An advocate for children in Florida’s foster care system is still critical of the state for it’s use of prescribed drugs to treat foster children, despite new attention being given to the issue. The head of the state’s child welfare agency is recommending stricter rules for prescribing powerful antidepressants and other medication to foster children after a 7-year-old in state care committed suicide.
The FDA analysis by Dr. Marc Stone, Dr. Thomas Laughren and colleagues involved a review of data from eight drug makers on 372 clinical trials involving nearly 100,000 adults.
Overall, they found the risk of suicide was “strongly age-dependent,” with higher risks in people under 25, no difference among those 25 to 64, and lower risks in people 65 and older.
I love Big Pharma. After getting a masters degree in drug design, I was fortunate enough to work within their stinky labs and learn the inner workings of corporate drug making (and dealing). My most important lesson: Not all drugs are bad. Some are really bad. Take the so-called antidepressant Prozac as an example…
Where once drugs were seen as poisons to be used judiciously and with caution, they are now treated as fertilisers whose more or less indiscriminate use can only do good. Where once farmers knew to keep their cattle out of fields growing the serotonin reuptake inhibiting weed, St John’s Wort, as it caused miscarriages, under industry influence women have been herded by doctors in exactly the opposite direction.
GPs are still prescribing an antidepressant known to cause birth defects in unborn children to thousands of women every year, it emerged last night. Pills such as Seroxat may result in babies being born with malformed hearts if taken in the first few weeks of pregnancy – a time when many women are still unaware they may have conceived.