Evidence: US Healthcare, Third Leading Cause of Death_Institute of Medicine, JAMA, 2000
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An OpEd in The New York Times (below) is trumpeting psychiatry’s latest “cure” for depression: it requires surgical implantation of electrodes in the brain, continued “maintenance” with powerful psychotropic drugs, and it costs $40,000.
This has the potential for restoring integrity to medicine by providing doctors and the public with impartial risk / benefit information about existing treatments devoid of commercial bias.
“Forgotten Children” is an investigative report by Carole Keeton Strayhorn,[1] the Texas Comptroller (2004) who uncovered evidence that 60% of children in the Texas foster care system are being drugged with powerful psychotropic drugs, most of which have not been tested in or approved for use by children. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledges that many of these drugs have serious adverse side effects, both physical and psychological. The Comptroller said she was alarmed that in her review of a single month (November 2003), two powerful antipsychotic drugs — Risperdal and Zyprexa — made up half of the drugs prescribed to foster children in Texas. These two drugs have been approved only for adults for the treatment of psychosis – primarily schizophrenia – yet, she found that children as young as four, were receiving these powerful, mind-altering drugs.
The most striking acknowledgement in this sad story underscores the shaky foundation upon which the field of child psychiatry rests is the following statement by a Harvard University child psychiatrist: "When she was almost 8… Haley met full criteria for virtually every mental disorder listed."
The latest QuarterWatch report (May 7, 2009) by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) found the following disturbing trends during the third Quarter of 2008:
Infomail Archive 2003 News Stories on Human Research Protection and Commentary by Vera Hassner Sharav Dec 19, 2003: Eli Lilly Prozac UK Fact Sheet: “Not Recommended” for Children – PMDD Withdrawn in UK Dec 19, 2003: Not-So-Public-Relations: Drug Industry & Bioethics – is it casuistry or sophistry? Dec 18, 2003:…