Over-the-counter cold and cough medicines don’t work for children under age 6, and giving the common medicine to young children cannot be recommended, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee said Friday.
We covered this a few weeks back. At the time, the FDA panel moved about halfway to a conclusion like this.
Although the panel’s recommendation is nonbinding, it could lead to changes in how cough and cold medicines are used. The votes are to be taken into consideration by FDA regulators, who might take action against the products at a later time.
Dr. Jeff Jenkins, of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said it could take a year or even years for the agency to make a final decision on the recommendations.
You wouldn’t want to have significant dips in the earnings curve for any concerned pharmaceutical companies. Right?
What gets me about this, is that it took almost 40 years to reach this conclusion with about 140 deaths total. This number is EXTREMELY LOW. (Look at the Viagra posting just below this.) A child under 2 I can understand for regular colds. One thing that the American society has gone away from is education and some doctors costing a lot. I should note that my father was a family physician until his death this past July. He (and our family) often went into a hole financially because my father would be cheaper than most of the other doctors NATIONWIDE. He, like his father who was also a family doctor, would rather see patients get treatment than take money. Both of them would educate the patient (or other family members) about what to do. Many a times did the phone ring at night with a patient (or family) with a simple question about what to take and to ALWAYS FOLLOW DIRECTIONS on the box. Even with me when I was sick. While our family are conservatives, we believe in cheap affordable health care for all. That is socialized medicine, though not one presidential candidate’s version. But it would be better than none at all, which is happening to too many people in the US.
It’s just like with the Tobacco companies, because lab mice never developed lung cancer after inhaling never ending doses of cigarrete smoke, them and their lawyers pointed out that humans couldn’t develop lung cancer; until of course, someone tried it on dogs and the poor animals did developed lung cancer.
First, from experience with our daughter, the cold medicines do work. Sure this is anecdotal, BUT, that is our experience.
Second, the dosages need some work. A three y/o can weigh less than 30 lbs and a six y/o may easily weigh 75 lbs. Yet the recommended dosage will be the same for any child from over two to six. The dosage should more relate to the size of the child than their age.
Third, so a cold doesn’t kill. Ask any parent if they know their precious little bundle of joy has a cold or if it could be something much more serious.
Fourth, go ahead, pour chicken soup down the throat of a crying, nose running two y/o. Then suck the snot from their nose with a bulb. Riiiight Dr. Pediatrician.
Fifth, Why is consulting a pediatrician something you should do when the child has a cold? You won’t squeeze the kid in until three days later after the cold has wained. Nor will you be there while the child is sick.
Why are Pediatricians the worst parents of all medical people?
“”A cold does not kill, so people should just relax,” Rausch said. “Kids get sick and there’s nothing that people can do about it, but they will get better.”
Yep, that’s pretty much what the doctor told my daughter when she took her 2 month-old in to see him. 36 hours later she woke to find my granddaughter dead.
I agree with the final supplemental comment. This delay by the FDA is all about protecting Pharm profits and the wealthys’ stock portfolios. At least until they get a change to bail out. As for the children medications having little or no efficacy. And never having even been tested. Why doesn’t this surprise me? Just who would have subjected their children to any drug experiments? Did they even try them out on immature chimps? Or was that deemed too costly, and/or unreliable? The scientists probably know more about Tobacco’s effect on children, than these OTC medications on them. At least, as far as we know, or have been told. Perhaps they’ve always known that they’re useless. Just a placebo, to take advantage of parents’ concern. And rob their wallets.
The alternative would have been for the maker to throw up their hands and say “sorry, we’ve got nothing”. And “since you won’t volunteer your kids for drug testing, we can’t guarantee the safety or effectiveness of anything we make for them”. Now they’ve never come right out and said any of that. They just cranked out the meds, and hoped nobody would ask the tough questions, like “how the h*ll did you guys test any of this stuff?” or “Is merely reducing the dosage for a smaller body weight, a valid enough extrapolation from adult physiology?”. Ignoring that young children haven’t gone thru puberty yet. So there’s no telling how their body chemistry would react to something that tested fine for adults. And it’s not just the meds industry that’s guilty of this. I’ve read that many hospitals aren’t properly equiped with smaller sized surgical instruments to operate on children. Apparently working on the cost cutting principle of “one size cuts all”.
In closing, I just like to say. I don’t see why we need to blow billions on a space program, that often claims that it will discover new cures. When all we really need to do is straighten out all the faulty hospital practices that currently exists, and allow too many preventable mistakes to happen. The industry and profession is in too big of a hurry to “process” patients, to always get it right. And while they all want MRIs and CAT scanners. Not all bother with surgical tools of a variety of sizes to accommodate the patient. Heaven help small children and midgets, in these ERs. We don’t need rocket science grants to figure off that this can easily be fixed with improved ER cerification.