Any scams are just that.
From the FAA perspective, they are pretty much stuck. Even a fraudulent diagnosis is still a diagnosis and FAA puts the responsibility on the patient/pilot/student-pilot to deal with their own messes. Maybe it's legit (I'm sure a small percentage are) but more likely it's not. Pilots have to prove that it isn't - the tough part is when kids are dosed and then many years later have to deal with the consequences. I can't find a whole lot of fault with the way FAA deals with it, generally it's the parent's doing. Yeah, maybe FAA can be a little more clear on its medical form by asking specifically about ADD/ADHD diagnoses and medications instead of having a general heading of "mental illnesses". Maybe FAA can be a little more easy to work with, but... it all boils down to it's still a recognized mental illness and a diagnosis is grounding.
I also agree that FAA is not the bad guy here -- and for me to defend a government agency causes me physical pain.
The thing is that if a person is one of the maybe 1 or 2 percent of people diagnosed with ADD/ADHD who actually have the condition, then that person probably would be well-advised to stay on the ground. All FAA is really insisting upon is that in order to debunk the diagnosis and be able to fly, the individual undergo the proper battery of tests that should have been performed before they were diagnosed and drugged in the first place.
The article mentions that as many as half of ADD/ADHD patients seem to have no deficit as adults. The shrinks will tell you that this is because they learned coping strategies, because the shrinks also believe that these are lifetime conditions that you can't grow out of. Of course, there is little evidence to support that assertion, but this is psychology we're talking about. To say it's an inexact science is generous.
My personal belief is that the reason why so many adults who were diagnosed with ADD/ADHD as children have no deficits is because the vast majority of the diagnoses were bull**** to begin with. Normal kids are hyper, fidgety, and rambunctious at times. It's part of being a kid. It's in the manual.
Kids also tend to get bored in school because, well, school can be boring. Really, truly, painfully boring. I've had some teachers who were so hopelelessly boring that if they were to teach the detainees at GTMO, they'd be charged with war crimes for torture. I'm talking about hopelessly, painfully, mind-numbingly, clock-stoppingly boring.
Back then, we dealt with it; and we thanked God and all the saints when the bell rang for recess and we discovered we were still alive -- that the teacher hadn't literally bored us to death. And then we went out and ran around the schoolyard to shake off the boredom and get the endorphins flowing again.
Nowadays, not so much. They expect these kids to sit in their seats all day like good little puppets -- with no fidgeting, farting, or fooling around -- while their teachers drone on
ad somnum about stuff that the kids don't really care about, anyway. So they drug them. It's easier all around.
-Rich