This is extremely disgusting. Doctors in California, who receive payments and other benefits from drug companies, have been prescribing anti-psychotics to kids in foster care -- kids who are not psychotic at all, but who are being drugged into a stupor in lieu of properly addressing their behavioral problems. According to the investigation by the San Jose Mercury News, drug companies spent $14 million from 2010 to 2013 to bribe doctors into making these prescriptions.
According to the investigation, nearly 25% of California foster children age 10-18 were prescribed antipsychotic drugs. I have written about these drugs here before. They are extremely toxic and can cause weight gain, diabetes, and other severe side effects. They are appropriately prescribed only as a fairly desperate measure for people who suffer from psychoses -- schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. Some kids were on as many as 8 psychiatric medications; and at most they would be appropriate for fewer than 2% of children. (None, in my opinion. These psychoses are generally not diagnosable until late adolescence and putting any such label on a child, whose brain is still developing, is wrong.)
This is just sick.
3 comments:
This just horrible. people already have a very low opinion of drug companies and this just helps to feul that. the question is when will government, who actually should be responsible in curtailing these types of blantant greedy behaviors, step in to reprimand them?
I'm sure this drug abuse ain't just in California. And what about all the non-foster kids?? Early-onset is, I imagine, very uncommon (I've seen it once), which means that there is almost never a justification for using psychotropics with pre-pubescent humans--correct?
Yes, this is a widespread problem. There is the equally horrific story of the psychopathic Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, who should be locked in a cage for the rest of his life.
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