ADHD drugs stunt growth (and worse)

This is a story that's been known for years, but has to keep getting reported because it always just goes in one ear and out the other and never gets picked up by the national media.

Researchers at Riley Hospital for Children, a nonprofit facility in Indianapolis, have concluded (once again!) that common ADHD drugs like methylphenidate (Ritalin) stunt children's growth.

Most ADHD drugs are poisonous and have been linked to a variety of conditions. Pemoline, for instance, which went by the brand name Cylert, has been known for over 30 years to cause fatal liver damage. This fact was largely hushed up for years, and the drug was only recently disapproved by the FDA. Ritalin and other ADHD toxins have been linked to heart failure: Parenthood.com has noted that the FDA has received numerous reports of cardiac-related deaths among people who had been prescribed Ritalin or similar poisons. There were 186 deaths from methylphenidate (Ritalin) reported to the FDA between 1990 and 2000.

Despite these damning reports, there's whole Internet forums dominated by whiny conservative soccer parents who drill each other on how to drug their children. And woe be to anyone who dares to point out how dangerous these drugs are. If anyone posts a link to an article from their local paper about the perils of ADHD medications, this gets trotted out as "proof" that the media has a bias against these drugs. Seriously, they really say that.

The newest conclusion - actually an old one that has to be discovered anew because the media won't keep it in the spotlight - says there's a link between stunted growth and ADHD drugs. The study says that 25% of children who visited an endocrinologist due to an unusually short stature also took ADHD medications - although the percentage of all American children taking these drugs is nowhere near 25% (yet).

Nonetheless, the druggings continue. There's more than a few cases of parents being court-ordered to give their child Ritalin (something that participants in pro-drugging forums always deny is going on) and of kids being taken away from their parents because the parents wouldn't drug them. There's undoubtedly thousands of cases of schools intimidating parents into giving their kids Ritalin and not telling them of the side effects.

The problem only gets worse as long as we don't have stronger laws to protect our families from this scam.

(Source: http://www.southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070613/Lives08/706130468/-1/Lives/CAT=Lives08;
http://www.parenthood.com/articles.html?article_id=9541)