Powerful antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs approved only for use in adults are suspected of harming — in some cases killing — Canadian children. Though Health Canada and the drug makers acknowledge the drugs are not approved for use in anyone under 18, doctors — often general practitioners with little psychiatric training — are prescribing these medications with little oversight.
“We estimate there are more than 200 children across Canada who were born with cardiovascular defects because their mothers were on Paxil during pregnancy,” said David Klein, one of the lawyers representing Gibson. “The information from GlaxoSmithKline was totally inadequate with respect to using the drug while pregnant.”
You’ve probably heard of Adderall, the latest flavour of the month in the world of performance-enhancing drugs for athletes. If you haven’t, you surely will soon enough because we are expected to believe a substance used to treat symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is medically required twice as often by baseball players as by people in general. Does that make sense?
You’ve probably heard of Adderall, the latest flavour of the month in the world of performance-enhancing drugs for athletes. If you haven’t, you surely will soon enough because we are expected to believe a substance used to treat symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is medically required twice as often by baseball players as by people in general. Does that make sense?
When all of the rhetoric is stripped away, what psychiatrists have actually done is redefine a set of behavioral characteristics as an illness and drugged it. The expensive chemicals given to those labelled with ADHD produce nullifying effects that are hailed as “demonstrably effective.” What is actually happening is the person has been drugged, and is exhibiting the effects of a dangerous mind-altering foreign substance in his or her body.
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