The US direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising has been immensely successful. Pharmaceutical sales and profits are up, and Americans take pharmaceutical drugs as a casually as a cup of coffee.
Since 1998 Americans have been trained by 12 minutes per hour every evening to diagnose and ‘medicalize’ every itch, twitch and inconvenient emotion. We use to call it ‘life’–now the drug companies have convinced us it’s a ‘disease’, and they have a pill to cure it.
This has been the role of advertising always. Invent a problem for which you offer the solution. Halitosis (a term invented by an ad writer for bad breath) ruining your social life? Listerine is the solution!
Now that we have these drugs in the house or we see on TV this is a ‘problem’ for which there is a pill–we’re diagnosing our children’s misbehavior or physical ailements and dispensing drugs to them.
The view of WMB is that dispensing drugs to children should only be in extreme cases–the medicine of last resort. This is true for all of us but especially children whose bodies are still developing. Testing drugs on children has rarely been done for ethical reasons–which is exactly why we shouldn’t dispense drugs to our children.

Reports of sharp rise in prescription drugs for two classes of drugs are particularly disturbing: both are impacts of DTC marketing of drugs and of unthinking parents wanting a quick fix to their child’s ailment or misbehavior.

Infants with GERD?
Between 2002 and 2006 the number of infants and children upto age four prescribed proton pump inhibitors, such as Prevacid, skyrocketed to over 557,000, about three percent of the population’s age group. That’s a 56 percent increase during the same period when some of these drugs were approved for use in children.
Doctors don’t deny that FDA approval of the drugs on kids (I can’t say for kids) had an impact on the number of prescriptions. They also recognize the effect of DTC advertising with parents coming in demanding a script to solve baby’s ailment. After all, Mom and Dad are using Nexium, Prilosec or Prevacid–why not baby or junior? Prescriptions for the 5-11 age group also jumped 31 percent to 551,000 during the four years. Another one million ages 12-18 are on drugs for indigestion.
Did anyone actually submit their infants and toddlers for drug studies? We can be certain there are no long-term studies of the effects of these pharmas on kids. Doctors do warn ‘there is some evidence’ (on adults, we can be sure) linking long-term use with increased risk of infections including pneumonia and bowel infammation. And how does an infant’s liver metabolize chemical meds, OTCs or prescription?

Other sollutions to Kids’ Indigestion
Several homeopathic remedies treat (and cure in minutes) indigestion ailments. Perhaps the most common–and my family’s standby even for husband’s GERD–is carbo vegetabalits, which is actually charcoaled vegetables. It tastes like granules of sugar, no side effects ever, and relief in moments.
Also, reconsider the menu. Prepare fewer fried or fatty foods. Reduce serving sizes and have more frequent but smaller meals. Obesity can cause indigestion, and this may be a factor in increased usage of digestion meds. Make mealtimes relaxed, peaceful time when the family truly ‘communes’. See WMB blog of August 2006 http://www.womensmedicinebowl.com/blog/2006/08/15/lets-get-real-about-eating-habits/

Psychotic Pre-Schoolers?
Until the 1990s children were rarely treated with psychiatric drugs for mental illness. But in 1987, pharmaceutical executives invented another ‘disorder’–ADHD for which they had a drug. Sure enough, M.D.s, whose medical schooling and continuing education is paid by the pharmaceutical firms, found cases of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Screening became mandatory in public schools, and school counselors, who aren’t trained for making mental health diagnoses, make recommendations to parents. Doesn’t this–drugging a child–sound like a quick solution for a teacher irritated by the class clown or overly concerned about a daydreamer? Could they be experiencing ‘childhood’?

After a 4-year-old girl in Massachusetts died last December from an overdose of psychiatric drugs, the state set up a tracking system to analyze the records of some 83,000 children under age five in the state Medicaid program to find children being given at least three psychiatric drugs or a single prescription of a power antipsychotic drugs. To date, they’ve found 955 such medicated children under age seven.

Most of psychiatric drug prescriptions for preschoolers in Massachusetts are written by child psychiatrists rather than pediatricians or family doctors. Could it be that family doctors and pediatricians take the time to inquire about the family environment and consider normal childhood development and behaviors, and recommend alternative causes–such as food allergies?
Of course, the alarming rate of drugging our children for ‘psychotic behavior’ has nothing to do with the finding that psychiatrists are way out in the lead in receiving consulting fees from pharmaceutical companies. Yea, right. (See May 15 2007 Kids are Drug Trial Subjects http://www.womensmedicinebowl.com/blog/2007/05/15/kids-are-the-drug-trial-subject/

If the trioka FDA-Pharma-AMA will not put the health of our children before profits, their protection rests squarely on parents. Young children can’t report the effects of medicine. They don’t have the concepts or words for ‘foggy brain’, unexpected emotions, or even pains. And labeling them as ill or abnormal has a negative impact on their development aside from the consequences of drugs.
The testing of chemical meds occurs every time a parent administers the MD’s script. Your child, like yourself, is an experiment with every medicine taken. Caution…

Salud!
Beverly Jensen, Ph.D.
President, www.WomensMedicineBowl.com