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Tag: Ablechild

Lawmaker Calls for Registry of Drug Firms Paying Doctors

New York Times, by Gardiner Harris

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — An influential Republican senator says he will propose legislation requiring drug makers to disclose the payments they make to doctors for services like consulting, lectures and attendance at seminars.

The lawmaker, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, cited as an example the case of a prominent child psychiatrist, who he said made $180,000 over just two years from the maker of an antipsychotic drug now widely prescribed for children.

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St. Petersburg Times, Letters to the Editor

I am the mother of a 16-year-old autistic son. First, autism is not a mental illness. There are physical situations that precede the condition. The best definition I ever heard came from Bob Doman, the founder of the National Association for Child Development, when he told me he referred to autism as “brain toxicity.”

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Skyrocketing Numbers of Kids Are Prescribed Powerful Antipsychotic Drugs. Is It Safe? Nobody Knows.

The ‘atypical’ dilemma

By Robert Farley, Times Staff Writer

More and more, parents at wit’s end are begging doctors to help them calm their aggressive children or control their kids with ADHD. More and more, doctors are prescribing powerful antipsychotic drugs.

In the past seven years, the number of Florida children prescribed such drugs has increased some 250 percent. Last year, more than 18,000 state kids on Medicaid were given prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs.

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The New Face Of Antidepressants?

By Ed Silverman

For the past three years, the controversy over antidepressants has largely centered on exploring links between the pills and suicidal behavior, particularly in youngsters. But there has also been considerable chatter about homicidal thoughts.

Several killings around the country have prompted defense lawyers to blame an antidepressant for a killing. Most famously, this occurred in South Carolina, where 12-year-old Chris Pittman claimed Pfizer’s Zoloft prompted him to kill his grandparents. And one of the Columbine killers was prescribed Luvox.

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Grassley Seeks Marketing and Safety Documents From Major Drug Maker

WASHINGTON – Sen. Chuck Grassley is asking the drug maker, Eli Lilly and Company, for information related to the risks and marketing of the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa.

Grassley made this request in response to allegations that the company downplayed safety risks and engaged in other improper marketing practices that may be jeopardizing patients’ health. The text of Grassley’s letter follows here.

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Showdown Looms in Congress Over Drug Advertising on TV

By Milt Freudenheim, The New York Times.

Drug advertising aimed at consumers, a fast-growing category that reached $4.5 billion last year, will face hard scrutiny in the new Congress, according to industry critics in both the House and Senate.

The consumer ads will be on the griddle early in this session at hearings on the user fees that manufacturers pay to speed the reviewing of new drugs by the Food and Drug Administration. The user fee law will die in the fall unless Congress acts to renew it.

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Parents Join State Legislators in Calling for Investigation into School Shootings and Psychiatric Drug Use

Patricia Weathers
President
www.ablechild.org
(845) 677-8115

Sheila Matthews
National Vice President
www.ablechild.org
(203) 966-8419

Three school shootings in the past week have left 11 dead and 29 wounded, prompting the Bush administration to call for a school violence summit with education and law enforcement officials to help communities prevent violence and deal with its aftermath. Yet parents and legislators say that the government has consistently ignored the correlation between school shooters and psychiatric drug use and are likely to do so again at the upcoming summit.

Last year, following the Red Lake Minnesota school shootings and the revelation that the shooter Jeff Weise was under the influence of the antidepressant Prozac, a coalition of Tribal leaders and National Foundation of Women Legislators (NFWL) issued a joint resolution calling on Congress to fully investigate the correlation between psychiatric drug use and school shooters that had left 29 dead and 62 wounded. Ablechild also requested an investigation at that time.

The joint resolution called for such an investigation “to include all autopsies, toxicology reports, dosages of drugs that school shooters were either taking or withdrawing from, and testimony from medical experts who have exposed the dangers of these events”.

To date Congress has not acted upon this request. Nearly a year later, the Rocky Mountain News reported that Colorado school shooter Duane Morrison had an antidepressant in his car. Morrison took several girls hostage, killing one of them before committing suicide.

The evidence tying psychiatric drugs to acts of violence continues to mount; the FDA has warned that antidepressants can cause suicidal ideation, mania, and psychosis. The manufacturers of one antidepressant, Effexor, warn the drug can cause homicidal ideation. And earlier this month a study published in the Public Library of Science-Medicine journal found that the antidepressant Paxil raises the risk of violence. Though the study focuses specifically on Paxil, the researchers concluded that antidepressant drugs such as Prozac, Celexa, and Zoloft most likely pose the same risk. Lead researcher of the study, Dr. David Healy, director of Cardiff’s University’s North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine stated, “We’ve got good evidence that the drugs can make people violent and you’d have to reason from that that there may be more episodes of violence.”

AbleChild.org, a national grassroots parent’s organization, calls on all concerned citizens to contact their federal representatives, urging them to conduct a full investigation into the link between the spate of school shootings and possible psychiatric drug use of the shooters. Furthermore, state officials must demand full toxicology reports on all three recent school shooters to determine psychiatric drug usage or withdrawal. The victim’s families and the public at large deserve no less.

Alaska Supreme Court Strikes Down Forced Psychiatric Drugging Procedures

In a resounding affirmation of personal liberty and freedom, the Alaska Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Myers v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute today. The court found Alaska’s forced psychiatric drugging regime to be unconstitutional when the state forces someone to take psychiatric medications without proving it to be in their best interests or when there are less restrictive alternatives.

Faith Myers, the appellant in the case, reacted to the decision saying, “It makes all of my suffering worthwhile.”

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Study: ADHD Drugs Send Thousands to ERs

By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

Accidental overdoses and side effects from attention deficit drugs likely send thousands of children and adults to emergency rooms, according to the first national estimates of the problem.

Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated problems with the stimulant drugs drive nearly 3,100 people to ERs each year. Nearly two-thirds — overdoses and accidental use — could be prevented by parents locking the pills away, the researchers say.

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Tots Used as Human Guinea Pigs?

Joseph Rhee Reports:

ABC News has learned that a Massachusetts hospital is currently recruiting pre-schoolers to test the safety and effectiveness of a powerful antipsychotic drug called Quetiapine. (SEROQUEL AstraZeneca – Vince)

The study, conducted by the Department of Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is testing subjects from four to six years of age with Bipolar Disorder. An earlier Massachusetts General study of the antipsychotic drugs Risperidone and Olanzapine recruited children as young as three years old.

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