Bye-Bye Kid's Cold Medicines?
We actually might be headed down that road. The FDA is considering banning the sale of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines for young children. Steven Reinberg of HealthDay News explains why:
1. Taylor JA, Novack AH, Almquist JR, Rogers JE. Efficacy of cough suppressants in children. J Pediatr 1993 122;(5 Pt1):799-802.
Such a ban already has the support of safety experts at the FDA, who published a 365-page review last month that showed decongestants and antihistamines have been linked with 123 pediatric deaths since 1969.
Many outside experts are also in favor of restricting children's access to cold remedies…
…"If these medicines are allegedly not effective or materially unsafe, how is the purchase of hundreds of millions of doses by parents to be explained?" asked Dr. George Goldstein, a pharmaceutical industry consultant who is a nonvoting member of the panel. "I don't believe the American caregiver or parent is, in a word, stupid."
Panel chairwoman Dr. Mary E. Tinetti, who is a professor at Yale University, said that many parents must think the drugs work and "are voting with their feet, so to speak."
She added that the number of children who are reported to have died after taking these medicines seemed relatively small compared to the millions given the drugs.Yeah, why ban the sale of something dangerous when there is money to be made? Geez! Now, Dr. Fuhrman is no fan of these drugs, in fact, he contends they do more harm than good. Check this out from his book Disease-Proof Your Child:
Suppressing the fever and cough with medication can lead to a prolonged illness. In fact, cough suppressants and over-the-counter cold medicines expose children and adults to further side effects without significant effectiveness. We were taught in medical that cough suppressants do not work well, which is good, because if the cough was really suppressed, the mucous would settle deep into the lung and cause pneumonia. The most common cough suppressants contain dextromethorphan and codeine. A head-to-head comparison between placebo and these cough remedies showed that the placebo worked just as well. All children improved significantly by day three, and there was no difference among the three treatment groups in any symptom parameter.1For more on this, check out these previous posts:
1. Taylor JA, Novack AH, Almquist JR, Rogers JE. Efficacy of cough suppressants in children. J Pediatr 1993 122;(5 Pt1):799-802.
