ABC News reports that antipsychotic drugs are being tested on toddlers at Harvard University affiliate hospital, Massachusetts General Children’s Hospital. Post your comments at: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/tots_used_as_hu.html
"I trusted the doctors, I trusted the FDA … and I feel betrayed by both," says Erin Evans, the mother of Rex who was prescribed the ‘atypical’ antipsychotic, Risperdal (risperidone) at age 8.
When the Times refers to an experiment as "bold and controversial" the reporter is sanitizing the fact that the experiment is UNETHICAL—it violates medicine’s cardinal rule "First, do no harm."
The New York Times reports that former FDA Commissioner, Dr. Lester Crawford "is under criminalo investigation by a federal grand jury over accusations of financial improprieties and false statements to Congress."
Under the influence of pharmaceutical companies, physicians anhd drug companies engage in "disease mongering." Below is a critique of Dr. David Healy’s essay: Dr. Nassir Ghaemi who argues for the legitimacy of bipolar diagnosis.
The answer given by Dr. Joseph Britto, a pediatric intensive care physician, hits the nail on the head: "Unlike pilots, doctors don’t go down with their planes."
In the U.S. the two populations at greatest risk of inappropriate, coercive, dangerous prescribing of highly toxic psychotropic drugs as chemical
restraints are the elderly and children.
"Are we becoming patients for profit? That is the question knowledgeable observers are asking.
A report in The New Scientist, "Prescribing of Hyperactivity Drugs is Out of Control," shows just how deviant U.S. prescribing of psychostimulants for
children is compared to the rest of the world.
A series of news reports may be a rude awakening to the fact that there are hidden, potentially lethal hazards of participating in clinical trials—and those hazards are concealed from the human guinea pigs who are enticed with promise of easy money.
The Associated Press reports that a just released study that found that a staggering, two and half million children in the U.S. are being prescribed antipsychotics annually–that’s 40 out of every 1,000 children.
The Boston Globe reports (below): “More than 50 years after psychiatrists began widely dispensing drugs to treat mental illness, the profession is coming face to face with a humbling reality: Its treatments often fail, leaving millions of patients [ ] to suffer while doctors search for something that works.”
