Dr. Mercola August 07 2008 52,978 views
The parents of a girl who went blind after taking Children's Motrin have sued Johnson & Johnson, saying the packaging didn't adequately explain the possible risks. The court case has drawn attention to the possible side effects of a drug most parents view as benign.
Stevens-Johnson syndrome isn't something that most parents worry about, but it is a potential reaction which can lead to severe problems.
Side effect of the drug can include severe allergic reactions such as hives, facial swelling, asthma, shock, skin reddening, rash and blisters.
Unfortunately, even if they’d been successful in getting yet another fine-print warning on Children’s Motrin (which they didn’t), it would not likely spare other children from being harmed by it or any other similar over-the-counter NSAIDs.
What’s really needed is increased awareness about the general dangers of all drugs, especially those for infants and children, and for physicians everywhere to discourage parents to use them unless absolutely necessary.
That’s the only way to decrease the harm being inflicted by these common drugs.
The Dangers of Pediatric OTC Drugs
This is not the first time the potential dangers of common OTC drugs hit the news. Late last year, the New York Times ran a story about the potential banning of pediatric cold remedies.
According to a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel, there is no proof that the medicines ease cold symptoms in children, while there are reports that they have caused serious harm.
“But how many parents are aware of this now, less than a year later, when shelves are still stocked with these potentially dangerous products and no warnings are issued on a grand scale?”
In 2004 and 2005, adverse drug events were the third leading cause of nonfatal injuries among infants treated in hospital emergency departments. They were also the sixth leading cause of nonfatal injuries among children 1 to 4 years old.
Children between 1 and 4 years old are also nearly 10 times more likely to be hospitalized for adverse drug events, and almost half of the adverse drug events are unintentional overdoses, mostly from common pain relief and respiratory medications.
Folks, just because a drug is sold without a prescription does not mean it’s perfectly safe!
OTC drugs can have a devastating impact on your health, and the health of your child, which this story is a grim example of. Unfortunately, the ease with which these drugs can be obtained presents a false sense of security.
Even though they're available without a prescription, they are still drugs and many contain potentially dangerous ingredients. And, while OTC drug labels will list some of the potentially harmful interactions on the label, you cannot rely on them to cover every possible scenario (and many people do not take the time to read the label anyway).
Certain foods, drugs, herbs, vitamins and other existing medical conditions could potentially create a harmful reaction.
Avoid the Drug Trap!
The first step to preventing critical side effects associated with taking drugs is to avoid them! I cannot stress this enough: Please don't get caught in the drug trap -- the utter reliance on pills and medicated syrups to make pain and symptoms go away.
The problem with this mindset -- the mindset that if you have a headache, heartburn or any other pain, you need to get a pill to fix it -- is that it ignores the fact that these symptoms are warning signs that something is not right in your body, and of course, the drugs often bring with them their own set of side effects.
Similarly, your headache or heartburn is not an illness in itself to be "cured" by a pill. It is a sign that something you are doing, being exposed to, eating, neglecting or so on, is causing a problem.
What is Stevens-Johnson Syndrome?
Stevens-Johnsons is just one of several names lumped under the general category of Erythema multiforme, which results from an allergic reaction to either a medication or infection (such as herpes simplex and mycoplasma infections). It is also known as Lyell's syndrome, and toxic epidermal necrolysis.
Symptoms include:
Medications commonly associated with this type of reactions include:
Should You Give Your Child Motrin?
Ibuprofen also has the potential to cause severe allergic reactions. Symptoms to be on the lookout for include:
But that’s not the end of ibuprofen’s warnings.
Motrin carries a LONG list of warnings and instructions beyond these most common symptoms, and stomach bleeding is just the beginning of that list. I recommend you review Motrin’s warning label in its entirety, and evaluate your child’s condition and other symptoms each time, before you consider giving it to your child.
Also remember, any time your child exhibits any symptom indicating an allergic reaction, make sure you seek medical care right away.
Watch Out For Banned Food Additives in Your Child’s OTC DrugsIt’s quite common for parents – especially first-time parents -- to rush to give their children OTC drugs for every pain and sniffle. It’s important to remember that in the first year or two of life, your child's immune system is still being formed, and their experiences during this time can often predict whether or not they will have life-long health problems.
Scientific studies continually support the wisdom of limiting exposures to "foreign" substances for children, including synthetic chemicals -- which includes ALL drugs.
But did you know that many OTC drugs contain otherwise BANNED food additives as well? They too can cause serious side effects, even though they’re not the main ingredient.
According to an expose’ by the British Food Commission last year, ALL BUT ONE pediatric OTC medicine out of 41 contained an additive that had been banned.
The additives found in these drugs included:
Treat Your Child’s Fever the Right Way
Along with immune system development, your child's nervous system continues to develop well into their seventh year of life. With the recent epidemic increase in the rates of autism, attention deficit, and hyperactivity disorders, it would seem prudent to nurture and protect your child’s health in every way possible and avoid giving them drugs like Motrin, unless absolutely necessary.
Many do not realize this, but a fever is actually a good thing. High fevers are especially good as they are far better than any immunization at building an authentic, life-long immune response. When you suppress these fevers with medication, you can cause far more harm than good.
I advise avoiding most all of the anti-fever medications unless your child is absolutely miserable, or the fever is over 104 degrees F. A tepid bath can be a soothing and effective alternative.
I agree that the parents probably would have given the girl the ibuprofen whether or not there was a warning on the label that specified blindness as a potential risk. Afterall, weren't a lot of other troublesome side effects already listed? My guess is they did not read the list of possible side effects at all or perhaps assumed that those side effects happen to "other people."
I agree. The tide will change only with a change in mainstream mindset of no confidence.
Like you said, a warning label is unlikely to have any significant impact. Lots of things have warning labels on them, but they're still being sold and bought. This is why not only does the public mindset needs to change, but much stricter regulation of drugs. A warning label is not nearly enough-these useless, ineffective, and dangerous drugs needs to be banned. And drug companies need to suffer severe penalties each time for them to get the message.
And like many of you said, a fever is a good sign of the body's defenses at work and should be allowed to run its course. Many of the cough medicine, fever medicine, do little to nothing. At the most, they usually just suppress the symptoms.
The public has been tricked to think that fevers aren't good. Fevers are your body's way of fighting the illness you are experiencing. In an article I read about patients who had a potentially fatal disease, patients who additionally got an infection that caused a fever, helped them to fight the first disease.
Ever since I read that, I stopped giving my children fever reducing medicine and their sicknesses have only lasted one day.
I find the articles very interesting. I have learned more about the dangers of medications since my husband had such tragic side effects to Celebrex. That is one medication that should have never been allowed on the market to begin with. My husband could be a "poster child" for Celebrex, then after having 5 by-passes......he can't even take any anti-inflammatory including ibuprofen. It will definitly cause intestinal bleeding when your body has been ruined by Celebrex. It is a drug trap that people unknowingly fall into and find out when it is too late. He never ever had high blood pressure, heart problems, or any bleeding problems until Celebrex done its job on his body. Now he daily suffers a lot of pain in his hips and lower legs and the only meds that he can take just don't take away a lot of the pain. It is a terrible mess to get in and I advise everyone.....PLEASE READ THE SIDE EFFECTS OF ANY MEDICINE BEFORE TAKING IT, ESPECIALLY FOR CHILDREN, OR ANYONE. My husband just never even considered side effects when his doctor put him on Celebrex, he just thought if the doctor prescribed it, it just had to be ok. He recovered from his surgery great, then they put him on Lipitor, Plavix, and more junk and now he has all those side effects and the doctors told him he "had" to take them, and he is afraid to stop taking them and they are making him sick. I live with this every day and I just want to throw all of big pharma's junk right into the trash can. I just cannot comprehend any doctor prescribing Plavix for someone who has intestinal bleeding at times, not all the time, but sometimes. They have never tried to correct the bleeding problem, they ignore it. I bought some vitamin K for the next bleeding spell. And I take Silver Biotics for fevers, it works great also and no side effects. ADVICE: READ THE LABELS AND WARNINGS!!
They talk about propaganda. I get up set every magazine I look at or TV show I watch makes me ill from the commercials on drugs. It is sad that they are grooming our children to think this way. My friend's sister gave her a kitten. She took it to the vet when it was old enough to be spayed. The cat came out with fits and no control of its facilities. When I asked another vet for some help for her all he said, was how else do you expect us to make a living. In China the Doctors do not get paid unless they help you. I wish that was like that here. We would have less mistakes, and more healthy people.
Myra pulseofwa@hotmail.com
This is valuable information every parent should know. Wise parenting is crucial to the salvaging of this narcotic poisoned, drug-crazed, insane society.
If you are interested in hearing about NATURAL products to support your immune system instead of pharmaceuticals, email me at walt.pat@hotmail.com and I'll direct you to the best there is for the immune system. You can check it out for yourself. My doctor tells me I need to take meds for high cholesterol, but I know better!! I will not put that poison in my body! Incidentally, I'm 65 and am not on any meds, am very healthy and energetic.
Swami,
I think the rest of the world would respectfully disagree that there is a time and place for "many" pharmaceutical medicines. The overwhelming majority of these "medicines" (technically a medicine should treat the problem, not the sympton, yes??) in fact never treat the root cause of the disorder and in fact are NOT needed at ANY time and place. The US, with 5% of the world's population, uses 50% of the world's rx meds, and our health care numbers are shockingly bad (well, not if you've been paying attention).
We are a nation of short cutters, and will continue to lag behind the rest of the world until we figure out that good choices create good health, not pills.