Before You Let Your Doctor Give Your Kids Drugs, Read This

There’s a lot of controversy right now about over-medicating children for both medical and mental/emotional reasons. Before you let your doctor prescribe any medications for your child, please do some research. Ask questions. Lots of them.

I’m not a doctor or a psychiatrist, but as a parent, I am very protective about my kids. Messing with their brain chemistry or masking symptoms while the root causes go untreated seems like it will come back to haunt us later.

First, a clip from the new movie GenerationRX:

For decades, scores of doctors, government officials, journalists, and others have extolled the benefits of psychiatric medicines for children. GENERATION RX presents “the rest of the story” and unveils how this era of unprecedented change in Western culture really occurred - and what price has been paid by our society.

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The filmmaker talks to former FDA Deputy Commisioner Michael R. Taylor (and former Monsanto-ite), currently being considered for USDA head, and has this to say:

My prayer now is that my new film, GENERATION RX will help to drive Taylor out of the arms of President-elect Obama — and back to Monsanto, where he truly belongs.

The NY Times reports that an “expert” psychologist is in the pockets of big medicine:

An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular public radio program “The Infinite Mind,” produced by Lichtenstein Creative Media, earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program.

The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drugmakers have been uncovered by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Dr. Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, is the first news media figure to be investigated.

Use of Antipsychotics in Children Is Criticized

Powerful antipsychotic medicines are being used far too cavalierly in children, and federal drug regulators must do more to warn doctors of their substantial risks, a panel of federal drug experts said Tuesday.

More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal, one of five popular medicines known as atypical antipsychotics. Of those patients, 240,000 were 12 or younger, according to data presented to the committee. In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders.

But Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks — which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent — are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, panel members said.

More Children on Drugs Than Ever: Chronic Prescriptions Increase Dramatically

A new study published in the November issue of Pediatrics Journal shows that the trends for chronic medication in children are way up. The three year study found that the number of type 2 diabetes medications prescribed for kids and adolescents more than doubled from 2002 to 2005, with a high prevalence among girls aged 10 to 19. Researchers from the Pediatric Research Institute of St Louis University and the Kansas Health Institute reported that the number of asthma medication prescriptions for children increased 46.5% over the three year study. ADHD medication prescriptions were up over 40%

Big Pharma’s New Mass-Drugging Agenda Pushes Statin Drugs for Healthy People

Drug companies used to sell products for the treatment of disease. But it didn’t take long for Big Pharma to figure out that the number of diseased people is limited, and therefore so are drug profits. To bypass this problem, they began inventing diseases and marketing them to the public as a way to create new demand for high-profit pharmaceuticals. This is how “bi-polar” came into existence, for example. Same story for ADHD, social anxiety disorder and even high cholesterol (which isn’t a disease in the first place).

There are instances where medication and intervention are called for, but in my humble opinion, treating the body and mind with medicine is the last thing we should do.

Our lifestyle, our diet, exercise or lack of, and our stress level probably have more impact on our mental and physical state than any sort of medicating. And most of the people that I know who have prescription meds for physical or mental conditions don’t do anything but take the medications. No lifestyle change, no self-help, nothing. It makes me sad to see so many people dependent on drugs just to exist. Not even thriving, just existing.

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