Right, Wojtek. Acc. to the USA Today article Marta cited, "the drug industry spent $5.3 billion last year on advertising in physicians journals and sending sales representatives on office visits [, and] sponsored more than 314,000 physician 'events' last year, ranging from catered lunches in hospital conference rooms to getaway weekends at resorts [at a cost of] nearly $2 billion". But if, in spite of all the prompting and freebies, the medical establishment is beginning to realise that bathing childrens' brains in toxins may not be the best way to ensure their proper development, that's *gotta* be tripe. Especially if it's reported by those voices for the sandal-and-bead wearing community, CBS News and USA Today.
Though I tend to be of the old-fashioned firm-but-fair school of child caring (I've none of my own but have been responsible for a few), I sympathise with parents when their kids are unruly. I'm sure, too, that there are exceptional cases that benefit from psychotropic drugs. But making common practice of adding Risperdal, Prozac, etc., to the strange blend of chemicals (some of which have been blamed for unruly behaviour) that your modern kid already ingests, ranges from the stupidly irresponsible to the criminal in my book. Fer chrissakes, in the case of Risperdal even the manufacturer doesn't promote it (though they stop short of recommending against it)! But it's another one of those win-in-the-short-term-at-any-cost solutions we're so familiar with, innit.
Interesting that the Feds, who cheerfully spend untold millions of taxpayers' dollars wiping out poppy growers in Columbia, incarcerating Blacks for possessing small amounts of crack and making sure people with AIDS can't get hold of pot, allow drug companies to sell antipsychotics with impunity to parents who want to silence their loudmouthed kids.
It's a wonderful world.
Joanna S.
>The fact of the matter is that today
>you cannot control unruly children without risking being accused of child
>abuse (which unlike criminal charges do not require any "due process" to be
>followed by investigating agencies, a mere report can result in a child
>ending up in a foster care).
>
>So if the brat that happens to be your child throws repeated tantrums, say,
>because you did not buy him what his peers have, you have basically two
>choices:
>
>(1) sending the brat to a boot camp (if you can afford the $2,000 -$6,000
>per month tuition), or
>(2) medicate him (most insurance plans cover prescription drugs).
>
>
>Now, if you are, say, a single parent with a "hyperactive" (i.e.
>out-of-control) child, which option would you be able to afford?
>
>Thank goddess for drugs - without them mental asylums and prisons would
>thrive.
>
>Wojtek
www.overlookhouse.com