The son of one of my friends has just been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). It's no fun - in fact, it's one of those things that the British tend to refer to as "being easily bored", the Americans made it a Disorder, and we ran with it, the way we always seem to. Personally,m I don't like the terminology that's used, because it's a cover-all excuse, and I'm not convinced that the medical profession really understands as much as it tries to make out.

  Basically, they're trying to say that the child (or whoever) with ADD is deficient in some way, and implying that there's a cure for it -in the US they try to use Ritalin, that kind of thing, but basically, there's no real cue for it. The reason there's no cure? Because they don't know what causes it, and there's too many different things that can be written off as ADD now.

  The fact is, it's down to boredom more than anything else. Yes, the child can either be behind the class, or way ahead of it - either way, they get bored, they get disruptive, badda bing, badda boom, they've got ADD, and here's a little bottle of pills that'll help them behave better. That's not medicine - that's keeping people quiet. Keeping people quiet seems to be something that medics have always done through the centuries, and to my mind it sucks, and it always has. Now, it's down to keeping people quiet by telling them that things that are just fucking human nature are now down to x disorder, y syndrome, z deficiency (I wonder how come deficiency has managed to come through the PC crowd intact?) or any other loads of bollocks they care to come up with.

  Anyway, because I'm coming to the conclusion that my mind's warped in some very odd ways, I also started thinking about something else : Why does the medical profession find names for the illnesses and so on that are SO unsuitable with regard to the sufferers of the illnesses themselves?

  What I mean is this - is Dyslexia a fair word to make a dyslexic spell?
     Put it in an application form - "I suffer from Lysde, Dislecks, Deslickseeya - fuck it, doc, you figure it out"
  "You're suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder"
    "Sorry, you lost me at from, after that I wasn't paying attention"
  "I'm sorry to tell you, you have contracted Hyperbolic Superactive Wiggling Pelvis Syndrome, Elvis"
    "Uh-huh-huh"

   OK, so the last one has been made up, but I'm sure the fucking quacks will come up with something similar to it before long.

  And yes, my friend has every sympathy from me - her son's bloody smart, and I know what he'll be going through at school, it's not easy - but a deficit of attention? Frankly that's bollocks - he pays a shedload of attention, it's just he gets bored when people can't keep on feeding him the data and input.

  OK, I'm going to shut the hell up now. It would only raise my blood pressure to keep on going - and I'm sticking well clear of the medical "profession" for as long as I can possibly manage it.