ This web page was written many years ago for the purpose of putting everyone on the same page literally and figuratively about the word disease. Heyman doesn't use the word in any way that approaches the reality which is why his book and arguments are useless and confused from the outset. Everything else he says about this topic is wrong, but because no one knows this, they have no way to dispute his argument, a completely specious argument as I will show. Moreover, it will be clear why voluntary quitting of an addiction is evidence for nothing concerning whether addiction is or is not a disease. Besides, addiction is not a disease as I've already said, and therefore it doesn't matter what Heyman's argument is about this issue. There's nothing that needs to be said about this fact, mostly because it means nothing. The real issue is what addictions are, not whether they are a disease or not, because we already know they aren't a disease.

So, what are addictions? The science of addiction causation shows clearly, and it's discussed here: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, as well as elsewhere on my web site in a million places, what addictions are. Since a disease must have a pathophysiology to be a disease, which addictions do not - it's a behavior and behaviors are by definition not diseases; behaviors can only be symptoms - for there to be a disease in here somewhere, we must show that addiction is caused by a definitive pathophysiology - a pathological alteration of a normal physiology, which is the definition of the word disease. And, this pathophysiology has to occur or exist prior to the addiction. That is exactly what Hypoism is, an altered physiology present at conception that makes a particular part of the brain produce addictions involuntarily and unconsciously against the will of the patient, the addict. Hypoism is a genetic disease of low reward activity that causes addiction (one of the symptoms of this disease) by genetically altering the instinct regulating apparatus of the brain at birth (part of which is the reward system) into a machine that inexorably causes addictions unconsciously and involuntarily at some later time in the person's life. But because no one writing these articles or interviewing Heyman or reviewing his book knows anything about Hypoism, they can't and don't confront him with it. They can't make a scientifically correct argument. I've been trying for the last 17 years to inform the public and the addiction establishment about this pathophysiology but because I've been ignored and censored for conflict of interest reason, reasons of bias, still to this day no one knows about this pathophysiology/disease that explains the cause of addictions, all hundred of them, to drugs and behaviors, and shows why addiction is not the or a disease but actually a symptom of a disease, the disease called Hypoism, explained in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, that's been in print since 1998, and in my web papers if people would only read them. This is why Heyman is correct when he says addiction is not a disease but also why everything else he says is categorically wrong and deliberately misleading because he doesn't know about Hypoism (even though I've written him about it he still ignores it proving he's not interested in the truth but only in selling his stupid and dangerous book). Once Heyman reads my writings there's nothing for him to do but say, "nevermind." But he'll try to get by without doing that as long as possible just to sell his stupid and ignorant book.

Once the public is allowed to be made aware of Hypoism and its scientific basis, they will be able to intelligently reject Heyman's nonsense. The same can be said for all the other nonsensical addiction theories that have overwhelmed the addiction field for the past hundred years. But will they read my work? so far the evidence shows they will not read it lest it ruin their pet theories. Ha Ha. It turns out that no one, except for a few honest people who have bought my book because they truly want to understand addictions, actually wants to know the science of addictions and its true cause. They want to believe the theories they want to believe. And, that's why the field of addictions is the mess it is and will continue to be as long as Hypoism is ignored and censored.

Every so often, in fact very very rarely, someone comes along and puts two and two together to denote a new paradigm so complete and perfect that it is instantly rejected by virtually all the experts in the field (The PIMMPAL complex - http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/pimmpalcomplex/ ). For example, I was summarily kicked out of ASAM immediately following my sending them a copy of my book, Hypoic's Handbook. The reason for this is that their worldwide addictionology scam is ruined if word gets out about the new paradigm irrespective of the fact that addicts around the world would be fixed and the addiction epidemic would be cured by this new paradigm. Those few experts who agreed with it have been so afraid to get similarly rejected, ostracized and punished they keep their mouth's shut tight (except for a few who wrote me emails by mistake agreeing with me). Eliot Garner, M.D. at NIDA is one of those. His email is quoted on the home page of my web site along with Eric Stice's.

In 1992 I wrote my first paper about Hypoism, "Hypoism - A Real Disease." This paper was rejected by 12 addiction journals but one of those 12 editors spoke to me on the phone, agreeing with me in secret. He was also a member of AA, but he rejected the paper nonetheless. That really pissed me off and changed my tone for all future writings. My anger became palpable because the censorship of Hypoism was now truly and verifiably responsible for the deaths of a million addicts a year and the ruination of the lives and families of many many more addicts. That paper, through evolution and updating, eventually became the paper called the "Hypoism Hypothesis" http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ of today. Another paper about the evolutionary psychology of the brain mechanism and genetic diversity causing Hypoism was accepted at the yearly 2000 Evolutionary Psychology convention at Amherst College. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ I gave a lecture in 2000 to the medical conference at Brookhaven Labs on these papers. Jack Wang, Volkow's right hand man at that time at Brookhaven, secretly agreed with me about Hypoism (otherwise, why would he invite me to give this talk) but has never mentioned Hypoism in public since that day. Volkow, his boss and now chief of NIDA, a political appointment, was present at the labs that day but purposely didn't attend the talk. She heads the PIMMPAL complex and doles out the money to the rest of it.

I began writing letters about Hypoism to the NY Times in 1995 published on my web site under the section "old letters." Here's the first page of letters from that section: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/nytimesletterstotheeditor/ Through today not a single one of these has ever been published by the Times, helping with the censorship of Hypoism. The newer letters, all similarly unpublished, are on my web site under "addiction blog." There is ample scientific evidence in the papers and the letters to prove Hypoism correct and all other current paradigms wrong. Despite this Hypoism remains totally ignored and censored by the media and the addiction establishment. In 1998 my book, Hypoic's Handbook, was finally published by me. It had to be self-published because despite having the help of a literary agent we were unable to find a "real" publisher. The one person at the agent's office who read the book said the book would be the addiction book of the century. Nonetheless, no publisher.

I sent copies of that book to about 50 heavy duty media outlets and handpicked addiction experts. Only one of these, Eliot Gardner, responded. I never heard from the rest except the Times' David Corcoran who said, "The book is not for us." This note came so fast I don't think he had time to read the book, 500 pages of very heavy stuff. When I asked him why, he said, "We don't have to say why." About 400 people by chance found my web site while looking for related things in Google searches and bought the book. Many of them have told me personally that Hypoism is the first addiction paradigm that ever made sense to them and that it changed their lives and recoveries for the better. No one who has read the book has ever told me they disagreed with it.

There are literally hundreds of all new and science-based ideas and concepts mentioned and discussed in Hypoic's Handbook and the linked papers. Since 1998 almost all of them have been validated by peer reviewed published studies. This is well documented in my blog and letters to the editors published on my web site. Using heroin for harm reduction, not "treatment" as today's stupid article says, is just one of them. All the media outlets know this because I continue to send them copies of my blog everyday as well as letters about articles that appear on their web sites. Despite this and their implications on the field of addictions the media continues to ignore and censor Hypoism, consciously helping to maintain the old and known wrong and ineffective current addiction paradigm that is killing a million addicts a year and wasting at least 580 billion dollars a year.

Why would the media and the addiction establishment do this while knowing Hypoism is correct and its methods would cure the addiction epidemic if put into effect?

It would have been nice if Tierney had shown where science came into the picture of this article. The article makes several implications but no scientific correlations to actual future behavior past 7 years of age, and even that correlation was very vague, "more behavioral problems," whatever that means. This is real psychobabble nonsense (until real correlations are made, if and when they are ever made). What this article doesn't do is show anything like cause and effect, just speculative implications which can only do one thing, give excuses for judgmental people to stigmatize and demonize other people who do or don't have enough guilt and remorse for their taste. This is very dangerous stuff. It allows self-righteous people in power, what I call "assholes with power" to mess with kid's lives and futures through speculative prognostication before the kids have demonstrated any particular behavior, only presence or absence of remorse and guilt. In fact, it gives assholes with power bullshit ammunition to make the same kinds of judgments and prognostications about anyone whenever they might feel like doing so. Assholes with power love to do this and this study gives them more ammunition for this kind of prognostication. I hear about assholes with power doing this kind of stuff today, even without studies like today's. For example, I know of a previously addicted doctor with an excellent real medical practice history who, though documented clean and sober for eight years with countless negative forensic urines and a history of never causing any patient injury before and during his addiction, who was deemed "dangerous to the public" because he didn't have remorse for things he never did but "could have." Can you imagine? Because of this out of thin air speculation based on absolutely nothing but bias and demonization of addicts ("all addicts are dangerous") the assholes with power who were judging whether to reinstate his medical license chose to reject his reinstatement because of that lack of sufficient remorse presumption even though he had done nothing to anyone that might cause him to have remorse. In fact, it wasn't about remorse or public safety or anything other than that they didn't like him that allowed them to use this excuse and their discretion to deny his reinstatement. They merely rationalized their behavior with the "lack of remorse for things he didn't do but could have" excuse to justify their dislike for him. To me this is no different from lynching a man for merely being black because of bias and prejudice. Thus, generalizations and stereotyping studies such as today's absent specific and definitive future correlations are the problem, not "insufficient" remorse or shame or whatever on the part of the person being judged. Remorse for being an addict is a tricky issue. If one believes addiction is caused by genetics and unconscious neurobiology outside the control of the individual that person will not have remorse or guilt about being an addict. Lack of remorse for being an addict is a normal outcome of that belief. Likewise, guilt and remorse for being an addict is derived from the belief that addiction is a moral choice. Today's addiction paradigm, the hijacked brain hypothesis, the moral paradigm of addiction causation, makes addicts who believe this paradigm have guilt and remorse, while addicts who believe in the genetic paradigm of addiction causation will not have remorse. Assholes with power who believe in the hijacked brain hypothesis will demand remorse from all addicts even if they meet the same objective criteria for reinstatement as those with remorse. Well, it turns out that the hijacked brain hypothesis has been scientifically proven wrong and the genetic theory correct. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ Can you imagine the remorse criterion being the deciding issue of whether a fine doctor should be allowed to practice medicine particularly when the theory that insists on remorse has been disproven? This kind of destructive behavior still reigns today in the administrative law process of dealing with recovering doctors and their futures. It stems from attitudes derived from studies like the one in today's article. In fact, these recovering doctors are still advised by their lawyers to lie about having remorse even when they have none and should have none. I didn't lie and I got punished, I didn't get my license back. The liars got their licenses back. I don't think you're supposed to lie in these hearings. Ha Ha. This behavior is what is dangerous and needs to be publicized and changed along with the theory of addictions that it is based on. Doctors in recovery shouldn't have to lie about having remorse and guilt in order to satisfy the self-righteous assholes with power who still believe in the moral paradigm of addictions. These lies occur daily in hearings across the country. The other downside of remorse for being an addict is that these addicts have a very hard time recovering because they see themselves as bad people who don't deserve recovery or even the forgiveness for being an addict which they shouldn't need anyway as the genetic theory removes it. They keep punishing themselves when there should be no guilt whatsoever. But the wrong theory of addiction causation demands and causes it. This is a major impediment to both entering recovery as well as doing recovery today. Even the textbook, Substance Abuse, A Comprehensive Textbook 1997 edition, says unnecessary guilt and remorse are primary causes of relapse as well as suicide in addicts. My 1998 book, Hypoic's Handbook, discusses remorse and guilt and their relationship to many aspects of addiction in great depth. Several self-punishing primary addictions such as anorexia, bulimia, self-mutilation, body dysmorphic disorder, and hair pulling, are addictions to the ostracism instinct.

The article states, "Stein said the study should not deter use of ADHD drugs in teens who really need them, particularly since there's evidence that kids with ADHD who don't get medication are at risk for abusing illicit drugs."

There's something wrong here. This quote implies that kids with ADHD who get treated with medications have a lower risk for "abusing illicit drugs." There is no such evidence, except for invalid evidence, supporting this implication. Kids with ADHD have a high incidence of drug addiction with or without being treated. There's no valid evidence that treatment lowers the incidence of later drug addiction. It is irresponsible and negligent for the associated press to publish an unsupported implication like this without a reference to the specific evidence. Likewise it is irresponsible for msnbc to publish the associated press article with this statement. This is how dangerous misinformation gets spread to the public.

I've written about this article previously, but because there's nothing new to write about today I decided to write another blog about this article. That's not the only reason. The other reason is that it still angers me and my previous comments have not been answered by this journal or any other. Previously I asked many questions the article didn't answer and I'm still waiting for these answers. The authors of this article are Pulitzer Prize winning journalists so you'd think they'd be capable of answering these questions, if they had actually done the research they should have done to write the article to begin with. Unless they just don't want to. So, why haven't they? Here we go again. Let's see if I get some answers this time. Please answer the following questions for the sake of completeness and fairness.

Of course, we don't want impaired doctors and nurses doing their duties while impaired. We don't want anyone, not just health professionals, doing their duties while impaired. 1) Why are addicted health professionals singled out for this kind of article? 2) What constitutes impairment? This question is never answered. It is always assumed, and it is assumed to be just addictions. 3) Where are the studies that define impairment? and 4) where's the list of these things that impair people? This list is a lot longer than you might think and most of them are not addictions. 5) Why aren't all impaired people dealt with in this article, not just addicts? In fact, we are interested in not just impaired people but all injurious people. It's well known that injurious people constitute a much larger group than just impaired people. 6) Are all impaired people injurious? 7) Are all injurious people impaired? So, we really want to have an article about injurious people because by definition these are the one's who are injuring other people, right? The real issue is 8) how are we dealing with injurious people? Health professionals? 9) Do you know that all the studies on this issue show, in medicine at least, that on a percentage basis addicted professionals injure patients at the same rate as non-addicted professionals, about 6%? When it comes to malpractice suits, addicts have a lower rate of suits than non-addicts. Do you know that? The largest study of patient injuries caused by medical mistakes was written up in a book available free on the web called "To Err is Human." I read it and addicted medical professional aren't even mentioned in the book. So I called the lead author and asked her about this. She told me there was no evidence that on the whole deadly medical errors were caused by addicted medical professionals and therefore they weren't listed as a cause in the book. Deadly medical mistakes were, for the most part, caused by non-addicted professionals. Does anyone know this? No. So, it turns out that articles like today's are actually a witch hunt against addicts rather than an attempt to prevent lethal medical mistakes. Yes, there are occasional addicted professionals that do cause patient injury but for the most part medical injuries are caused by non-addicted professionals. Addicted professionals however are so easy to pick out and blame they are the ones this problem is blamed on even though they aren't responsible for the problem. This is part of our stigma and ostracism campaign and discrimination against addicts rather than an honest attempt to correct the patient injury and medical mistake problem. In fact, when a non-addicted medical professional injures a patient, even multiple times, essentially no punishment is applied, but when an addicted professional injures a patient, they are severely punished, sometimes criminally. In fact, when addiction is found in a medical professional absent any patient injury they are just as severely punished while non-addicted professional commit multiple patient injuries and merely get slaps on the wrist. I documented this in my book on addictions, Hypoic's Handbook, from the NYS Health Department web site data. There is massive discrimination against addicted medical professionals based on differential handling of these people, a major reason why addicted professionals go underground when they find they are addicted. Instead of being helped they are destroyed personally and professionally. This makes them more likely rather than less likely to do damage over time. The whole system to deal with this makes all this worse rather than better.

This system needs to be changed, and I suggest these changes that would get these people into recovery earlier in my book and web site, such as the paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/committeeonphysicianhealthspeech/ . Simple things like group disability insurance is one thing that would help in all this. Instead, we would rather revoke the licenses of these addicts rather then help them get into recovery earlier and make it easier for them to do this. I suggest many ways to do this but have been ignored and censored. It seems that the issue that motivates all this behavior against addicts is addict hatred rather than public safety. Too bad hatred doesn't save patients from their injuries which are mostly derived from non-addicted professionals though you'd never know it.

Actually, the most effective way to help addicted professionals has to do with changing the addiction paradigm from the wrong one, the hijacked brain hypothesis, to the correct one, the Hypoism Hypothesis, the genetic theory of addictions. This change would lead to effective prevention and treatment which today's wrong theory doesn't allow, because it is wrong. The scientific argument against the hijacked brain hypothesis and for Hypoism is in my book as well this paper, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

The main reason addictions remain the mess they are and the reason addicts are discriminated against is the hijacked brain hypothesis and other similar wrong theories based not on science but on bias and addict hatred. All this will be changed if and when we acknowledge the science-based Hypoism paradigm and allow the country to learn it and use it. It ends the addiction epidemic and the drug war, and solves all addiction related problems. No one knows this needs to be done because the entire debate on the science of addiction causation has been censored by the addictionology establishment who wants the wrong paradigm because it makes all its money off it. Thus, blaming the addict is key to the whole current paradigm's longevity, and that's what the hijacked brain hypothesis does, though it doesn't solve a single addiction related problem. Hating, commoditizing and abusing addicts are more important to them than solving the addiction epidemic. This is the biggest medical scandal of all time and no one knows about it because it's been kept out of the media by the addiction establishment and the government, which handpicked the head of the addiction establishment, Nora Volkow, chief of NIDA, a political appointee who is in charge of essentially all the research money in the field of addictions. She is the main reason the hijacked brain hypothesis is still the ruling paradigm even though it has been proven wrong long ago.

So, you can see, if you choose to, that the entire addiction paradigm is being fraudulently maintained based on scientific misinterpretations, untruths, and the addicted health professional witch hunt is merely just a small but highly visual part of that, the part that helps maintain the public demonization and stigmatization of addicts, keeping the public fearful of addicts and causing them to go along with bad public policies desired by the government, ruining millions of lives and wasting billions upon billions of dollars in the process. This all can be changed by your learning the real science of addictions and using its policy implications all of which is discussed in my book, Hypoic's Handbook and on my web site.

Decriminalizing drugs is correct policy but only under the Hypoism paradigm, not under today's wrong paradigm, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH). Under the HBH every policy is wrong, so it really doesn't matter one way or another.

Today's quote is: "At one Tijuana drug treatment center, a former addict was not convinced that going easy on those found with drugs was the right approach. �With everything that�s happening, we need to distance ourselves from drugs,� said the former addict, Luis Manuel Delgado, 50, who is also the center�s assistant director. �Imagine if I told the people in here that it was now legal for them to have a little. No way.� Jailing addicts helps them reach rock bottom and decide to turn their lives around, Mr. Delgado said.

This is a very compelling quote from this "former" addict who only knows one paradigm, the wrong paradigm. It's interesting that the Times gets their quotes from a former addict with a couple of years clean who has never read the science of addictions and doesn't know how ignorant he truly is. Let's just ask any addicts what's best and what's right, and we believe them, but not Umanoff under any circumstances. Ha Ha. The only problem with doing this is that whatever these former addicts say is wrong. But who cares if they're wrong as long as they say what we want them to say. We don't cherry-pick what quotes to print. NOT MUCH.

The fact is that today's NY Times quote of the day makes sense under the hijacked brain hypothesis paradigm, the paradigm under which this article was written. There are good reasons for this, mainly because addicts for the most part avoid treatment like the plague because of the stigma and because most treatments torture addicts in detox and rehab. both physically by not giving them enough medications to taper them down slowly enough, and mentally by blaming them for their addictions. Thus, addicts have to be just about dead before they go for treatment, not because they're recalcitrant as the quote suggests, but because treatment is torture.

The main problem with today's paradigm is that it is scientifically wrong, has no prevention methodology, and has ineffective and torturous treatment due to the fact that the theory is wrong and the methodology is wrong. It also keeps addicts as far away from treatment as possible for the above reasons. I've written the Times about this a thousand times, but they wouldn't think of quoting me.

However, the correct theory of addictions, the genetic theory, reverses and cures all this by being correct, loving, and humane in all its arenas, something former addicts like the one quoted knows nothing about because they don't know they exist. I guess that's why they used him to make their quote. They didn't have to worry he'd say something valid and correct, only something that helps perpetuate the current paradigm, the one that gives him his job. The correct theory, Hypoism, destigmatizes addicts and addictions as well as provides for real prevention for young hypoics long before addictions occur and effective treatment based on the right theory of how the brain causes addictions, not drugs. Detox and rehab are humane and loving rather than torture and punishment, making treatment something addicts look forward to, not run away from. Under Hypoism there is effective prevention and treatment addicts look forward to. Therefore they don't have to hit bottom to get into treatment. This was proven in the Swiss PROVE program where there was both decriminalization and harm reduction with heroin which was associated with increased entry into treatment, not less as is suggested by the "former addict.". The Hypoism methodology as described in my book, Hypoic's Handbook, would increase that effect a hundred fold. In fact, the Hypoism paradigm ends the addiction epidemic through real prevention and effective treatment as well as harm reduction in those who slip through these program. It also ends the drug war and the massive mess that goes along with it. So, why doesn't the Times do an article on Hypoism? Good question.

New America Foundation[ http://www.newamerica.net/ ]: I'm an independent thinker [my credentials are listed on the home page of my web site] with no conflicts of interest who, besides world peace, has one goal, to fix the addiction epidemic and the addictionology mess that is a major national destructive issue. I am a strict agnostic who uses the scientific method and believes that only valid evidence should be used to guide evaluation, policy and decision-making; that valid and effective policies can only be derived from valid and scientifically correct theory derived from valid scientific evidence whenever possible (and it is possible today in the area of addictions)- wrong theory always leads to wrong policies and right theory corrects this. Also that even right policy derived randomly under the wrong theory still leads to bad outcomes. Thus, if I had a motto it would be "Right theory leads to right policies." This holds for all areas of need including addictions. So, in the area of addictions this would translate to: The reason we have such a mess in the addiction arena is caused by using the wrong addiction causation theories (all current theories including and headed by the Hijacked Brain Hypothesis (HBH) of NIDA and ASAM, bought and paid for by NIDA) and that replacing this wrong theory with the right theory, the genetic theory, the theory I have named Hypoism after its pathophysiology, genetic low reward system activity, genetic diversity of the brain's reward system, will correct this mess. The proof of this argument and the required methodology (essentially cost free) are in my 1998 book, Hypoic's Handbook, and in two major papers on my web site: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ and http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

Do I have to outline the argument proving that the addiction arena is a mess? I hope not. That's obvious, right? Do I have to show how incredibly massive this problem is? If so, let me know. It is massive. It's been estimated at 580 billion dollars a year in dollars alone. A million dead addicts a year. Many innocent bystander deaths and casualties. And this is just in the United States. All caused by the use of policies derived from the wrong theory, the HBH and other similar theories. Moreover, there is a similarly large amount of addiction discrimination undermining the lives of the 30 million addicts of all hundred or so varieties in America - a lowball estimate. I call this the Hypoic Genocide. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/entitledtoyouropinionnotanymore/

I reviewed your web site and could find nothing in it that deals with this problem, a problem once solved would change the course of just about everything important in our country and around the world. The list of problems this would solve is almost endless. I think solving this problem needs to be one of your listed goals and I would be happy to lead this effort for you. On my own I am having a difficult time accomplishing this because there is massive resistance to a paradigm change in this area despite it being obvious that one is needed.

You probably are saying to yourselves, "Why should we get involved here? Isn't the addictionology establishment doing this already?" It seems like they would be doing just this, but sorry to say, it's just the opposite. The addictionology community is actually the cause of the problem and they will never, if left alone, do what is necessary and honest to do this. The addictionology community is so severely conflicted they aren't even aware they are the problem. They are massively deluded by the longevity of their beliefs and the lack of debate, both caused by their own obstructive behavior. They do go out of their way to censor the information the public needs to fix the problem, so, they're not innocent at all in any degree. Their conflicts of interest are many including money, religion and other beliefs, power, paternalism, intellectual pride, governmental influence, and money (I know I said money already). They don't put the solution to this problem first. They put their conflicts of interest first and the solution is merely an afterthought if anything at all. The solution is not going to come from them, period. They've had their chance and have blown it severely. There is absolutely no integrity there whatsoever. And, yes, they are deliberately lying to the country. Thus, the solution to this mess will only come from the public and the public knows nothing about any of this because it's been censored from their awareness. Other groups similar to yours have been given the opportunity to do what I'm asking you to do but they also have conflicts of interest that have kept them from being honest about this issue. Some of my letters to them are on my web site. It's been quite exasperating to say the least, especially since the theory and methodology to fix this mess have existed since 1992.

So, when I came across your group's web site I decided you might have the integrity, honestly, and interest (within your goals and world view) to take the lead here. I invite you to do this and await your response.

There 's only one thing to learn from this article: people are stupid. And 20/20 is helping. DUI's have been happening since the day the first car was invented. The father loses his daughter and joins MADD? That is insanity. MADD hasn't changed anything except put more people in jail. His daughter died because of MADD. Of course, no one should drive drunk. Hey. It's against the law. Guess what? The law doesn't help. You don't know this already? Nothing anyone has done helps but we keep doing the same wrong things. The same articles appear saying the same things urging the same policies and nothing changes. This is no different from any aspect of the drug war. We say the same things, do the same things, nothing works but we keep doing them anyway. Who lives this way? Who thinks this way? Why is this happening? This is very stupid!

It's because we think the same way about alcohol and drugs from yesterday to today. Why isn't someone, someone writing these stupid articles, asking the question: Isn't it possible that our entire paradigm about addiction is wrong, our theory on addiction causation, prevention, and treatment are wrong, and maybe if we found the right paradigm we could solve these addiction related problems? Is no one asking this question? If not, then we're stupid.

Of course, this is the problem. We are using a wrong addiction paradigm that does nothing to reduce addictions. More addictions - more addiction related problems. So, how about we look at that. Well, when I had my problem with addiction I did just that, just in case there was a better paradigm out there that could solve this mess brought on and perpetuated by the wrong addiction theory. I read the scientific literature on addiction causation and found that the current theory of addictions, the hijacked brain hypothesis, was scientifically wrong and was both causing this mess as well as making it worse. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/

The addiction experts say the HBH is right but they're lying. The science shows something different. Addictions are caused by a genetic disease of the instinct regulating apparatus that makes people use drugs against their will and also get addicted, not anyone, but only people with the genetic disease, about 10-15% of the population. The way this disease called Hypoism works in the brain directs us to the solution to this mess, Hypoism recovery. My book details this method. In fact, if we can diagnose these hypoics at an early age, long before they use alcohol and drugs and get addicted, and get them into hypoism recovery then, they would avoid ever getting addicted. Not drinking and not addicted they can never have a DUI. Unbelievable. Hypoics in recovery don't have DUI's.

The hijacked brain hypothesis can't prevent a single addiction because according to that theory you have to get addicted before you can make the diagnosis. And that's too late. It also causes the stigma that keeps people out of treatment. Only hypoism can make the diagnosis early enough to allow for prevention. Not only is Hypoism the scientifically correct theory but it is also the only theory that allows for prevention of drinking, using, and addictions - for all hundred or so addictions, not just one or two. Hypoism ends the entire addiction epidemic, ends the DUI mess, ends the drug war, and fixes a lot of other things - the list is quite long.

Funny. I've been writing about Hypoism since 1992 and have been ignored and censored since 1992. It's the only theory that is right and will do exactly what we want but we ignore and censor it. There's something very stupid about this. And that's the only thing about addictions that is a choice, which theory you are going to use today. Why do we keep choosing the scientifically wrong one as well as the one that doesn't fix the problems we want to fix and ignoring and censoring the right one that will fix all these things? Either ask yourself this question and answer it honestly or shut up already. It's time to write the story about Hypoism so we can move forward.

This article raises a few very important issues and concepts that go way beyond sex determination in sports. We need to establish rules and specific objective criteria for the determination prior to any particular analysis. First, public evaluation: despite the possibility of personal humiliation, the process must be made public so that ordinary citizens can make sure by their own analysis of the facts that the process is done objectively and without bias. Next, public pre-set objective criteria, the criteria used to make the determination need to be publicized, objectified, and codified prior to the analysis of any particular person to get beyond bias of the analyzer. As the science changes so do these criteria. Only these pre-set objective criteria can be used in the determination. If there is any objective evidence found to show cheating or lying was involved in the process, by either side, the cheater is disqualified and punished, including state prosecutors. The criteria for this evidence must also be objectified beforehand. In other words, the analyzers can't be allowed to be subjective, arbitrary or capricious nor allowed to use discretion, as they are today, because these allowances lead to discrimination which is inherently "unfair."

I think everyone would agree that any system used to make similar kinds of determinations, for whatever issue the determination is being made, should go by these guidelines. I'm not crazy about humiliating myself publicly, but in order to change what is happening today to millions of people my story must be used as an example of what is wrong today.

In 1998 I was analyzed for my medical license reinstatement by New York State after having my license revoked for my opiate addiction during the time period 1986-1989. My addiction had begun following surgery on my mouth and the legal prescription of vicodin in 1986. The specific reason for the revocation was that I had been convicted of obtaining my drugs illegally during relapses following my voluntary surrender of my license and admission of being addicted. I never denied or lied about my addiction. In other words, during my attempt to get into recovery while I was not practicing medicine I had relapses during which I wrote prescriptions for myself now without a license, a behavior that was legal prior to surrendering my license, but now illegal. Relapses are well know to happen to recovering addicts, but because I had no legal means to obtain my illegal drugs, my relapses became felonies, while Obama's smoking relapses, exactly the same as mine in regards to the disease of addictions, are merely laughed about. He remains president while my entire life was ruined. It had nothing to do with my practice of medicine which was spotless and of excellent quality and admittedly so by the New York State Department of Health. It was stipulated by NYS that there was no patient injury of any kind. I had an excellent reputation as a physician in a large and highly public practice in Nassau County, NY. By the time I attempted to have my license restored in 1998 I was documented clean for eight years and had satisfied 100% of the requirements of the NYS CPH for this reinstatement, the NYS addicted doctor monitoring group, and had obtained their 100% advocacy for reinstatement without any qualifications. I had fulfilled all their objective criteria, many of which were arbitrary and capricious themselves, but I had done them nonetheless. Then I had to be analyzed by two panels handpicked by the state (no voir dire) which meant two hearings in front of people who had no expertise in addictions whatsoever and my entire life was on the line. After these hearings the panels wrote letters to the head of the NYS Education Department with their opinions and reasons for their opinions on whether I should be reinstated. Both panels rejected my reinstatement request. Their reasons were 100% purely subjective, arbitrary and capricious reasons manufacturing out of whole cloth that had nothing to do with anything in reality or any addiction principles in existence. They completely ignored all the objective and actual evidence in my favor. They decided I was dangerous to the public because of my opinions about addictions, all of which they deliberately misinterpreted something that could have been easily corrected seeing that I had written a book on my opinions of the science of addictions and that book contradicted everything they said about those supposed opinions. Moreover, the one transcript that was obtained from the first hearing, only one hearing even made a transcript, also contradicted what they called "evidence" of dangerousness to the public, especially since I had never been dangerous during my practice of medicine for the 10 years I had been in practice, including the three years I was addicted. Besides, I was perfectly willing to undergo any future monitoring they wanted me to undergo, and the reality was that there had never been any patient damage by a practicing recovering doctor who had been monitored the way I was willing to be monitored - NEVER. That fact has been well documented in the literature by Dr. Doug Talbot, a renowned addicted doctor addictionologist. None of their "evidence" was objective as evidenced by the 100% advocacy of the NYS CPH which completely supported my reinstatement on the basis of the actual objective evidence. Otherwise I would never have gotten to the hearings to begin with. This evidence was completely ignored by the hearings. Everything objective and in my favor was ignored. Only their subjective interpretations of what they decided out of thin air would be my prognosis were used as "evidence" and these were all interpretations of things I was supposed to have said during the hearings; not about my behavior which had perfect for the previous eight years, but their interpretations of what I supposedly said. Not what I said, but their interpretations of what I said. Every one of these interpretations were misconstrued and misinterpreted, deliberately. Whatever they were, they were also all subjective and all against the actual objective evidence, which was my 8 years of documented recovery and 100% compliance with everything the CPH had asked of me.

So, what I'm saying here is that all the objective evidence including four glowing psychiatric evaluations by board certified addiction psychiatrists, none of which were my friends or colleagues, were in favor of my reinstatement but I was denied restoration by false and invalid claims by the two panels based solely on scientifically wrong subjective beliefs and predictions of the future on their part. The Health Department put these letters on their web site but not the transcript they were supposed to be based on. One of them didn't even bother to make a transcript, so there's no way to validate whatever they said about me and the hearing they were supposed to be about. The objective facts about my practice, my addiction, and good recovery are all available and they all supported my restoration, 100%. The fact is that what these panels called evidence were totally bogus and were contradicted by all the available objective evidence and the addiction scientific literature itself. In other words, these letters by these two panels were shams and lies which were contradicted by the one transcript that existed, my book, addiction science, and my life. Yet the head of the Education Department believed them and denied my reinstatement. We sued NYS in court but was denied a requested trial which would have vindicated me. The judge made a decision on his own based on these bogus and purely subjective evaluations ignoring our arguments about the bogus evidence and denying our request to use the Americans with Disabilities Act which made these hearings illegal and unconstitutional from their outset as well as their methodology. I could have appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States but didn't have the funds to do so seeing I hadn't worked in ten years by then. So, I just gave up, deciding to spend the rest of my life changing this clearly unconstitutional system and the entire addiction paradigm it is based on.

Many people have their lives ruined by this kind of discrimination due to subjective bias against addicts. All systems for dealing with addicts need to be objectified, as described in the beginning of this letter, even though the states don't want to do this, and, in fact, haven't. How our country deals with addicts is no different from the way blacks were dealt with during the Jim Crow days of yore. Good ole boys get together and lynch them willy nilly while the federal government sits there and lets them get away with murder. That's what happens to addicts today because they are seen as willfully bad people, according to the current bogus addiction theory, the hijacked brain hypothesis, and the bible of course. The public and the media go along with this as evidenced by my work being ignored and censored by them as well. Someday when the real science of addictions is allowed to be known by the public all this will be changed, but in the meantime millions of addicts a year die or have their lives and families ruined by the scientifically wrong subjective beliefs of the public and the government and the use of unconstitutional methods for the use of the policies based on these beliefs.

This article is exactly about what is caused by the wrong theory of addictions, the hijacked brain hypothesis, perpetrated on you and your town by NIDA, ASAM, and the government. The correct theory of addiction causation, the genetic theory, Hypoism, changes all this. It ends the drug war, prohibition, and the entire addiction epidemic. Real prevention and effective hypoism treatment end the addiction epidemic. All the crap caused by addictions isn't caused by addictions but by their prohibition which is caused by the wrong theory leading to wrong laws which make everything worse. There's another better and healthy way to deal with addictions, If you want to understand this read my blog pages on my web site under the web page section The Hypoism Blog - The Addiction Blog, my book, and these two papers: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/

There's a lot for you to learn if you are interested in helping change the mess in addictions. Your choice. I'm available to help you if you want to. Otherwise things will just continue as is or even get worse.

I'm glad Crist called me about this appointment. Ha Ha. This no different from appointing Volkow to head NIDA. This is like appointing the head of the KKK to run the civil rights movement just because he's had many years of experience with racism (credentials). People tell me I shouldn't be so angry. LOL. Like there's no conflict of interest here in addition to lack of expertise. But this is what happens when addicts opt out of the process and let the assholes run the show. The National Association for the Advancement and Advocacy of Addicts (N4A), Inc. has existed for 10 years to advocate and protect addict's interests in all areas of addictions including politics. But addicts and their organizations like AA have ignored and censored Hypoism and the N4A and have decided to be good boys and girls and let the establishment run the show, killing and stealing from them, the ultimate outcome of this incredibly stupid and damaging decision. This is what happens when you stick your heads in the sand. You wouldn't think it could get much worse, but here it is. It just got a lot worse. We're going backwards thanks to AA and the NCADA, complete tools of the system that kills addicts.

You think this is good? What's good about it? All it's going to do is escalate the war not solve the addiction problem, the main reason for the drug war to begin with. The problem is not the supply side. It's the demand side, and our policies to deal with the demand side stink. They are wrong, useless, ineffective, immoral, unethical, damaging to the country, and all because they are based on lies, the lying science of addictionology. The whole demand side of the equation is wrong because the theory of addiction causation used by the demand side is wrong, the hijacked brain hypothesis. The hijacked brain hypothesis is wrong, proven wrong, useless, and damaging. Only the right addiction causation theory, Hypoism, will solve the demand side of the equation and when it does that the supply side will be automatically solved. Why are you ignoring this and supporting the drug war which is only bad?

Of course, this is not treatment. It's harm reduction. It is part of the Hypoism paradigm and has been since its inception. The reasons for it are discussed in my book, but we need the whole paradigm, not just this one little piece. The whole paradigm includes the right theory, Hypoism, and the right policies derived from that theory - for all addiction simultaneously in the same place. This includes clinics like the kind mentioned in this article but designed instead around the Hypoism theory, not today's wrong theory. This includes Hypoism recovery meetings, detoxes, rehabs, harm reduction methods for all addictions, education, and long term availability of recovery methods based on the Hypoism paradigm, the correct theory, the most important part of the paradigm. We need the whole enchilada, not just bits and pieces of the right policies. This enchilada is detailed in my book which has been available since 1996.

You never know what argument people will make in debates on issues like this one where there is mostly a large emotional content (cortico-limbic dissociation) to the argument. By emotional I mean irrational bias and strong irrational feelings, mostly xenophobic feelings, backed by people's irrational beliefs. Here's a situation where most people would have expected Olson to use emotional irrational religious arguments against gay marriage. But out of the blue, apparently because he had close relationships to discriminated against blacks at an early age and generalized his anti-discrimination values to include homosexuals, he decided to use the issue of choice to decide the basis of his argument. He chose to use the rational argument involved with whether a homosexual is biologically determined to be homosexual (does not have a choice) versus it being a personal preference, an immoral choice. The article states, "If sexual orientation is not a choice � and Mr. Olson argues that it is not � then the ban is not going to encourage his clients to enter into heterosexual, child-producing marriages, he insists." Thus, if homosexuality is not a choice but is biologically determined in some way then homosexuals should be treated as equals rather than punished for making an immoral choice where it would be right to discriminate against them. It is the science vs the moral argument, an unusual stance for a conservative who routinely go for the moral argument even in the face of strong science against it. Thus all the uproar.

It's funny to see this happening because the homosexual civil rights movement (argument) by homosexuals themselves does not usually use the choice (cause) issue as their major argument. Rather, their argument for gay marriage is the presumption that they are equal, irrespective of the CAUSE of homosexuality, and because of this should be treated equally. Similar kinds of discriminations use this same argument. If the behavior is a choice then it's OK to discriminate but if it is biologically determined and against the will of the individual then it is not OK to discriminate. This includes homosexuality, race, sex, obesity, and a multitude of addictions. That's why choice vs. biological determination is being fought out in these areas. We see nonscientific and biased articles about this everyday in the media.

My main area of interest is in addictions and the discrimination of addicts. If addiction is a choice then it's OK to discriminate, what we call ostracism, which is society's way to get people to change their behavior, and if they don't they get crushed. If, on the other hand, addiction is biologically determined, then it's not OK to discriminate or ostracize. Thus, the main issue in addiction is whether or not addiction is a choice or is it biologically determined. The drug war and all the rest of our policies about addictions hang on this issue being resolved one way or another, just as it is with the other areas I listed. Thus, the argument surrounding the CAUSE of addictions is critical in our determining our policies for addicts and addictions. If voluntary choice is the cause of addiction then its OK to ostracize and discriminate against addicts while if it is biologically determined and not a choice one way or another it wouldn't be OK to discriminate and ostracize. So far, we have determined addiction is a choice and therefore it's been not only OK to discriminate but seen as the right thing to do. It is done with vigor and much enjoyment.

It turns out that the current theory of addictions, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH) and all its variations, which are many, insist that addiction is caused by a voluntary and willful choice, the choice to use of the drug by the addict-to-be. It says so in the first sentence. This is NIDA's theory. This is ASAM's theory. This is AA's theory. This is our government's theory. This is everyone's theory, no matter what it's called, and whether the cause is psychological, spiritual, anti-social, stupidity, ignorance, etc. All current and accepted theories of addiction causation start with: "The person voluntarily and willfully uses the addictive drug......" Whatever happens after that makes the subsequent addiction a moral issue and allows for ostracism and discrimination even if what happens after that is called a disease, which today it is by the same people who push the HBH. The disease was caused, according to all these theories and experts, by a willful decision, a choice. Thus, whether after the fact addiction is seen as a disease or not it is still always seen as a moral issue, because the immoral volitional choice occurs first. The so-called "disease concept of addictions" doesn't remove it from the moral arena because of this as all other diseases do. The hijacked brain hypothesis says the initial drug use is volitional and then the drug causes a disease, the disease of addiction. The drug turns the brain into an addicted brain. Thus, it is clear that under this theory addiction is a caused by an immoral choice, so irrespective of whether a disease happens after that makes no difference; the disease is still seen as caused by a conscious and willful choice. This makes all addictions, under all these theories, a moral issue. Thus, public policy is made around this FACT. This includes legal discrimination and ostracism of addicts. I don't know what Olson's theory of addictions is and whether he believes they are immoral behaviors but clearly his theory of homosexuality is not. But, just like in addictions, there is a first use of some homosexual behavior and it appears, at least to non-homosexuals, just a volitional as the first use of a drug by a future drug addict. So, what's the difference? Why doesn't Olson see this first homosexual act as a moral act just as the first use of a drug presumably is? Because he "knows" that the homosexual brain MAKES the homosexual-to-be do that act against his will. The homosexual is always going to do that behavior because it's the only behavior that person's brain can do. That's what I mean by "against his will." The homosexual is going be either a homosexual or nothing and Olson sees that as biologically determined, as I do. The science of Olson's "knowing" however doesn't exist yet although there are many inferences to it in the science literature. It's mechanism has not been demonstrated. Despite this lack of mechanism Olson still knows homosexuality is not a choice.

On the other hand, the hijacked brain hypothesis of addictions has been scientifically proven wrong. This disproof has existed for many years and I go through the science of this disproof here: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ Not only do I disprove it but other scientists do as well. Hiroi's paper, linked to my paper, does a good job of this except that he doesn't have a theory to replace the HBH. I do. My paper disproves the HBH and replaces it with a pretty well proved genetic theory called Hypoism, a theory that has been in existence and known by the addiction field since 1992. It hasn't made it to the public's attention yet because it has been censored, but the entire addiction field knows about it. They have just censored it. The Hypoism theory shows that in hypoics, people born with genetic low reward activity affecting the decision-making apparatus in the unconscious part of the brain, the first use of the drug is unconsciously and involuntarily caused by the genetic disease itself, Hypoism, not by a conscious and willful immoral act. Hypoism, caused by proven genetic low reward system activity, causes the first use of the drug unconsciously and against the will of the addict to be, not voluntarily or willfully, and not consciously. This is the complete opposite of the HBH. The science proves this, just like science proved the earth goes around the sun when everyone didn't want that theory either, but because people don't read my papers and book, Hypoic's Handbook, and don't like the theory and don't believe the theory and don't want the theory, they ignore and censor the theory, especially the addictionology establishment which makes tons of money off the wrong theory.

So, addictions remain run by a wrong theory, remain a moral issue, and the addiction epidemic continues to worsen, but the people can feel good about discriminating against, ostracizing, and hating addicts by believing in this wrong theory though their kids die from it. I wonder what Olson believes about all this addiction stuff, if he himself uses the "not a choice" side of the argument for addictions as he does with homosexuality. Or does he choose to only use it for homosexuality and not for addictions even though the science for addictions is much stronger than that for homosexuality so far.

Below is a link to the description of the program which has no scientific basis:

The program director says. "Raising awareness about substance abuse will help better equip youth to make informed decisions about their futures and their health" said Mr. Dykstra. "I look forward to seeing the benefits of this project in the months and years ahead."

He looks forward to seeing the benefits of this project. Of course, there's no way to know whether this program is working because surveys are useless. And what happens if this program doesn't work? Nothing. Well, a little more than nothing - addicts die.

The real issue is whether raising awareness and education prevents drug use and, most critically, addiction. The fact is that there is no evidence whatsoever that raising awareness or education prevent addiction. And there's a scientific reason, an ignored reason, why this is so. Addiction does not happen through conscious mechanisms. Let me repeat that. ADDICTION DOES NOT HAPPEN THROUGH CONSCIOUS MECHANISMS. So, conscious mechanisms, like this program, will not prevent addictions. [my book and web site paper, Hypoism Hypothesis, go through the science that demonstrates this.] Thus, at its outset this program will be a failure and moreover, the addicts will be blamed and punished for this. Any method to prevent addictions must reconcile this fact. But it doesn't. It ignores it. That's why these kinds of programs have never worked. They don't include methods that take into account the fact that addictions occur unconsciously. The Hypoism paradigm does this. It's the only paradigm that does. What addict ever decided consciously to become an addict? Not one. So, why do they think that not wanting to become an addict will prevent addictions? It's just that stupid. Kids aren't that stupid either. All kids know consciously already that if they use addictive drugs they might get addicted. They know this already. Ask them. They know it. So, why do they get addicted anyway? It's not because they are ignorant of this. It's not because they're not aware of this. So, why should these people think this kind of program will prevent a single addiction when it has never done so in the past? Why?

This methodology has been tried many times in the past and has never worked. So, why should it work this time? If this methodology had worked, there would be no illicit or licit drug addiction. This methodology would have prevented all those addictions and the war would be over - it would have been won. It's been tried many many times. What makes them think this time it's going to work? Nothing about this was mentioned. It's as if they were the first to try this method. A half a million dollars is being flushed down the toilet so they can again show this method doesn't work. But that's not the problem. While they're spending this money and doing this project they are not doing what will work to prevent addictions. And this is exactly why this kind of nonsense is not only a bad idea but a deadly idea. While they're doing this program they are not doing what will work and therefore they are actually helping kill all the new addicts that appear while this program is being used instead of an effective program. They don't think about that consequence but it's real. It's been happening for the last hundred years. Not only are they wasting money and time, they are allowing all these new addictions to happen under their tutelage. This is worse than doing nothing because it gives the public the feeling that something is being done and they go back to sleep instead of looking for some method that actually might work. By using this methodology they stop looking for a method that might work. And I assure you. This program will not work. What do you call people who use the rhythm method of birth control? Parents. It's no different from that.

Addiction is not caused by using drugs. That theory is called the hijacked brain hypothesis of addictions and its been disproven by real science. The theory is wrong. Addiction is not caused by drugs but by an underlying genetic brain disease, Hypoism, due to genetic low activity alleles of genes of the reward system of the instinct regulatory mechanism, a theory that has been proven scientifically correct but no one has heard of. Read my book, Hypoic's Handbook. Hypoism causes addictions unconsciously and there is a method for recovery specifically designed for this disease that takes this into account. Left to their own devices hypoics get addicted like it or not. I have never met an addict who told me they set out to become an addict. Never once. And, they all knew that addictive drugs are addictable. They all new that. So, why would they use these drugs if they knew this already? Because their hypoic brains made them do it unconsciously. This may sound crazy, but it's true. That's the paradox of addiction. People know better and still get addicted as if they didn't know better. That's what people who want to stop addictions don't know and don't accept. In fact, they refuse to learn about this. My book has been available on the web since 1998 and the addiction experts refuse to read it. Many others have and are using it.

It doesn't matter what these addicts actually told themselves about drugs and addictions; the actual words that is. What matters is that they all knew addictive drugs are addictable and if they used them they might very well get addicted, but somehow they still used them and got addicted. What makes a crazy thing like that happen? People have attributed this to ignorance, psychological problems, and anti-social behavior. What else could it be? People do stupid things like use drugs because they are either ignorant of the dangers or are crazy. What else could it be other than those reasons? That's how people have thought about addictions for thousands of years.

Is there another explanation? Obviously not, they believe. So, they keep using the same kinds of preventive mechanisms based on these reasons. And they continue not working. And the kids keep getting addicted and dying. And we keep punishing the kids instead of the lying experts. What does this result mean? It means their theory about what cause addictions is wrong. As many times as they prove their theory wrong by using it and having it not work, they keep believing it and using it more despite these results. Now, that's what's crazy; not the kids who get addicted but the people who believe they know what causes addiction - conscious stupid decisions. And its that theory that allows these kids to get addicted because they have no defense against a wrong theory. It's those people who believe that wrong theory who are responsible for the continued addiction epidemic; not the addicted kids but the addiction experts who believe in the wrong theory that when used instead of the correct theory results in addictions. It's they who need to be incarcerated for lying to the public about the cause of addictions and imposing on the public useless prevention and treatment methods. They are at fault and they should be punished for it. It's as simple as that. If they were sent to jail maybe they would care about their lying to the public. But because they're actually making a living off it, they continue to do it. And the government keeps paying them to do it. The only way to stop this negligent behavior by the addiction experts is to try them in court for lying to the public and facing long jail time if they're proven liars, which would be easy. Why don't we do that and see if the methods for preventing addictions begin to look more like hypoism and begin to work. Letting them off the hook for lying and perpetuating the addiction epidemic is the stupidest thing we could do. We need to get smart ourselves and begin holding these people accountable for their useless and ineffective methods - just the opposite of what we are doing today - sending the addicts to jail.

Here's an interesting quote from this article, "The fact is science is like any other social network. It's a lot easier to go along with the crowd. Every now and then there's a revolution in science, a paradigm shift, like when Einstein came along, but it's so easy to lock people into a particular way of thinking, of trying to build on the ideas that are in vogue. In the end, there is almost a fashion in science � ideas that are in, ideas that are out." This is a description of the religion of science, not science. Science is about the science, not about people. Science is not a social network. Someone published Einstein's paper. No one published my paper, even though it is scientifically valid and correct. A paradigm shift has happened but no one knows about it because NIDA, run by a political appointee, a governmental appointee designated to do exactly what she was appointed to do, doesn't want it to happen.

Of course, this is not what science is at all. It's instead what people are; non-scientific people. Real scientists don't think or act this way at all. Cults do; religion does; fascists do; not science. That's how Einstein did what he did - he ignored the assholes and high priests who told him he was wrong. He wasn't on their payroll. Only people who are worried about grant money do what this quote says, and they aren't scientists. They have no integrity. Science is all about integrity. Science is mostly about integrity. This quote is a good description of what has happened to the field of addictions because of the way money is doled out by NIDA. The field (ASAM etc.) is bought and paid for by NIDA which controls the money, and therefore science is not being done for the most part. They are playing follow the leader, a game played by kids, not adults with integrity. Science requires debate and there is no debate whatsoever in the addiction field. There's only the party line, and if you don't follow the party line you don't get your money. If there were debate, everyone would know about the science that disproves the hijacked brain hypothesis and proves Hypoism. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ That paper is the debate that no one knows exists because it's been censored. In science there is no censorship. But today in addictions there is no debate and no public knowledge of any of this. This is the biggest medical scandal of all time not just theoretically but in reality because a million addicts die and many more have their lives ruined each year in our country from this censorship. Addictions aren't killing these people; lying people are.

This is the kind of meaningless, useless, and degrading nonsense hypoics have to go through when their recoveries are run by the P/R paradigm - when the cause of the disease is unknown and misrepresented. What other medical disease is "farming" and "religion" the treatment of? This article is exasperating. The same old crap, and the NY Times just eats it up. Please. Moreover, the public gets the wrong idea of what recovery is all about at the same time. Recovery from what? Addiction? That's not recovery. Recovery has to be from the disease, not from its symptoms. They don't know what the disease is. How can you recover from a disease you don't know you have or what it is? That's been the problem from the beginning. They think and insist that addiction is the disease but it's not, of course. It's Hypoism. Recovery needs to be from Hypoism, not addiction. But where are these guys going to get recovery from Hypoism? Nowhere. They don't even know what it is. This program is absolute bull but the addicts and the public watching this stuff get misinformed and think it means something when in fact its just degrading baloney; having nothing to do with anything. The addicts get that stupid idea as well. What do they know? They're just being used by the people setting up this ridiculous program. If it were used in conjunction with Hypoism recovery, then it would be OK. But it's not. It's the whole "recovery" program. Of course, it's also why it doesn't work and why the addicts get blamed for its failure to work - -because someone says it's supposed to work. This the same kind of nonsense that has run the field of addictions for the last hundred years, never has worked, but continues to be seen as meaningful. Farming plus religion. That's supposed to be recovery? It's sickening and a joke perpetrated on addicts and the public who know even less about the disease and what recovery needs to be.

Even I'd admit I was not as smart as the fictional Dr. House. At the end of the internship all American interns had to take a grueling 3rd part of the National Boards. My year I got the highest score of all interns at Medical College of Virginia by 30 points and among the top in the country, 745 out of 800. I did a nephrology fellowship like him and became a board certified nephrologist. I played the guitar since the age of 10 and the piano as well. I always had a motorcycle, like House. In practice I was frequently asked to consult on the toughest cases and many of them were diagnosed only by me, and many of them walked out of the hospital in one piece due to my clinical acumen. I was also a hydrocodone addict, and here's where the difference lies. Although I was never accused of injuring any patients while I was addicted, unlike House, my career was destroyed by the drug warriors, unlike House, despite being 8 years clean and sober, also unlike House. And when I got kicked out of medical practice in 1990 I went out and discovered the cause of addictions, Hypoism, and its cure in 1992, unlike House. My book on this cause, Hypoic's Handbook, has gone unread and unappreciated for unknown reasons except I guess because I'm a defrocked addict, but when it is acknowledged will change the entire field of addictions in all ways positive, unlike House and better than House who's fictional character knows nothing about addictions except the old school nonsense even though he himself is an addict. The fictional Dr. House shows no interest in addictions whatsoever. Of course, this makes no sense.

What this all shows is that a doctor even better than House will be destroyed by the state and the medical establishment for being an addict even though never injuring a single patient and solving a major medical health enigma. The real Dr. House can not exist in today's addictophobic environment even clean and sober.

Let's assume the author to be correct in everything he said which of course he isn't. But for fun, and this letter is fun, let's go with him. We can debate the other stuff some other time. The last sentence then says, "But there is really no other way to cure an epidemic." Of course, he doesn't know about Hypoism and the Hypoism paradigm that includes a strong method for preventing addictions; obesity being an addiction; ending this epidemic in its tracks. Thus, he knows not that his quote is very very wrong. Hypoism exists and comes to the rescue. It is the solution. Hypoism recovery is the cure he says we don't have. Hypoism recovery beginning at an early age prevents obesity and all the other addictions such as one other he mentioned, smoking. So, here's the solution but it's being ignored and censored. What should we do about that? Obviously we need to keep censoring Hypoism, right? No sense in acknowledging it now, LOL. I've been doing everything I can for the last 17 years to get Hypoism acknowledged and its methods used but this same newspaper, the NY Times, has censored it since 1995 when they decided not to publish my first letter to the editor or any others that followed http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/nytimesletterstotheeditor/ [I published many of these letters in several places on my web site, so they're not lost to posterity.] Does anyone find this ironic, that the Times, if it allowed itself to be honest about this, could have prevented the obesity epidemic had they printed that letter. The Times could have been a hero instead of whatever it actually is [they wouldn't be allowed to print the words I would use to describe what the Times is]. But conversely, they are responsible for this epidemic by their censorship of the only paradigm capable of preventing this epidemic. And you can bet your last donut they won't publish this letter either. Ha Ha. My book, Hypoic's Handbook, had its methods been put into effect 14 years ago, would by now be spread across this pudgy landscape of ours preventing the scourge of obesity and all the rest of the long list of addictions, saving megatons of money and lives. But their opinion, and everyone else's who never read the book, was that "This book is not for us" (quoting David Corcoran of the NYT science dept. here) and obviously not for the rest of the country. So, here we are instead with a big fat mess, fatter and messier than it was 14 years ago, and the need to begin to escalate the hypoic genocide and the massive discrimination that goes with it just because Corcoran was too lazy, close minded, and ignorant to read my book honestly. To be kind to the Times, lots of other papers and journals censored Hypoism as well without reading about it! http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/entitledtoyouropinionnotanymore/

Just a few weeks ago Eric Stice and his team published a paper that proved conclusively that obesity is caused by Hypoism mechanisms, though Eric didn't know about the word Hypoism or its theory so he didn't use it. But his studies were about the Hypoism genetic brain mechanism (low reward activity) in the production of obesity in women. I reference them in the last paper in this email. Go to the library and read them or ask him to send you a copy. How timely they are. See my blog, http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/currentletterstoeditors72309/ , under the date 7/28/09. His response to my email to him about Hypoism was, "Sounds like you figured this all out much earlier than the rest of us!"

So, is it timely for the NYT to actually read my book now and review it? I think so. Better late than never.

I could extend this email and say a few more timely things about the censorship of Hypoism, its reasons, motivations, and the rest of the characters involved in this censorship, but if you read my blog which is many pages on my web site you can get that information there.

Seriously, the Hypoism paradigm can not only put an end to the obesity epidemic but also to the entire addiction epidemic through its recovery program which happens to be free of charge as well. Really! I make no money from any of this except the book. My salary for being CEO of the 501 c 3, the N4A, has been deferred for 10 years. There are no conflicts of interest here. How about we learn about Hypoism and use it rather than beginning a war against fat people and continuing the war against the rest of the addicts, all 30 million of them in this country, as this article suggests, calling it "tough love" - Ha Ha! That's like calling the holocaust tough love with a million dead addicts a year from our use of the NY Times promoted wrong addiction theory of NIDA, the hijacked brain hypothesis, to run everything concerning addictions in this country. This deliberate error must stop now! It is the biggest scientific and medical scandal of all time! Similarly it is a massive journalism scandal as well. The science of all this is discussed here: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ The prevention and recovery methodology and their scientific bases are discussed in depth in my book.

I agree with that but for the right reasons, not theirs. I don't support the drug policy alliance.

Papas, from the Drug Policy Alliance, says addiction is a medical issue and because of that Cameron Douglas shouldn't go to prison. Maybe Papas can explain what he means by addiction is a medical issue. But he doesn't. Neither does the Drug Policy Alliance which is backed by billions of George Soros' money. They have the money so they get quoted by the media. Too bad they also don't have the smarts. They say addiction is a medical issue but can't describe what that means.

And that's the problem with the Drug Policy Alliance and the Huffington Post which uses them for their anti-drug war quotes as if they had some special information the rest of us don't. They don't. They just want drugs legalized so they can get high without going to jail. They're not fighting for any particular scientific theory of addiction. They're fighting for their right to get high, addicts be damned. That's not the right motivation for their stance on decriminalization. Their demands will kill even more addicts than the current theory and policies because they could care less about addicts. They only care about getting high without having to go to jail. But they're not even honest about that. so they make up a lot of blah blah about addiction as a disease and should be treated as a disease but they know nothing about what that disease is or how it should be treated or anything else about addiction. It's a false issue for them. They are full of it.

I've had a long history with the Lindesmith Center, now the Drug Policy Alliance. I tried as hard and as long as I could to get them straightened out but they adamantly refused, so I quit trying. They think they know what drug policies should be but could care less about what causes addiction and why this is important. I went to a CATO conference back in the late 90's about drug policy and handed out a paper explaining the science of addiction and why policies need to change and to what - the drug war war, #4 at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/articlesbyandforhypoicspage2/ They not only ignored this but ridiculed me for caring about the theory issue. Too complicated and probably wrong anyway, were their comments - irrelevant. Many of their changes are the same as Hypoism's but for different reasons, and the reasons are the important things, though they disagree with that. They just want the changes without understanding the reasons. Well, if you do it their way you get more Cameron Douglas's, and dead ones at that. That's what I mean by addicts be damned. They don't care if Michael Douglas dies as long as they can get high, and that's what their policies will do. More will die irrespective of the policy changes. Without considering the correct addiction paradigm more addicts will die. They don't care about that. I do.

The right policies have to come from the right theory, an issue they ignore and refuse to deal with or support. I've tried to get them behind the right theory first and the right policies derived from that second, but they just want the policies without dealing with the theory. Because of this they can't convince anyone because the current consensus but wrong theory which the drug war is based on, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), is what is determining the current equally wrong policies. The public has been taught the HBH which supports the drug war. The public needs to be taught that the HBH is wrong and why, and why the replacement theory, Hypoism, is right first. Then they will be able to understand the need to change the policies. This is why the theory war needs to be fought before the policy war. But the Drug Policy Alliance refuses to enter this war. They don't agree with the need for it and don't understand that their policies will kill more addicts their way with just the policy changes they want. So, either way, if they win or if they continue to lose, addicts lose. That's just selfish on their part and that's why I can't support them. They are deadly wrong as are the addiction establishment and the drug warriors. The whole mess is wrong as long as the current addiction theory remains in effect. The theory war must be fought and won first, then the right policies will happen automatically while saving the addicts, both of which must occur to be successful.

Moreover, the Huffington Post is using the wrong consultants for their drug issues. But money buys a lot of things. And that's sickening.

You wouldn't think this article to be too important, big deal, fire used to make tools, ha ha, but it is very very important. Let me show you why.

"Early humans crossed a threshold around 75,000 years ago, when they started painting symbols, carving patterns and making jewelry. A new study found they also began to use fire to make tools around that time." It wasn't a threshold. It was an instinct, one new and complete instinct. Making better tools with fire is an example of science, the existence of scientific thinking. We knew about the other two (art and supernatural) before, but now we have evidence for the third part of this instinct, making all three as part of the same instinct, the critical issue in the makeup this concept.

Just before the final great emigration from Africa something new appeared in Africa, in our common ancestor. The last great human instinct appeared, I call it the superstition instinct, which consists of art, supernatural beliefs and symbols, and science. Today's article is the evidence for the science part of this triumvirate. Actually, the superstition instinct is the need to ask the question "why?" and the compulsion to answer it, one way or another. The three kinds of answers are art, science, and supernatural concepts. Like all other instincts it is hooked into the reward system which is why we get high from these traits, exactly like all the rest of the instincts. I discuss this instinct in my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, and in this paper: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/10thesuperstitioninstinct3100/

The importance of today's article is that it shows the occurrence of all three parts of this instinct simultaneously rather than one at a time which would have been three or more separate instincts rather than one major instinct. The triumvirate nature of this instinct is important in its meaning and understanding. The other important part of this concept, yet to be proved, is that there is genetic diversity of the amount of reward for each part of this triad in any one individual explaining why some people are more prone to use either art or science or supernatural beliefs rather than all three of these methods equally as ways to answer any particular "why" question. Only one part is rewarded strongly in any one individual. That these three traits occurred simultaneously in time shows this is one instinct, not several unrelated instincts, such as the "religion" instinct or the "music" instinct or the "science" instinct. This helps us to understand why it is rare to have any one individual major in all three traits, or why most people major in one of the three and only minor in the others. For example, why it is usual for scientists to not be extremely religious or artistic in their expressions of ideas, an issue I raised in the appointment of Collins to run NIH.

Another important issue raised by this instinct is that it is, as are all instincts, situated in the limbic system, an unconscious, irrational, and emotional part of the brain. This is critical in understanding how we (individually) use and value the various parts of this instinct and why there is so much emotional contention between these parts, such as creationism (supernatural) vs. evolution (science). I discuss all this in my book.

Anyway, the article is one more important piece of the puzzle of the understanding of human nature and development of any seriously considered human nature paradigm, a paradigm that is secondarily critical in our understanding of other issues, such as addictions, since addictions originate from the genetic alteration of the instinct regulating apparatus, an issue few people recognize or are even willing to recognize, the reason addictions are so poorly understood today.

It's not the university that should be sued. There's no way they can know what to do about this stuff under today's addiction paradigm, the hijacked brain hypothesis. It's NIDA and NIAAA for their deliberate perpetuation of this known wrong, proven wrong, addiction paradigm, the hijacked brain hypothesis, by their deliberate misinterpretation of the science of addiction causation. Of course, no one knows this but I've been writing about this issue for many years but my letters have been ignored and censored by the people, organizations, and media outlets to which I've sent them. The correct addiction causation theory, Hypoism, could have put an end to this kind of behavior long ago if it had been allowed to be known by the public. But, due to bias and conflicts of interest in the field of addictions which highly favor the hijacked brain hypothesis, a scientifically disproved theory, Hypoism has been suppressed and censored leading to the continued addiction epidemic and misuse of drugs, alcohol, and many behaviors. Hypoism can fix this mess if the public is allowed to know about it. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ The university knows nothing about this theory issue and therefore has no way of knowing what to do about drugs and alcohol on or off campus. No one does because of the unconscionable behavior of NIDA and NIAAA and the media.

I'm looking to sue NIDA and NIAAA under the whistleblower law if anyone knows of a lawyer who will do this suit with me. That's the law suit that needs to happen.

This is an example of what we're up against. This is written by a free lance writer and has a link on the huffington post, a popular web site. This is her answer to her question:

"Researchers don�t completely understand addiction and perhaps never will, but the majority does agree that the recipes for addiction vary and can include an array of factors including psychological demons, social environment, lack of intellectual stimulation, learned behavior from family members, genetics, and depression." Is this true?

Has she read any of the addiction science she refers to? I doubt it. Is she capable of reading it and evaluating whether it is valid or not. I doubt it. But she does write a piece on it and she does get it published and linked to by Huffington Post for some unknown reason. Psychological demons, the first answer is equal to genetics. Has she read any of these studies showing psychological demons cause addictions, lack of intellectual stimulation, learned behavior, genetics? Obviously not. They're all the same to her.

I'm going to clue her in on the science of addiction causation. Read this paper http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and my book, Hypoic's Handbook, and tell me what you now think causes addictions. Let's see what she does.

This article really makes me sick. The addiction articles I hate the most are the ones written by recovering addicts about addictions. They learned about addictions in their 12 step meetings or on their own and think they know what addictions are all about because they were able to stop using. They were addicted and now they are clean and sober, and that makes them experts on addiction. Is a diabetic who's blood sugar is 95 an expert in diabetes? Is a epileptic who isn't having a seizure and expert in seizures? Is a dialysis patient who does home dialysis an expert in dialysis? Etc. No. No. and No. So, why do these recovering addicts think they're addiction experts without having read and evaluated the addiction science literature? Even the "real" addiction experts know nothing about addictions because they do or don't do the exact same thing. That's why the whole field of addictions is a mess. So, why should these people think they're experts? It amazes me but I see their articles in the media all the time. They are all wrong because they haven't a clue about addictions even though they think they do. And the addiction epidemic and the mess it makes continues unabated. There are 270 comments for this article (so far). Everyone of these people thinks their an expert too. None have read the addiction literature. Most are addicts or related to an addict in one way or another or just hate addicts. Not a single one made the correct comment. The reason for this disaster is that we believe in and use the wrong theory of addictions and that the right theory of addiction causation would have prevented this disaster and is the only thing that could have prevented this disaster. The wrong theory, the hijacked brain hypothesis, is responsible for this mess. The right theory will correct this mess if and when it is discovered and used. Let's find it!

But not one commenter said that. The author didn't say that either. That's because everyone of them believes they know the answer, including the author. And another day goes by with the wrong theory running addictions and the mess and its disasters continue and no one cares because they all believe they know the answer, including the "real" experts who in reality know nothing.

We are using the wrong theory of addictions and this theory is causing addictions to be a mess. We need to admit that and look for the right theory that according to all we know about medicine will correct the problem once we find it and use it.

And when the right theory comes along they ignore it because they know it can't be right because their theory is right. Ha Ha. So, the problem continues inexorably exactly for this reason. The right theory has been here since 1992 and no one knows about it or cares because that's impossible.

"If you don't understand where someone's coming from and what type of challenges they're having, it's a lot more difficult to teach them how to cope," said Wright. [They're going to teach alcoholics? Please. To cope, no less? This is insane.]

"Alcoholism is a complicated syndrome, and we know there is also a genetic component," she said. "Alcohol itself has deleterious effects on the brain; nevertheless, this could be part of a pre-existing syndrome. This may precede alcohol abuse, and could be a part of a wider array of these problems." May? We already know it does. It's Hypoism and it's described and detailed in my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, my Nobel Prize book. Ha Ha. I've written abc news.com about this many times over many years. They could care less.

These are people who are supposed to be experts on alcoholism and they needed a brain scan study to show them that alcoholics' brains react differently from non-alcoholic brains to some stimuli? This is exactly why only recovering addicts can possibly treat other addicts. We already new this. It's in my 1996 book on addictions, Hypoic's Handbook, and all over my web site. Read: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thehypoismaddictionhypothesis/ and http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ for free. There are six book chapters on this web site for free too. The whole paradigm is available for free on the web site yet they still censor my work for supposedly being self-promoting. I'm promoting a free paradigm from theory to prevention to treatment and there's something wrong about this? Who's going to inform the public about this except me. I'm the only one who knows about it. Should I just sit here with this theory and let millions of hypoics and their families suffer and die for the lack of this theory? That would be unethical and cruel to say the least.

The experts haven't a clue as to what an alcoholic is while alcoholics know this intuitively. To have to ask whether addicts have some pre-existing syndrome is remarkable. Of course they do. It's called Hypoism. I've been writing about it since 1992. It's the genetic low (HYPO) activity of the reward system (thus, HYPOISM) which alters the function of the decision-making apparatus of the instinct regulating apparatus. Of course they have a pre-existing syndrome. All the animal and human data show this. It's been known since the 80's. The story of how I uncovered this theory is in my book. Everyone on the planet needs to read it. That data on genetic low reward system activity in animals and now in humans is the data that allowed me to uncover the disease that causes all addictions, Hypoism. My book goes through this discovery process of mine in the early 90's that led up to and resulted in the Hypoism hypothesis. It's 2009 and the experts are just getting it, nut not really. This lateness of getting this incredibly important theory is the reason addictions are still the mess they are. Hypoism should have straightened out the addiction mess in 1992 when I wrote my first paper called Hypoism - A Real Disease which detailed the genetics of the reward system as the underlying pathophysiology of the cause of all addictions. But this paper was censored by the addiction establishment when I asked them to publish it way back then. It continues to be censored by them and the ordinary media to this day.

My web site says, "Hypoics are born, not made". They are born with a genetic disease that causes addictions and many other symptoms, two of the major ones are decision-making and evaluation mistakes due to the genetic alteration of the decision-making apparatus which is the pathophysiology of Hypoism and the cause of addictions as well, the third major symptom.

But these experts threw my book in the garbage can without reading it as did the media. So, the addiction mess continues while the experts ignore and censor Hypoism and addictions remain misunderstood and out of control. These experts should be tarred and feathered for all the damage they have done to all kinds of addicts, but instead they're still seen as the "experts." And newspaper editors complain that I "self-promote." Who else is going to fix the addiction mess? The experts refuse to acknowledge the genetic neurobiological basis of addictions so it's only me who can tell the world about it. The article says we need to do more research on this issue. HA HA. It's been done. The story has been told. It's already available. We already know about it. We do need more research on it but that doesn't mean we can't use what we already know - that Hypoism and its pathophysiology cause all hundred or so addictions and other major symptoms that go into making a hypoic and all the problems associated with this disease. My book tells the whole story as well as how to use this information to prevent and treat Hypoism and its symptoms, addictions, decision-making, and evaluation mistakes and disasters. My book told the world about all this in 1996 when I posted my then preliminary book on the web for free. It was ignored and censored then so I was forced to write it in book form which was finally published in 1998. Ask Eliot L. Gardner at NIDA and Jack Wang and Nora Volkow at Brookhaven Labs about it. Gardner, a world class addiction researcher agreed with Hypoism when he read my book. His email to me about his feelings about Hypoism are on the home page of the Hypoism web site. Or, you could call him and ask him. Also, I gave a lecture on it at Brookhaven in 2000. I have it on video tape. Ask them about it and why they agree with it but still censor it. It's the biggest medical scandal of all time. Hypoism should have fixed the addiction mess in 1992 but because the experts hate the theory, even though it's correct and obvious from the data they know about but I detail, and therefore ignore and censor it with the help of the media. As soon as Hypoism is allowed to be known by the public it will be put into effect and the addiction epidemic will end, irrespective of what the experts say or do. I hope I live long enough to see that happen.

This article is absolutely wrong. There are valid studies and there are invalid studies. And then there are studies (only valid studies that is) that are repeated and verified; confirmed by independent scientists with no conflict of interest. To know which studies are valid and whether their confirmations are valid one generally needs to take some courses in research methods. Because most studies are done by people with conflicts of interest they will use invalid methods to get results they want according to their agenda. Therefore, conflicts of interest need to be known as well. Peer review is also not sufficient because peer reviewers can be as biased as were the researchers and the people paying for the study.

Most of the studies reported by newspapers are scientifically invalid in one way or another because most studies done are invalid. This is the reason newspapers shouldn't even report them unless they've cleared all the hurdles of being scientifically valid, absent conflict of interest, and independently confirmed similarly. This would negate most of the studies reported by the media and therefore there would be a lot less confusion and reversals.

The problem with the media is another important consideration. They want to sell newspapers and journals and shows. If they don't publish first they lose the audience, so they publish stories about studies that are invalid and misinforming while ignoring valid ones that aren't that interesting or are against the consensus even if they would help the public. Media has its own conflicts of interest.

So, in the short and long run, the consumer gets misinformed while the various businesses make money off the consumer's back.

This kind of nonsense has ruined the entire addiction field because for the most part only invalid studies have populated the literature and no one except me complains about it or writes scientific critiques, and I'm merely ignored. So, I wrote my book and web papers and write my letters to editors for anyone to read (on my blog at hypoism.com) and question me about (because I have my email and phone number out there). Moreover, I make no money off addicts or addictions; have no conflicts of interest. But in the long run, people still believe what they want to believe, so my work is nonetheless ignored and censored anyway. But at least it's there if anyone wants it. I've been consistently validated and verified for the last 17 years. All my work is in the public realm for anyone to read and question. I'm also publicly available to answer their questions publicly as my readers will testify to.

After much blabbing about much nonsense the article finally states, "Why some like Vicki and Alex become dependent and others can smoke socially, is still a mystery." This is a very good question. But it's not a mystery. In fact, this question is THE question for the field of addictions and I answered it in 1992 with my fist paper on Hypoism, the genetic cause of all additions. They had Volkow, chief addiction scientist of the country, chief of NIDA, right there on the phone and got other comments from her, so why didn't they just ask her to answer this question? Or, was this the answer? "There is tremendous variability and vulnerability," Volkow said. "It's like the H1N1 flu. Some people don't even get the symptoms and others die. It's the same thing with drugs." Was this her answer to that question or is this sentence just a nonsequitor? There is tremendous variability.....of what? She doesn't say. "There is tremendous variability and vulnerability." Is this an English sentence? Variability and vulnerability? What does this mean? What is the connection between these two words? Variability and vulnerability. Or, did she mean variability of vulnerability? Some people don't get symptoms and some die, just like the flu? That sounds like variability of vulnerability. So, let's assume that's what she meant to say - variability of vulnerability.

So, what does variability of vulnerability mean, whether with the flu or with drugs? She didn't explain. Why couldn't she explain that to us? Why didn't they ask her to explain that to us, or, did they think we already knew what that meant? The old variability of vulnerability thing that we all know about so well. No need to explain that. We all know what that means. Right?

Just like the flu? Could she explain variability of vulnerability about the flu? Does this mean that there's a genetic difference between people so that some people are genetically vulnerable to the flu while others aren't? Just like drugs? "There is tremendous variability [of] vulnerability," Volkow said. "It's like the H1N1 flu. Some people don't even get the symptoms and others die. It's the same thing with drugs." And then she says this is the same for drugs!!! So, there's the answer to the drug question, "Why do some people get addicted and others (most) don't even if both groups use the same drug?" Because of genetic variability of vulnerability. She doesn't say it outright but here it is - some people get addicted and others don't because of genetic differences in vulnerability. This is exactly what I've been writing about since 1992. Read my Hypoism Hypothesis paper - that's one of the questions I ask at the beginning of the paper. And Hiroi wrote about it in 2005. "Genetic susceptibility to substance dependence," Molecular Psychiatry (2005) 10, 336�344. His paper on this is embedded in my Hypoism Hypothesis paper below. Read it.

Now, if you read Volkow's writings about addiction causation she doesn't use this explanation. She, and the rest of the addiction field, uses the hijacked brain hypothesis explanation which ignores differences in vulnerability. Or, if there are differences they emphasize psychobabble (psychological) differences, not genetic differences. This is well documented in her writings. She's been pushing the hijacked brain hypothesis on the country since she entered NIDA. I know this because I've been arguing with her in writing for the past 7 years about this exact thing to no avail. Clearly, differences in vulnerability of getting the flu are not about psychological reasons, and she says the reasons are the same for both drugs and the flu, so differences in addiction vulnerability, she is saying it right here, are not psychological but genetic, the same thing I've been saying for 15 years while she has ignored and censored what I have said. Now, out of the blue, she's agreeing with me. But she doesn't say it forthrightly, only by implication, by what she says is the similarity between drugs and the flu. They quoted her. It's right there in print.

I've been writing about the genetic differences in addiction vulnerability for 17 years and have been ignored and censored by NIDA, ASAM, and the media. Hypoism is the genetic explanation of the differences between some people getting addicted and others not while using the same drugs. I've been writing about this and its implications since 1992 and have been ignored to the detriment of millions of addicts and their families, and here she agrees with me and not one word is mentioned about Umanoff and Hypoism, or Hiroi's paper, or even Ken Blum's work. Read my paper reviewing all this at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ This paper is the scientific argument proving the Hypoism hypothesis and disproving Volkow's hijacked brain hypothesis. I've sent links to this paper in one form or another to hundreds of newspapers, journals, and addiction experts over the last 17 years. I've been ignored and censored unanimously, and now, out of the blue, Volkow agrees with me and I'm not even asked about it or mentioned in this article! Am I invisible? Am I living in some kind of vacuum? Plastic bag? On another planet? Why am I still being ignored and censored after all these years and now Volkow is agreeing with me without mentioning me? And she's still considered an expert? She's 17 years late on this. My book, Hypoic's Handbook, a book published in 1998, is all about this genetic difference between people and solves the addiction epidemic, but it's still ignored even with Volkow now agreeing with me.

I think it's time that Hypoism was acknowledged so we can move forward into the future of addictions and fix all the problems manufactured by the hijacked brain hypothesis. And Volkow needs to be held accountable for her censorship of the genetic model of addictions and its implications. It's on her head that the field of addictions is 17 years late in knowing the truth about addiction causation. Agreeing with me now doesn't absolve her. We need a new chief of NIDA and fast before another million addicts are killed by the hijacked brain hypothesis.

In the fashion section of the NY Times again we have today's addiction article. Thus, we can count science out of the equation, which turns out to be the case. This article is a joke from the first word. There's one anecdote and one opinion after another. There's even a number, 111 out of 135 are still sober. And there are experts who have been certified, or labeled "professional." And there is a slogan, "addiction is a disease of denial." But there's not a single fact about what they are talking about. Even the number, 111 out of 135, is a lie. How did they get that number? Phone calls? Questionnaires? Sorry. These aren't valid. So, what's the point of the article? Basically, I'd say, it is to support better interventions as a way to save lives and get addicts into recovery. But there's not one correct fact or actual expert in the entire article. You're not an expert because you've been doing something for a long time or because you're certified or charge money. Expertise means your theory is right and you get repeated and valid results more than non-experts or by chance. None of that exists here. And addiction is a disease of denial? What does that mean? That the disease of addiction causes denial? Or that denial causes addiction? They don't say. But either case they're wrong. The only reason there's denial associated with addiction is because the current wrong theory of addictions makes it so. Who is willing to admit they're an addict under today's stigmatizing, demonizing, and incarcerating paradigm? Even AA is anonymous for that reason. Isn't that denial in one form? Denial is a product of the hijacked brain hypothesis, the moral theory of addictions. We have no denial with the right theory of addiction causation, hypoism, the genetic theory, because there's no stigma, judgments, or incarceration with Hypoism. Under Hypoism we don't force anyone to get sober and we also don't incarcerate any addicts. In fact, we help addicts who don't want recovery to get their drugs safely and purely. There's no need for denial under Hypoism. Thus, addiction is not a disease of denial. The theory and the implications of the theory, moral judgments and legal sanctions, cause denial.

So, everything about this article is wrong or a lie, as usual. Nothing proved and nothing valid. But we still want to help addicts right? So, what do we need to do? We need to admit for once that today's theory of addictions is wrong, seeing that it has been proven wrong a hundred ways. Then we need to find the right theory which actually exists, but has been censored by these same experts, Hypoism, the low reward genetic theory. http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ Then we need to teach the country about this theory and begin to use it from prevention in kids to recovery in kids and adults and lastly to helpful public policies dictated by this theory. Medicine works this way: correct theory yields correct and effective prevention and treatment methods as well as helpful public policies, and a loss of denial among addicts. Wrong theory does the opposite, exactly what is happening today. Under Hypoism everyone works together to do what's best and most effective, not like today under the wrong theory.

Why did Cobain leave the rehab and eventually blow his head off? Similarly, why did Jackson die from a weird overdose? Well, you can ask other addicts why they might do such a thing. The answer is always the same, because they're addicts and they're not allowed to be addicts. That's all caused by the hijacked brain hypothesis and other wrong theories of addictions but not by Hypoism. Besides being right scientifically, Hypoism is also an addict-accepting and addict-loving paradigm. There's no need to commit suicide under Hypoism. Is it worth keeping the wrong theory of addictions (in order to be able to hate and punish addicts) if it means they're going to die? Well, that's the whole point of the wrong theory to begin with. It's meant to kill addicts and that part of it works very well. It's the only part of that theory that actually does work. That's why I can't go to AA meetings anymore, now that I know all this, because AA does the same thing - it insists on using a wrong theory of addictions which kills way more addicts than it helps and doesn't want to hear about it! In fact, the same goes for the whole treatment industry and the rest of the PIMMPAL complex - http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/pimmpalcomplex/

Well, finally, the NY Times has the answer to the addiction crisis. It's in this article. No wonder they don't need Umanoff or Hypoism. They already have the answers. Funny. Why didn't we know this already? They're right here. Ready? Read it here! Here it is. Are you really really ready? Set, go......

"It�s to Mr. Suozzi�s credit that the focus, was not just on high-profile raids and gang crackdowns, but also on treatment, prevention, education and tough community-based policing. Those offer the best chance of limiting and undoing the epidemic�s damage." Mr. Suozzi has the answer and it's treatment, prevention, education, and tough community-based policing. Not one word about Hypoism. Why not Hypoism? Because we already have the answer. It's not that the answer is wrong but that we don't have the will or the money to do it. "The means to easing this crisis are known. What�s needed is the will to carry them out, and the money.

Well, there it is. And the Times had the answer all along. Words. The answer is words. Words. Words and money. Words and money. All we need to do is, repeat after me - words and money. Treatment -Treatment; Prevention - Prevention; Education - Education; Tough Community-Based Policing - Tough Community-Based Policing. And Money - Money. How many times do we have to say these words before they work? Do we have the will to say these words enough times for them to work? Will - Will. If we just had the will to say these words enough times and in the right way they would work. Now, altogether now - repeat after me....... And send money to dan umanoff, 8779 misty creek dr., sarasota, Fl 34241

Compare the situation of the blacks to the addicts in this country. I've written hundreds of letters to the Times about this. Let's look at how the Times deals with them. There's a hypoic genocide going on and the Times ignores it. A million addicts a year dying and their families ruined because of the wrong theory, bias, and prejudice against addicts. Much worse than the current racism mess. But the Times thinks it's all OK. No genocide. No problem for addicts. They deserve whatever happens to them because they did it to themselves. Addicts are arrested and sent to jail for long sentences everyday for just being addicts. But when I object to that stupidity with valid science behind me, they ignore and censor me. Ultimately nothing happened to Gates. He was wrongly arrested, yes, but still has his job and house. He was abused and embarrassed. But his story gets two weeks of press and a beer with the president; a beer no less. I was arrested, jailed, lost my medical license and business for just being an addict. Never hurt anyone in any way. Millions of addicts have had the same things happen to them, ruining their lives and family's lives. And I get angry about that and people tell me I'm too angry. Ha! someday the mess in addictions is going to be straightened out but no one is going to give reparations to the addicts who have had their lives and incomes ruined because of a false belief, the same kind of false belief that causes racism and the holocaust, all genocides for that matter. But Herbert gets to be angry and mouth off for all to read and identify with but I'm not allowed to tell my story or the story of millions of other destroyed addicts. Someday the country will apologize to addicts but they won't repay them all they have lost due to the wrong theory of addictions that today gives them the right to destroy addict's live and families. Doesn't Herbert know about this? Doesn't the Times know about this? No? Well, I'd like to have a beer with the President to explain the addiction mess and its solutions. But I'll have coffee and a cigarette instead of a beer, thanks.

I have nothing specific to comment on today so here goes an editorial about the mess in general and what's not happening after 14 years of my writing about it.

Everyday there's an article or some kind of media event related to addictions, drugs, and their consequences. There's never been a solution or any evidence of improvements in this area despite what the self-appointed experts have claimed. 16 years ago I wrote my first paper about Hypoism, a theory I had developed from an intense and thorough study of the addiction literature. The science was documented in this paper; the same science everyone else knew about but which was interpreted differently by me. I knew there had to be a better interpretation of the existing science than what existed because the current interpretation was not fitting the picture of real life addiction and not solving the problems of addictions. My guess was that it was being misinterpreted because of bias and conflicts of interest. 14 years ago, 1995, after studying the addiction literature for three years added to my experiences with addiction and recovery I jumped into the fray and began writing letters to editors of newspapers and other media outlets about this stuff, mostly theory and how the theory issue related to everything else. I sent my book out to these media outlets for obvious reasons. I sent links to papers on my web site. I sent them everything they needed to understand what I was talking about and was always available to them for explanation. My work was received like the plague. If they made any comments at all they said it was "hokey." That was from the Newsday science editor, Jamie Talan, who never read a word about Hypoism. Corcoran from the Times said my book "wasn't for them," after having received it only 3 weeks before, never reading it. The rest gave me no comments whatsoever and none of my letters were ever published. There was never a specific comment about the science or the interpretation of the science. Mainly these media outlets told me to stop writing them because they promised they would never read my letters. All because I discovered Hypoism. Quite weird.

I had the same reception from addicts in AA, AA itself, and the myriad of organizations that concern themselves with addictions. They attacked me personally or just ignored me. None dealt with the science and none seemed to care that the wrong theory was killing and ruining the lives of millions of addicts and their families. They insisted on their theories and their programs, addicts be damned. They just wanted me to shut up and go away. They had it under control. I was even kicked out of ASAM for my book and its implications. I was told by a shrink who was asked to evaluate me for my license restoration that my book was a delusion without, of course, him reading it or anything else about Hypoism. He used that as evidence to make a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and demanded I undergo 12 years of psychotherapy to cure it. This was actually used against me in my attempts to have my license reinstated both by the NYS CPH and the panels for the state that interviewed me.

Now it turns out they were wrong and I was right. I'm not the one with the delusion. They are. They're killing addicts by the millions and I'm the only one who can save them but I'm erased. Of course they wouldn't know that because they never read the book. Hypoism is the cause of addictions but they don't call it Hypoism. They call it dopamine deficiency and they give dopamine raisers. And we all know what dopamine raisers are: ADDICTORS. They are giving it different names and still not reading my writings, not the media or the addictionology establishment. But what they are doing with this is all wrong too because they don't use the brain mechanism, the instinct regulating apparatus, the decision-making mechanism, the FOKS. so, how are they going to use this new information? They can't. It makes no sense to their paradigm. So, they are just going to invent pills to take and lose out on recovery. Again, it's not going to work because pills won't work as we already know. And if they do anything they will just cause more addictions.

But they won't read the book. So, they won't know this and they will just waste everyone's time until they do. Which they won't because they refuse to because it was written by me. And I don't count. Period. Because I'm an addict and an agnostic and everything else wrong, even though I'm right and always have been right. Ha Ha.

Of course, only an addict and agnostic could have discovered Hypoism. In fact, only I could have discovered it for the reasons I discuss in the book. Funny huh? The only person who could have discovered Hypoism is the only person the world won't pay any attention to. Sorry, but that's not my fault.

Making this argument about religion is a mistake and wrong. It's about bias, bias, and bias, irrespective of what the bias is.

My high school teachers would have said, "School is wasted on Umanoff. No matter what we tell him he never listens. He's more interested in the truth than in becoming a good American." Ha Ha. I just made that up. My teachers weren't that insightful and didn't know me that well. They had no idea I was an idealist. Neither did I. Without being aware of it myself, however, I was a born idealist, against my will, and an altruist. These traits are the last things I would have chosen had I had a choice, and trust me, they weren't learned at home or anywhere else. Add to these traits agnosticism and critical thinking and you have one hell of a pain in the ass personality disorder. I was obviously not meant to be a politician but a physician would suit this combination of traits perfectly if I was smart enough which turned out to be the case. Add to this mix perseverance and a complete absence of any talent in marketing and you end up with what I have become - A complete failure at selling my book, Hypoic's Handbook.

So, take this exact guy, fully educated and trained in medicine with eight years of prior recovery in AA, rough him up a little - http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/thedoctordrugwarwrongandwastefulp1/ - for having had a relapse, and see what he does next. It's 1990. No, I didn't become a priest.

Surprisingly, with plenty of time on my hands, to see if I could make sense out of what had just happened to me, I decided to read the science of addiction causation, something I knew nothing about and had no preconceived biases. I also had no conflicts of interest. Within two years and from the same science everyone else was reading I wrote my first paper on what I had deciphered from this literature entitled "Hypoism - A Real Disease." This paper eventually became my web site, my 501-c-3 (N4A), my 1996 book, Hypoic's Handbook, and the ongoing and continuously updated paper, The Hypoism Hypothesis http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ . Hypoism was the exact opposite of the then current consensus addiction theory, what in 1997 became codified and published as Leshner's (chief of NIDA - part of the NIH) Hijacked Brain Hypothesis (HBH) and published in the journal Science, a highly respected science journal. Same science - Complete opposite theories. His paper published in Science and mine not published anywhere. In fact, these theories are so different I compared them to creationism (HBH) vs evolution (Hypoism) in my 1996 book. Interesting comparison, no? Since then, the HBH has been completely disproven in many ways while Hypoism has been confirmed and validated in many ways. Yet because the HBH originated from the NIH (NIDA) and is believed (bias) by the current chief of NIDA, Volkow, it remains in effect as the consensus addiction theory and determiner of all our country's failed addiction policies while Hypoism, the correct theory, has been ignored and censored. It has been given no chance to prove its effectiveness in the field although it has been proven in the laboratory (read my paper). Meanwhile the field of addictions remains as ineffective as it always has been with a million addicts dying each year and a half-trillion dollars wasted a year because of addictions. Everyday articles appear in newspapers with mothers of dead addicts crying for "something to be done" about this but nothing [new] is ever done. The experts go out of their way, many of them from the NIH itself, to maintain the wrong theory and ignore the right theory. They are all biased and all have conflicts of interest.

How is all this possible? Two diametrically opposite theories from the same science and the wrong one maintained as if it were the right one by the NIH while the addiction epidemic remains out of control and worsening.

This can only happen when the wrong [biased] person is chosen to run the NIH agency (and they control all the money for the entire field). This can only happen when a biased person is chosen to run that agency; biased for a particular theory even if it is wrong. This is what is happening at NIDA and NIAAA, the drug and alcohol NIH agencies, with biased chosen chiefs of these agencies. Is this what we want for the entire NIH? Irrespective of what the bias is? Is your own bias so strong that it's worth sacrificing your kid's life?

Watch the video. Despite all the letters to ABC News from me about Hypoism as the cause of obesity and other addictions over the years and now the work that comes from Dr. Stice's lab on the genetic low reward activity alleles as the cause of overeating (the opposite of the HBH and referenced in the letters below this one), confirming Hypoism physiology as the cause of overeating, Nightline continues to advertise Kessler's book on the hijacked brain hypothesis as the cause of obesity. Dr. Stice's studies disprove the hijacked brain hypothesis for food just as other work has disproved it for other addictions. Kessler's book is completely scientifically wrong but what does ABC care? They just want to jump on the HBH bandwagon because Kessler is a known entity, an authority, and the HBH is the consensus, though wrong, addiction paradigm of NIDA. Since when is Kessler an authority on overeating? Kessler got hoodwinked by NIDA himself. Kessler knows nothing about this science. As usual, when it comes to addictions, the public is being misled and injured as it has been for a hundred years.

From: Eric Stice

To: dan umanoff

Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 2:52 PM

Subject: Re: Dopamine-related activity of food reward circuits in the brain and weight gain

Sounds like you figured this all out much earlier than the rest of us!

I have attached our papers that have been published this far. At present we are interested in using PET to better characterize what is going on with reward circuitry, given that fMRI only tells you a bit of the story.

Which conference are you referring to? Will you be at SSIB in Portland this week?

Best wishes, -Eric

Dr. Stice:

the ssib conference? no, didnt know about it, but i dont have the funds to do that kind of thing. i'm on my own here. i would need some kind of financial support. i saw another paper about opioid receptor deficiency and obesity too but didnt get the reference. do you know which one i mean?

yes. this is a complete paradigm as you will see if you read my papers and book. this issue being not just the low activity alleles of the regulatory genes but more importantly the brain mechanism where these genes work, what i call the decision-making apparatus - the instinct regulating mechanism, and the reward system which i call the feel ok system - FOKS. the funny thing is that no one wants to know about it. my letters to editors about it have been ignored and censored since 1995. i have tried getting these papers published but can't seem to get the journals to do it. likewise for a book review of Hypoic's Handbook. i gave a lecture on this material to Brookhaven labs medical conference in 2000 and they gave me a hard time. volkow was there but she refused to attend. jack Wang invited me and led the conference. nothing came from it except that all their work supports the theory. haha. Eliot l. Gardner at nida read my book and supports it but wont write about it. funny.

by understanding how this brain apparatus works we can discover, or i think i already discovered, the place where intervention makes physiological sense, the autonomous thinking belief (ATB). intervention here is what i think is real recovery, and in kids with this disease the addiction prevention methodology - recovery from hypoism in kids, before they experience addictors, is real prevention. this methodology can be done as a grass roots program similar to how AA is administered and done for free with recovering hypoics sponsoring newcomer hypoics. for all addictors including behavioral addictors like food, sex, and gambling, etc. this is all explained in the book. it explains hundreds of peculiar human behaviors, instinct addictions, and raises our consciousness about how instincts work and their diversity due to the variations of their regulatory genes, moreover, this paradigm changes the whole complexion of addictions and moves the focus from the psychobabble to the physiology. it also destigmatizes addictions, addicts, and addictors.

7/30/09

Dan,

Sorry you have had difficulty publishing your results. There is a lot of papers on this general topic, so I think others are coming on board. Best of luck with your efforts. I am in an insanely busy travel period, so I need to run.

Best wishes, -Eric

7/30/09

eric - i'd appreciate it if you would begin mentioning Hypoism and the paradigm in your talks and papers. It was, in reality, the first paradigm developed on the clinical picture of reward deficiency and the brain mechanism (Hypoism), the instinct regulating apparatus. Not only do the "experts" need to know the complete book has already been written but addicts need to know it's real and valid so they can begin to trust its science and begin to use its prevention and recovery methods.

Whatever science is it is always one thing: The complete lack of bias. In science, the less bias the better. Actually, science is two things, 1) a method of thinking, a method of answering questions, and 2) a complete lack of bias in that method. Thus, any method of thinking that includes bias, belief absent proof, or even and especially already disproven beliefs, is not science. But what difference does this make? What good is science anyway? Answer this. Would you rather fly in an airplane designed and made by a theologian or an airplane engineer? I don't think you have to think too long to decide. Things like that are what science is for. Science, the method and the practice, is very important. Of course, we all know that.

Likewise, would you rather have your medical diagnosis and treatment designed and performed by a theologian or a medical doctor? Now, you could split hairs and say of course, a medical doctor, but a theologian who went to medical school would be just as good. Maybe not. How about a doctor who is receiving money from drug companies? Definitely not. How about a doctor/theologian http://www.biologos.org/about supported by money from the John Templeton Foundation? That's Collins. Would this person be your first choice to head the people's (governmental) medical research organization (NIH)? If you were being honest you'd say NO because of possible bias in his decision-making putting you and your family at severe risk and there's no reason to take such a risk. This choice is not about details but about bias, and we all know how bias can affect our decision-making. Even in a well trained person bias can and does often lead to decisions not in the best interest of anyone else. You might say that everyone has biases, so what difference does it make? Well, you have one chance to get it right. Your child's life is on the line. Are you going to go out of your way and pick a bought and paid for already known biased person who puts unproven beliefs on an equal footing with proven facts in charge of the NIH, your kid's life, when there are expert people available for this job absent these powerful biases? I don't think so. It makes no sense. And moreover, what would be the point of doing that?

We (the people of the United States of America) don't know this, because my writings on this kind of NIH bias has been censored, but we have the same problem at NIDA, the branch of the NIH specializing in addictions, the biggest medical mess our country faces today. We have the chief of NIDA, Nora Volkow, who believes in and is biased in favor of a particular theory of addiction causation, the hijacked brain hypothesis (HBH), that has been proven wrong long ago http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/hypoismhypothesis/ and continues to use it to guide her decision-making in research and practice of addiction medicine and policy-making. The HBH had already been proven wrong when she was appointed by Bush (43) and it continues to be proven wrong daily, which she ignores. The public knows nothing about the mess addiction theory is in right now despite my writing about it daily. My letters to editors have been completely censored from the public. The results of this unnecessary choice has been the conti