WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- If individual people behaved the way American corporations and the federal government do, they would be considered mentally ill, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader told a psychologists' organization.

      "Suppose a family spent 20 percent of its money defending against non-existent enemies," Nader said to a packed house at the American Psychological Association meeting. "And suppose they spent another 25 percent of their income to make the rich in town even richer, and in the process they neglected their children? They would be considered to be suffering from a mental illness."

      Nader challenged the psychologists to analyze the companies the same way they analyze people.    "If corporations insist on being treated as persons (by the government), what would happen if we treated them as persons psychologically? Would drug companies who gouged their elderly patients be called kleptomaniacs? Would HMOs who want to get you out of the hospital 24 hours after you've had a baby be thought to have attention deficit disorder?"

      Nader criticized corporations for failing to look at the long-term view when it comes to the environment.   "The energy companies want to sell more coal, more oil, and more ozone-depleting chemicals, and cut down more equatorial forest" rather than considering renewable energy sources such as solar energy, he said.   Nader rejected the proposition that corporations don't take a long-term view because they are focused on quarterly profits.

      "Suppose you eliminate quarterly measurement and measured the companies once every year, or every five years," he said. "Would Exxon say, 'We should go to solar technology?' No, because they have invested in certain technologies and have an interest in keeping practical alternatives like solar energy from the American people."

      Nader, a 66-year-old consumer activist, lambasted the pharmaceutical industry for focusing mainly on "lifestyle" drugs that help patients regain their hair or lose weight.    "There are needs for other drugs to combat tuberculosis and malaria but the pharmaceutical companies are not interested because there's not enough money in it. Third World people (who need the medications) won't pay up for it."

      Words like "mercy" and "compassion" should be applied to corporations as well as individuals, he continued.   "No one's asking them to lose money. They just won't make as much money as they would with lifestyle drugs."

      He disputed pharmaceutical companies' contentions that it costs $300 million to $500 million to develop and market a drug, including the cost of testing unsuccessful compounds. He noted that government scientists have been able to develop several malaria drugs on an annual budget of only $15 million.

      The increased level of marketing to children, especially children under 12, is another problematic corporate practice, Nader said   "They are increasingly separating children from their parents, teaching them how to nag their parents and selling them junk food, pornography and the idea that violence can solve problems."