US Psychiatry's
Unapproved,
Uncontrolled Harm Producing
Experiments on Children
ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RESEARCH PROTECTION
Promoting Openness, Full Disclosure, and Accountability
http://www.ahrp.org/ and http://ahrp.blogspot.com/
FYI
An editorial in the Daytona Beach News Journal (below) acknowledges the duty
to protect children from antipsychotics, among the most harmful prescribed
medications:
"Florida owes a more important duty to the thousands of children across the
state who are taking powerful medications."
This sense of responsibility is what is lacking in psychiatry, which is the
reason that millions of children are being exposed to toxic psychotropic
drugs that are damaging their central nervous system, their developing
brain, and their vital biologic systems.
In sharp contrast to other medical specialties, psychiatry's prescribing
practices are governed by conjecture--i.e. faith--rather than scientific
evidence to support clinical practice. And, as is acknowledged by Thomas Insel, MD director of the National Institute of Mental Health, psychiatry's practices have always been governed by the personal preference--i.e., bias--of the psychiatrist:
"One of the things I think that people struggle with the most is that the
treatment they are likely to be given may depend much more on who they call
and not on what problem they're dealing with. And that's a bit of a change.
That's not as true in cancer. It's not quite as true in heart disease,
although there's some of that. But in the case of mental disorders, there's
still this huge variation in the treatments that people are given, and a lot
of it depends not so much on a thorough understanding of these disorders,
[but] much more on what it is the therapist is most comfortable in doing."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
Medicines' precautionary ethical principle, "First, do no harm" is largely
violated by psychiatrists who expose patients to serious harm caused by
faith-based, invasive biological interventions--be they pharmacologic,
magnetic, electric, or surgical. In the absence of scientific evidence to
support them, such prescribing practices are unethical.
Last week, Public Broadcasting aired a report on Frontline, the Medicated
Child, focusing on US psychiatrists who misinterpret children's exuberant
behavior as pathological, "diagnosing" a million American children as
"bipolar" for which they prescribe toxic brain damaging drugs--primarily
antipsychotics singly and in cocktails--without a shred of scientific
support the risks.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
Frontline interviewed leading child psychiatrists who have been in the
forefront promoting pharmacological interventions. When asked, Why has there
been a 4,000 percent increase over the past 10 years in the number of
children diagnosed with bipolar? None of them could provide convincing
evidence to support this phenomenon. Indeed, many of them now acknowledge
that the problem of misdiagnosing and misprescribing psychotropic drugs for
children has increased exponentially in the absence of science to justify
current practice. For example,
Dr. Thomas Insel: "What's not really clear is whether many of the kids who
are called bipolar have anything that's related to this very well-studied
disorder in adults. It's not clear that people with that adult illness
started with what we're now calling bipolar in children. Nor is it clear
that the kids who have this disorder are going to grow up to have what we
used to call manic-depressive illness in adulthood."
Dr. John March, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University:
"We're using these medications. We don't know how they work, if they work or
at what cost, and it amounts to a huge experiment with the lives of American
kids."
Dr. Patrick Bacon, a child psychiatrist who loosely prescribes
antipsychotics for children: "It's really to some extent an experiment,
trying medications in these children of this age. It's a gamble. And I tell
parents there's no way to know what's going to work."
Dr. Marianne Wamboldt, the chief of psychiatry at Denver Children's
Hospital: "We're dealing with developing minds and brains, and medications
have a whole different impact in the young developing child than they do in
an adult. We don't understand that impact very well. That's where we're
still in the Dark Ages."
Dr. David Shaffer, chairman of child psychiatry, Columbia University,
acknowledges: "The whole area of bipolar is filled with dispute and
uncertainty and argument. So I don't think that there are too many people
out there saying that we're sure this is the way it is, at least not among
the leaders in the field....A lot of symptoms that you see in disturbed
children could be quite normal if you just looked at them by themselves. How
do we decide? Well.. There are very few of what are called pathognomonic
symptoms... Almost every symptom that you can name may occur in normal
kids."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
ml
When asked, Why is bipolar popular? Dr. Shaffer replied:
"I think bipolar is fashionable because for many years it was thought to not
exist in children, and then, all of a sudden, it became fashionable because
it was common:
Out of nowhere bipolar disorder suddenly was being diagnosed left, right and
center."
"Out of nowhere"- without any supporting evidence-psychiatrists diagnose and medicate irresponsibly prescribing the most toxic interventions -violating with impunity, ethical constraints of standard medical practice, which is governed by evidence, and the "do no harm" principle.
Some psychiatrists now urge caution when it comes to diagnosing children
with bipolar. But, as FRONTLINE noted, others--foremost among these, Dr.
Joseph Biederman, of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, and his
disciple, Dr. Kiki Chang, director of pediatric bipolar disorders, Stanford
University--argue for even more radical "treatments" at even younger ages
for children who they "believe" to be genetically predisposed to "bipolar
disorder." However, their "belief" is not supported by evidence, just
speculation.
"We believe it's a disorder that kind of takes on a life of its own. There's
this theory in the literature -- the kindling theory -- that was first
presented by Bob Post [Dr. Robert M. Post], and the theory is that you have
some genetic predisposition, some genes to get this disorder later
on.Certain stressful events or a stressful environment, together with these
genes, are going to send you in a certain direction. If you have those
bipolar genes, you're going to go toward a bipolar direction."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
"The theory is that if you get in early, before the first full mood episode,
then PERHAPS we can delay the onset to full mania. And IF that's the case,
PERHAPS finding the right medication early on can protect a brain so that
these children never do progress to full bipolar disorder."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
Neither the kindling theory nor the rush to medicate are backed by science.The "early intervention" rationale for prescribing antipsychotics for children falls within the realm of unethical, faith-based medicine whose serious risks of harm are measurable, and documented.
http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2006
Psychiatrists whose knowledge base about the cause, the diagnostic criteria,
the natural course of illness, and the ill effects of interventions they
prescribe, are engaging in irresponsible practices. Their ignorance is
guided by the preferences of zealous "authorities" rather than medical
science. Read interview with Dr. Chang:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages
US psychiatrists who disregard the serious harmful consequences of the
interventions they prescribe pose a very real threat to the health and
well-being of children (and others). As acknowledged by John March, MD,chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center:
"We're conducting a giant experiment with the lives of America's children by providing them not just one drug, but often two or three drugs incombination, with no data to know whether these drugs are effective or safeover the short term, much less the long term." -John March, MD
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06
Such unethical experimental practices open the door to liability charges.
Contact: Vera Hassner Sharav
veracare@ahrp.org
212-595-8974
~~~~~~~~~~
Daytona Beach News Journal
Editorial: Drugs for children? Prescriptions of anti-psychotics troubling
January 16, 2008
Parents at their wits' end, wearing long sleeves to hide bruises and bite
marks inflicted by their own offspring. Psychiatrists struggling to cope
with children as young as 2 who show intractable behavior problems. Drug
companies ready to suggest powerful drugs that can produce marked changes in
a child's behavior -- getting heavily involved in state-level determinations
of which drugs should be prescribed for which conditions. And a state
struggling to keep up with rapid changes that have pushed Medicaid costs for
powerful anti-psychotic drugs from $9 million seven years ago to almost $30
million in 2006.
Something doesn't add up. Do all these children need the drugs they're being
prescribed? Without a careful review of individual medical records, it's
difficult to say -- but the trend is disturbing. Other states are already
pushing hard for answers, and Florida should join in.
The drugs in question are known as atypical anti-psychotics and include
Risperdal, Abilify, Geodon and Seroquel. Originally intended to treat major
mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar mania, they have become
increasingly widely prescribed for children with autism and
attention-deficit disorder with tics.
Yet, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved few of these drugs
for use with children -- especially in conjunction with many of the
conditions for which the powerful drugs are prescribed. There's little
research on the effects of the drugs, and a growing number of reports
suggest that the medication could be responsible for deaths or serious side
effects, including tardive dyskinisa (involuntary jerking of the limbs and
grimacing).
State Medicaid programs across the country have found themselves paying for
increasing quantities of these drugs. In Florida, the number of child
Medicaid recipients taking atypical anti-psychotics has doubled since 1999,
despite a lack of evidence suggesting that they're any more effective than
other cheaper drugs.
Twenty-six states are exploring legal action against drug companies for
unfair trade practices or consumer-protection violations (Florida is one of
them; the Attorney General's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit served drug
manufacturer Eli Lilly with a request in 2005 for information regarding its
marketing of the drug Zyprexa.) Other states are being more aggressive;
several have actually filed suit seeking to reclaim some of the millions
spent on these drugs.
But Florida owes a more important duty to the thousands of children across
the state who are taking powerful medications. Immediately discontinuing
Medicaid reimbursement for the medications would be a mistake -- too many
children are currently stabilized on drugs and might actually be benefiting.
But the state should move to develop better standards for when the drugs
should be prescribed. And this time around, the state should look first to
public-health officials and the FDA.
Comments here:
http://www.news-journalonline
N28011608.htm
(Emphasis by Justice Lover)
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