Nevada TeenScreen Pusher Up On Ethics Charges

The entire article is reproduced below. To see it in its original setting, click here.

July 11, 2007
by Joe Enge

As reported by Samantha Stone with KOH Radio this morning, 2 of the 4 charges Joe Enge with EdWatch Nevada filed against state board member Gary Waters in June of 2006 in trying to implement TeenScreen have been upheld to warrant a formal hearing with the Nevada Commission on Ethics in September. Waters is no longer a board member, his final term ended in December of 2006. Waters set up The Center for Health & Learning as a non-profit to implement TeenScreen. I questioned whether it is legal for a state board member to set up a non-profit and use Nevada Department of Education equipment and office.

TeenScreen is a highly controversial mental health screen that asserts it can identify students from the 5th to 12th grades who are suicidal. Critics nationally point out TeenScreen does more harm than good with their self-admitted 84% rate of false positives and makes end runs around the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment without obtaining proper, positive consent from parents. You can read details about TeenScreen on my former EdWatch Nevada Web site at: www.campaignsitebuilder.com/templates/displayfiles1/Tmpl34.asp?id=19383.

Also available at http://www.edwatchnevada.com/ is one of the actual TeenScreen exams. Much to their chagrin, TeenScreen’s “super secret” exam is now public. The exam is listed under the heading of “Downloads.”

The two charges for setting up the non-profit were dropped. The Nevada Commission on Ethics came to the conclusion that it is legal for a non-profit, set up by a Nevada State Board of Education member, to use government equipment and offices. What’s legal is not always what’s right. I questioned also how this could be done without formal State Board of Education approval. They concluded the State Superintendent of Instruction, Keith Rheault, could do this on his own authority. They also concluded Waters did not make any money. $71,000 was awarded to the Center for Health & Learning, but he did not receive any of it.

My information shows Waters intended to start collecting money from a far larger federal grant of $1.2 million after he left office in December of 2006, the very reason he set up the non-profit. I suspect the publicity and scrutiny of my filing these Ethics charges in June of 2006 threw a monkey wrench into those plans. The federal $1.2 million grant has a table on page 29 showing a list of staff who will participate in the project with their role and level of effort. Waters is listed as director of the Center for Health & Learning and 100% FTE (full time equivalent). The center is also listed as a sub-grantee for funding. He can’t be convicted of his intentions once out of office since he was forced by these charges not to carry it out.

The Nevada Commission of Ethics did find just and sufficient cause exists to hold a hearing and render an opinion regarding whether Waters did not properly disclose his commitment, interests, or business relationship at the March, April, and June 2006 Nevada State Board of Education meetings at the time proposed standards for supplemental mental health and suicide were discussed, violating {NRS 281.501 (4)}. They also found just and sufficient cause exists to hear whether Waters acting on the same issues at these meetings violated {NRS 281.501 (2)}. The Nevada Commission on Ethics is scheduled to hear this matter on September 12, 2007 in Las Vegas at the Grant Sawyer State Building, room 4401.

Given it is legal in Nevada for non-profits to use government equipment and facilities, I think I will request an office in the Nevada Department of Education building in Carson City on behalf of EdWatch Nevada to better oversee their activities. I wonder what their reply will be.

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Joe Enge serves as an education analyst with NPRI, as chairman of EdWatch Nevada, and as a member of the Carson City School Board. Author of two world history textbooks, columnist for Liberty Watch Magazine, Joe was a high school teacher in Nevada from 1988 to 2006 and a Fulbright teacher to the former Soviet Union. He was named a Madison Fellow in 2005

33 Dead -- And He Was On Psych Drugs! Are We Surprised!

Now it's 33 dead in Virginia -- at the hand of a man who was a psych drug victim. And as usual, he went crazy and started killing people AFTER he got his "treatment". This paragraph from Associated Press tells the whole story:

News reports said that he may have been taking medication for depression and that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic.

Yes, because that's what medication for depression does -- it causes people to become suicidal and homicidal.

If he wouldn't have killed himself this young man would have gone to trial for a grisly murder spree. But when are we going to indict the Big Pharma people who colluded to cover up this aspect of psychiatric drugs -- that they kill. These people are guilty of murder, too. For the last years, since Prozac et al came on the scene, it has been onesies and twosies in the murder/suicide stories for the most part. But this one killed 33. How many does it take before we rip the cover off the cover-up?

Prozac causes depression. And suicide. And homicide. And so do the myriad of other drugs identified as "SSRIs" like Prozac -- including Luvox, Paxil, Zoloft and the others. The FDA puts on warning labels, stronger ones each time, but that's not enough. We need to take the drugs off the market, and serve indictments for manslaughter to those who swept the truth under the rug while making billions off the sale of these drugs.

Just Say No To TeenScreen

Updates on Montana, Illinois and Florida legislation to come soon.

But, now Minnesota legislators are at it. SAY NO to S.F. 148

The Minnesota Senate Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security is hearing a bill on Monday 02/26/2007, 12:30 PM in Room 15 Capitol to fund TeenScreen. The agenda verifying this bill will be heard by this committee can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/223s5x

E-mail the Chairman of this committee and bcc the committee members. E-mail addresses provided below.

Full bill here: http://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php?bill=S0148.0.html&session=ls85
Sec. 5. COLUMBIA TEENSCREEN GRANTS.
The commissioner of education shall develop a request for proposals for grants to implement the Columbia TeenScreen program. The request for proposals shall require the grant applicant to specify how the applicant will follow, implement, and conduct the essential components of the Columbia TeenScreen program. Applicants for grants shall be limited to public schools and family service collaboratives.

Some points to consider: :

1. There is a national controversy on screening kids for suicide. See petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html and video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfU9puZQKBY The petition can be presented as it is addressed to state legislators.

2. There is no evidence that screening for suicide works! See U.S. Preventive Services Task Force report here: http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/3rduspstf/suicide/suiciderr.htm
A. no evidence that screening for suicide risk reduces suicide attempts or mortality.
B. limited evidence on the accuracy of screening tools to identify suicide risk
C. insufficient evidence that treatment of those at high risk reduces suicide attempts
D. no studies were found that directly address the harms of screening and treatment for suicide risk. .

3. The chairman of the above Task Force, Ned Calonge, who is also chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said recently in the Washington Post "Whether or not we like to admit it, there are no interventions that have no harms, There is weak evidence that screening can distinguish people who will commit suicide from those who will not, he said. And screening inevitably leads to treating some people who do not need it. Such interventions have consequences beyond side effects from drugs or other treatments, he said. Unnecessary care drives up the cost of insurance, causing some people to lose coverage altogether. Reference: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061501984.html

4. The bill has the high possibility of increasing suicides! Since 90% of shrinks use psychiatric drugs as their main method of treatment and the FDA says these drugs produce suicide ideation, what do you think will happen? See sample black box warning here: http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/antidepressants/SSRIlabelChange.htm

5. Ask them if they'd be willing to be suicide screened themselves with the suicide screening questions that were recently exposed nationally here: http://www.libertycoalition.net/cognitive-liberty/psychiatry-gone-wild-teenscreen-documents-exposed

6. If they want to reduce the rare instances of teen suicides they need to educate parents about the dangers and FDA suicide warnings on psychiatric drugs.

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Chair: Senator John Marty sen.john.marty@senate.mn

Senators - Committee on Health, Housing and Family Security:

sen.patricia.torres.ray@senate.mn, sen.paul.koering@senate.mn, sen.john.doll@senate.mn, sen.sharon.erickson.ropes@senate.mn, sen.michelle.fischbach@senate.mn, sen.linda.higgins@senate.mn, sen.debbie.johnson@senate.mn, sen.tony.lourey@senate.mn, sen.ann.lynch@senate.mn, sen.betsy.wergin@senate.mn, sen.linda.berglin@senate.mn; sen.david.hann@senate.mn; sen.yvonne.solon@senate.mn