Comment by snuxoll
4 months ago
Hell, taking medication or not, if you have had a diagnosis in the past (and didn't lie on your medical history), merely having current symptoms is grounds for your FAA medical certificate being deferred.
The fact that somebody can be completely undiagnosed, untreated, and potentially self-medicated, will get their medical certificate issued while those seeking treatment and function at the same level as their peers get deferred is madness. I completely understand concern being warranted, given a majority of airline accidents can, unfortunately, be attributed to pilot error, but it shows a maddening lack of understanding of the condition by the agency. Especially when their justification for telling AME's to defer individuals actively taking ADHD medication has nothing to do with the condition itself, but some bullshit that it actively increases cognitive deficits? Give me a break, I'd rather they just be honest, "we don't trust people who need stimulants to properly follow routine checklist procedures that are the bread and butter of a commercial pilot's job."
> but some bullshit that it actively increases cognitive deficits?
It doesn't look like obvious "bullshit". A number of ADHD medications are well-known intoxicating substances; it's not unfathomable that they might induce some kind of cognitive or behavioral impairment (not necessarily the same kind one might get diagnosed for, either).
It's similarly not unfathomable that they might possibly remotely provide a benefit to the people that derive a reported benefit from them.
Sure, but do you really want people flying a plane when their performance might depend on how they happen to react to that kind of medication? It's just one more thing that can go wrong in so many ways. And it's not like flying airline routes is a job that would even appeal to the typical ADHD-diagnosed person - like GP said, its "bread and butter" is sticking to boring checklists. There might be some silly glamorous aspect to it but that's not a good reason why one should want to be a pilot in the first place.
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