But another reason is the direct-to-consumer drug advertising on TV which began over a decade ago. In between ads for M&Ms, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Oreos, Hershey's Milk Chocolate and Doritos, kids and their parents saw $108 million worth of ads for Prilosec, $100 million for Claritins and $91 million for Zocor in 2000 -- when the national "epidemics" of GERD, "seasonal allergies" and "statin deficiencies" began.
Nor are the meds kids are taking even deemed safe for children.
Kids react differently to medicines says Duke University pediatrics professor Danny Benjamin in the Wall Street Journal and in a third of FDA studies, what was thought to be the right dose for a kid, wasn't. Long-term safety in kids is also "almost never known," says Dr. Benjamin since ped studies, like all drugs studies, are of short duration.
(Wait seven years before taking a new drug unless you want to be an uncompensated tester say drug safety advocates.)
Consider statins like Lipitor, the world's top selling medication, which was approved for US children in 2008 and recently in a chewable form in Europe. (Move over Froot Loops and Flinstone gummies.)
Over-prescribed, of debatable effectiveness in reducing heart attack, less desirable than lifestyle changes to lower cholesterol and expensive, statins are six times more likely to cause liver dysfunction, acute kidney failure, cataracts and muscle damage in adult patients says a 2010 article in the British Medical Journal. Let's give them to kids?
Statins are also linked to nerve damage, memory loss, sleep disturbances, impotence, breasts in men, a lupus-like syndrome and acute, usually mild, pancreatitis in an observational study says the Medical Letter, though cause and effect are not clear.
"Plenty of adults down statins regularly and shine off healthy eating because they know a cheeseburger and steak can't fool a statin," writes Dr. Michael J. Breus on the Huffington Post. "Imagine a 10-year-old who loves his fast food and who knows he can get away with it if he pops his pills."
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