Violence Against Children: The Pharmaceutical Industry (From The Victimology Handbook: Research Findings, Treatment, and Public Policy, P 61-76, 1990, Emilio Viano, ed. -- See NCJ-126951)

• NCJ Number: 126956
• Author(s): F Henry; S Chomicki
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 16 pages
• Sale Source: Garland Publishing, Inc.
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Pharmaceutical companies commit violence against children by promoting drugs for which the known harmful effects far outweigh the possible benefits, by promoting drugs for inappropriate uses, by promoting drugs without adequate warnings of their harmful side effects, and by promoting drugs for which the harmful effects have purposely been inadequately investigated.

Abstract

Since the pharmaceutical companies are the principal information source for physicians regarding the correct use and possible effects of the drugs being marketed, the public for whom these drugs are prescribed is at the mercy of companies who have shown that their primary goal is profits. Some of the results of such a system for marketing drugs have been disease, injury, and death for thousands of children in both developed and underdeveloped countries. This violence has deformed babies before birth through the drugs of thalidomide and bendictin; continues through early childhood with such drugs as chloromycetin and lomotil (especially in the Third World); and into later childhood with psychoactive drugs such as Ritalin, for which a specific behavioral disorder (minimal brain dysfunction) was invented. 26-item bibliography (Author abstract modified)