Sunday, October 3, 2010

Side Effects May Include Lawsuits

Antipsychotic drugs are currently the top-selling class of pharmaceutical drugs in America that generate revenue so large that actually surpasses sales of heart-protective statins. The origin of how these drugs became so universal and profitable is their start with the company Big Pharma that got behind the drugs in the 1990s and used them to treat conditions and mental illnesses like hallucinatory schizophrenia. Today, however, they are being recasted to much broader uses for less serious illnesses.
These drugs have been given to children as young as preschoolers and even to patients as old as nursing-home patients. The drugs are not safe for patients of these ages and could be fatal. Lawsuits have arisen from these unknown side effects that have included tics and restlessness.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/business/03psych.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=illegal%20drugs&st=cse

Kilee Imlay

2 comments:

  1. I think that there is definitely something that can be done to only provide young children with the correct medicine. If these medicines are bad for the kids then there should be something that completely prevents them from reaching kids. This task would fall under the government leg on the three legged stool. The market creates the medicines for the people and the government must do their job to correctly regulate the distribution of them

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