I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask, really, what "exact sciences" are there? (No, I'm not Tom Cruise, I'm serious...) I suppose things like physics and mathematics are considered "exact sciences," but these sciences are still built on ideas and theories developed by normal people over hundreds of years, and they continue to evolve. Even today, people are challenging the fundamental rules of physics - String Theory , for example, which probably sounds crazy to a lot of people but may become "fact" in a few decades. Who knows.

Science is constantly evolving, some areas faster than others. We often use the scientific knowledge we have *now* to explain things we don't understand, and when new ideas (like String Theory, or ADD) crop up, the collective scientific community can either receive these new ideas with interest, or tell the guy he's crazy.

I think you're right on the money, Jeff, when you
state that the medical profession is shoehorning people into a societal model. Things like ADD are relatively new to medical science, and it's entirely possible that doctors aren't recognizing the symptoms correctly, or they're just writing a prescription and moving on to the next patient.

That's why it's important not to shun the development and research of these fields. What we call "ADD" now may be totally different in 200 years. Could be that we have 15 different terms for ADD-like symptoms by the end of the century, and drugs to treat the specific "conditions."

There are plenty of "conditions" that people cannot regularly solve on their own. I suppose you consider alcoholism just a "condition" that people should solve by themselves?

Depending on the research, 30 years can be a LONG time in terms of medicine. Think of it this way: we didn't know about AIDS 30 years ago either. AIDS existed (not among humans, but it did exist), we just didn't have a name for it. When people started dropping dead from simple viral infections, we knew there was something wrong. Imagine if the scientific community had ignored the problem, or just told people they were "pussies," or "deal with it yourself." Instead, most industrialized nations spend billions of dollars a year trying to find ways to treat AIDS, and as such, over the last 30 years they've come up with some pretty impressive treatments.

Maybe if the medical/scientific community had the goverment funding ADD research, we'd know more about it. As it is, we have to rely on the knowledge we have now, but the last thing I want to do is to discourage new research into this field.