Thom Hartmann: We’ve had a lot of debate in the political arena about our schools and how they’re being run and all these kinds of things. And I wanted to touch on a topic that comes close to this. Back in 1978 my wife, Louise, and I started a community for abused kids in New Hampshire, it’s called the New England Salem Children’s Village. It’s still there, SalemChildrensVillage.org will get you over there.

And in 1980 I wrote a piece for the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry (Article: "A Nutritional Model for Effecting Change in Behavior-Disordered and Severely Emotionally Disturbed Victims of Child Abuse: The Experiences of the Salem Children's Villages" by Thomas C. Hartmann, Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry, 1st Quarter 1981.) I had gotten to know Dr. Ben Feingold, we had tried his diet on our kids. Virtually all the kids had this hyperactive label, it was called Hyperkinesis back then, with a hyperactive syndrome. And I wrote one of the first papers suggesting that the problem wasn’t that the kids were defective, that they were just wired differently. Nobody really seemed to take it seriously. So, you know, this was in 1980.

Here’s the basic symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder. There’s basically, it’s a three-legged stool. Distractibility, impulsivity and a high need for stimulation. The hypothesis that I had come up with, and I wrote about it in a book in 1992, called "ADD: A Different Perception." (Book: "Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception" by Thom Hartmann.) The hypothesis was that in a hunting/gathering world, distractibility would actually be an asset. Because if you were in a hunting/gathering world, if you’re a hunter going through the forest and you’re looking for lunch, you need to be scanning your environment constantly, because you know otherwise you might miss that rabbit over there that’s lunch, or you might miss that bear over there that wants to make you it’s lunch, and you get weeded out of the gene pool. Distractibility is a good thing.

Impulsivity, making quick decisions. If you’re chasing a rabbit through the forest and a deer goes by, you don’t have time to pull out a pad and a pen and go oh let’s see, deer more meat, harder to get. Rabbit, easier to get, less, let’s do a risk/benefit analysis. Can’t do that. It’s got to be instant. And number three, need for high levels of stimulation. The kind of person who would wake up in the morning and say you know what sounds like fun? Let’s go out there in the world where people want, where there are things, animals, that want to me eat me as much as I want to eat them, and find lunch. That person would survive.

So my hypothesis was that when we had a hunting/gathering society, there was a genetic brain component for us that actually made better hunters. And that when we shifted to an agricultural society that became a problem because if you’re distractible and your job in agriculture is to pick bugs off plants all day long, you get bored stiff. If you know, so the distractibility becomes a problem, impulsivity becomes a problem, the high level of stimulation needed all become problems in the agricultural world. The agricultural world then became the industrial world, putting bolts on screws all day long. Or our school system, sitting in a class and not fidgeting for a whole hour waiting for the bell. And all of these things, these kids, I call them hunters in a farmer’s world, seemed out of place.

Well back in ’92 I first laid this out in this book, "Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception." And it was, a lot of parents said, "Ah, I get it." And a lot of scientists said, "Ah it’s got to be nonsense. Come on, what are you talking about. Genetics? This can’t, this is a disease. You know, give the kids some drugs." And it became a multi-billion dollar industry.

In the, in 2003, a fellow by the name of Robert Moyzis, he worked for the Human Genome Project. And he was given a seat at, or a department actually, at the University of California, Irvine. They said you can research anything you want. He said I want to research ADD. And he started looking at the genetics of ADD. This was a combined study that was done with Yale and the University of Beijing, and the University of California. And their initial results came to the conclusion that yes this is genetic and yes it has to do with Dopamine.

So I wrote a book in 2003, titled "The Edison Gene: ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child." And I said you know this, there’s a gene here. One of the Dopamine genes, and I proposed that it was the DRD4 gene, the 7th allele, which is the 7th variation on that gene, that seems to pop up a lot in ADHD. And I said that gene is actually probably responsible for modern civilization as we know it, and for all the innovations.

It’s obviously what Thomas Edison had, who was thrown out of school when he was 7 years old. It was obviously what Ben Franklin had who had 35 jobs in his life, his last job was creating the United States of America. None of these guys could stay on anything for more than a year at the most. They were ADD classic cases. And they changed the world. So anyhow, I proposed the DRD4 7th allele, in 2003 in "The Edison Gene."

And now the research has been done. You know, finally, now, this week. In New Scientist Magazine, a new study. This is the third study that has corroborated the hypothesis that I laid out. I, you know, I guess I’m claiming some victory here. But I think it’s victory for our kids. In 2000, or just last week, this study said there’s actually a quote from the study that we’ve got here somewhere. Here it is. "ADHD symptoms, like rapidly shifting focus and quick movements, are actually survival traits that were selected for during our migration out of Africa." (Article: "Out-of-Africa migration selected novelty-seeking genes" by Aria Pearson.) Bingo. ADD actually is a value.

So, we’re confronted with a choice when we see these kids in the classroom. Do we modify their brains by putting drugs and chemicals into their brains so that they, you know, basically violate the genetic code that they’re carrying and stop being hunters and start behaving like farmers, or do we modify the school environment, and make it more interesting, make it more varied, get rid of "no child left behind," stop rote learning, do more Socratic teaching. Do the things that are being done in other countries and that have been done in a lot of schools in the United States. Innovative teachers, both in public schools and private schools, that we know work. And tragically, we’ve been making the choice, far to often in my opinion, of saying let’s just shove some drugs at these kids. Which have long term consequences.

Similarly, for adults, there’s a lot of adults who have many, many careers in their lives, where you know they just couldn’t quite grab it. And it’s because they were hunters who were trying to be farmers. I used to have a friend who was a CPA. And he was just crashing and burning in the CPA business. He couldn’t do it. He was a hunter, and CPA business is the ultimate farmer business. Being an accountant. So I suggested to him, why don’t you instead start selling the services of the CPA firm that you work for. Become a salesman, that’s a perfect hunter job. Just like a private detective, I mean there’s a lot of good jobs for hunters out there. He made that switch and suddenly he was making three times as much money and having a great time.

So, it’s like figuring out who we are, whether it’s kids or adults. And questioning the conventional wisdom of let’s drug our kids. Because frankly, the "let’s drug our kids" conventional wisdom is producing a lot of really, really negative side effects on developing brains. So I just thought it’s really useful to share that information with you today. Thank you.

That's The Big Picture.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.