Courtesy of the ABC News Blog, via
ABC News has learned that a Massachusetts hospital is currently recruiting pre-schoolers to test the safety and effectiveness of a powerful antipsychotic drug called Quetiapine.
The study, conducted by the Department of Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is testing subjects from four to six years of age with Bipolar Disorder. An earlier Massachusetts General study of the antipsychotic drugs Risperidone and Olanzapine recruited children as young as three years old.
These antipsychotic drugs are only approved for use by adults and are so toxic they carry a "black box warning." The drugs have been found to cause diabetes; a life-threatening nervous system problem called Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome; low blood pressure; and have also led to higher death rates in the elderly. Despite these serious potential side-effects, a patient recruitment video obtained by ABC News contains no mention of any of these risks.
Vera Hassner Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection said, "Antipsychotics were never approved for use in children whose developing brains and central nervous system may be irreversibly harmed. We believe that physicians who subject children to the toxic effects of these drugs...are practicing outside medically accepted standards."
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