Saving Anthony
Apr 8th, 2010 | By admin | Category: Lead Article
Key West Citizen
By John L. Guerra
Apr 8, 2010
Nine-year-old Anthony Morales is a different child now that he’s not in restraints, shot up with Thorazine or locked away in a seclusion room of a state children’s psychiatric hospital.
The youngster seemed like any other kid in the Florida Keys as he sat squirming in a plastic chair and concentrating on a Pokemon game on his handheld video console.
“I’m glad to be back in Key West,” he said Wednesday, without missing a play. “I’m glad to see my older brother again.”
His mother — a single mother — watched him fondly as she explained how her son was almost lost to her in the state’s child psychiatric system.
“They restrained him with straitjackets and Thorazine; they told me he was mentally retarded, that he was going to end up in prison,” Hope Estrada said.
That was last year.
Anthony’s troubled behavior — bursts of violent anger, days without sleeping, disruptive behavior documented in his medical records, and multiple Key West police reports and Monroe County sheriff’s dispatch notes — began to surface when he started pre-K in Key West when he was 3½ years old, Estrada said.
“He could not sit still, he was very hyperactive,” Estrada said. “The school district did an evaluation through the Easter Seals and a doctor decided to give him Ritalin.”
The controversial drug is a mild central nervous system stimulant used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children, according to Drugs.com. In children, side effects include “loss of appetite … [and] inability to fall or stay asleep,” among others.
That’s not all Anthony experienced.
Bad side effects
“He would drool, suck on his T-shirt, and was very lethargic,” his mother said.
Doctors changed him to Risperdal, an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia, mixed and manic states associated with bipolar disorder and irritability in children with autism, the manufacturer’s Web site states.
His behavior didn’t improve. When he was 4, he would run from his mother and refuse to come back. He’d try to strike her and would threaten or attack other children.
This began a series of Baker Act calls to his home. The law allows authorities to detain and commit individuals for temporary mental health evaluation and treatment when required, either on a voluntary or an involuntary basis. He was committed to Miami Children’s Hospital several times, leaving his mother to jump in her car and drive the distance.
“I had to call the police,” she said with tears in her eyes. “I had to have help. The medications were not resolving anything. Some made him hallucinate.”
From age 5 until last summer, when Anthony was 8, he had been committed at least nine times, stabilized and either sent back home or to Sandy Pines, a residential psychiatric treatment center in Palm Beach County. The facility, licensed by the state Agency for Health Care Administration, has a public school, swimming pool, gymnasium and nature trails in a state park that borders the property.
Anthony would live there for six months and receive psychiatric care, counseling and an education. At night, he’d be restricted to the residential treatment unit with other troubled children from around the state. When staff determined he had improved, they’d release him — but the next Baker Act always seemed to come, Estrada said.
It was here that Anthony was restrained, medicated with psychotropic drugs, and isolated in a seclusion ward when he broke down and staff determined he had become violent, Estrada said.
‘A bad place’
“It was a bad place; they stuck needles in me,” Anthony said of his medication, looking up from his video game for a reaction from the adults in the room. “It was scary.”
Five years after Anthony began what his mother calls “a traumatic, emotional roller coaster” of hospital stays and other trouble, a glint of sunlight showed when things were at their worst. Years of driving from Key West to Miami to Palm Beach and back — not to mention the constant worrying about her son’s health and future — Estrada said she heard really bad news.
“On one of his last stays at Sandy Pines, a doctor told me, ‘I don’t know why Anthony is back here because he reached his full potential two months ago. He’s mentally retarded and has no future — except prison,’” Estrada said.
The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) said Anthony could not return to Key West because he could not find the help he needed in the community, Estrada said. Not only that, but Anthony was reaching his limit, too. Upon learning that he’d have to return to Sandy Pines, he said something that truly frightened his mother.
“He told me, ‘They’re just going to drug me up. I want to kill myself,’” she said.
The last time Anthony was released to his mother’s care, in July, she had a panic attack and fainted.
Frightened that she’d lose her son to state authorities forever, she started calling lawyers to see what could be done.
Child advocate
“It’s her child, the treatment he was getting was missing the mark and she was crying for help and people weren’t listening,” said Andrea Moore, a lawyer who answered Estrada’s pleas. Moore had been referred by a television consumer advocate reporter Estrada had called.
“I read many of Anthony’s medical records and went to visit Sandy Pines,” Moore said. She met with Sandy Pines staff, with Anthony in the room to see what was going on. “When I first met Anthony, they brought him into a room full of adults at a meeting. He had all the signs of being on psychotropic medication but they let him climb on the tables, climb on the chairs. I was taken aback.”
Moore and the DCF have been alerted to the use of Thorazine, Clonodine and other heavy psychotropic drugs on children as young as Anthony.
It took the suicide of a boy Anthony’s age to shine the spotlight on the practice.
In April 2009, 7-year-old Gabriel Myers hanged himself in his foster parents’ home after years of being on psychotropic drugs, according to a state work group report on the use of the drugs on children. There were many factors that led to his alleged suicide, among them instability in his life and worries about the future, but the drugs are cited as a moving force in his decision to take his life. The work group also found that some 3,000 children had been given the strong drugs without parental permission.
Like Gabriel Myers, Anthony was in trouble, Moore said.
“In my opinion as a child advocate, psychotropic medication in young children is used as chemical restraints, to keep them quiet, calm and really to treat the environment rather than to treat the child,” Moore said.
The Gabriel Myers task force reached the same conclusion about the use of the drugs in child psychiatry. Nationwide, some 5 percent of all children are treated with psychotropic medications, an August 2009 task force reports. “In Florida’s foster care system, 15.2 percent of its children receive at least one such medication.”
The solution?
The bright young boy playing Pokemon still fidgets, but he’s off the heavy medication, Moore said.
“I recommended a thorough neuropsychological battery of tests so we could have an expert determine the best way to treat Anthony,” Moore said. “It was pretty clear that the treatment being provided was missing its mark.”
Moore also requested a PET scan of Anthony’s brain. His skull showed images of a fracture line, the result of falling out of bed when he was 8 months old, Estrada said. Moore thinks that’s where doctors may have gone wrong.
“They didn’t take into account that Anthony may have had organic damage to his brain,” she said.
Anthony is now under the care of a brain injury specialist.
Off medication, Anthony still faces behavioral problems, but has learned coping skills and new ways to get his way using socially acceptable methods, Moore said.
Anthony also was introduced to a different setting to attend school in Hollywood, albeit one that also has seclusion rooms, but does not give Anthtony medication. Known as Florida Palms Academy, it’s one of several alternate family care facilities around the state.
“He had an Individual Education Plan developed for his needs,” Moore said. “He has made incredible progress in school, his behavior has substantially improved and his ability to focus has substantially improved. More importantly, he made progress in reading and math and the other subjects; that was beyond what we would have reasonably anticipated. You can watch him bloom with every passing week.”
There has been action in the Legislature, too. State Sen. Ronda Storms, chair of the Children, Families and Elderly Affairs Committee, has introduced SB 2718, “Relating to Children/Out-of-home Placement/Psychotropic Meds.” If it becomes law, it will require psychiatric evaluation of children and express and informed consent or assent be obtained from a child or the child’s parent or guardian.
Time will tell how much Anthony will improve and whether he’ll do well when he returns to Key West permanently sometime in the next few months. He was in town with his mother Wednesday to see his brother, and perhaps his third-grade teacher at Poinciana Elementary School.
“I just want a second chance,” Anthony said. “I think everyone deserves a chance.”
http://www.psychsearch.net/psych_news/?p=161
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Thursday, April 22, 2010
DSS reviewing its actions in foster care abuse case
DSS reviewing its actions in foster care abuse case
4-year-old was injured while in Taylors man's care
BY PAUL ALONGI • STAFF WRITER • APRIL 22, 2010
The state Department of Social Services is conducting an internal review into what officials knew when they placed a 4-year-old into the home of a Taylors man who has been accused of abuse.
Jamille Anton Hardy, 41, is charged in a warrant with throwing his foster son on the floor at his home at 804 Center Road. The child suffered bleeding on the brain and bruises from his chest to below his knees, according to a warrant from the Greenville County Sheriff's Office.
Circuit Court Judge James C. Williams set Hardy's bond at $150,000 on Wednesday and ordered that any contact he has with children under 15 years old be supervised. Hardy remained at the Greenville County Detention Center on Wednesday night.
DSS spokeswoman Marilyn Matheus said the child will be placed with caregivers who can meet his needs after his release from the hospital. The agency's internal review includes “what we knew about” Hardy and “our oversight of the child's care,” she said.
DSS Director Kathleen Hayes said in a written statement that a “senseless crime” had been committed against a helpless child and that she and others at the agency were saddened and outraged.
“We are cooperating fully with law enforcement,” she said.
A warrant charging Hardy with inflicting great bodily injury upon a child alleges the abuse happened April 4. A doctor wrote in a letter that the child couldn't have suffered his head injury by falling down, Williams said.
Staff writer Paul Alongi can be reached at 864-298-4746
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20100422/NEWS/304220020/1091/YOURUPSTATE12/DSS-reviewing-its-actions-in-foster-care-abuse-case
4-year-old was injured while in Taylors man's care
BY PAUL ALONGI • STAFF WRITER • APRIL 22, 2010
The state Department of Social Services is conducting an internal review into what officials knew when they placed a 4-year-old into the home of a Taylors man who has been accused of abuse.
Jamille Anton Hardy, 41, is charged in a warrant with throwing his foster son on the floor at his home at 804 Center Road. The child suffered bleeding on the brain and bruises from his chest to below his knees, according to a warrant from the Greenville County Sheriff's Office.
Circuit Court Judge James C. Williams set Hardy's bond at $150,000 on Wednesday and ordered that any contact he has with children under 15 years old be supervised. Hardy remained at the Greenville County Detention Center on Wednesday night.
DSS spokeswoman Marilyn Matheus said the child will be placed with caregivers who can meet his needs after his release from the hospital. The agency's internal review includes “what we knew about” Hardy and “our oversight of the child's care,” she said.
DSS Director Kathleen Hayes said in a written statement that a “senseless crime” had been committed against a helpless child and that she and others at the agency were saddened and outraged.
“We are cooperating fully with law enforcement,” she said.
A warrant charging Hardy with inflicting great bodily injury upon a child alleges the abuse happened April 4. A doctor wrote in a letter that the child couldn't have suffered his head injury by falling down, Williams said.
Staff writer Paul Alongi can be reached at 864-298-4746
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20100422/NEWS/304220020/1091/YOURUPSTATE12/DSS-reviewing-its-actions-in-foster-care-abuse-case
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Radio Broadcast Online – April 22 – Child Protective Services and Organized Criminal Enterprises
Radio Broadcast Online – April 22 – Child Protective Services and Organized Criminal Enterprises
Paul A. Drockton, M.A. will interview sociologist James Roger Brown of The Sociology Center.
The topic: Child Protective Services and Organized Criminal Enterprises
The link: The Paul Drocton Radio Show
Listen in… the original broadcast will be on April 22, 2010, 4-5 pm PST – 7-8 pm EST (Live)
Rebroadcasts: 11-12 pm PST – 2-3 pm EST (Encore 1) and 7-8 am PST – 10-11 am EST (Encore 2)
A few articles about child protective services by sociologist James Roger Brown:
Child Protection: Do you know why the hair is standing up on the back of your neck?
National Advisory: Organized Crime Operating in the Child Protection System
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part One
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Two
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Three
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Four
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Five
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Six
http://fightcps.com/2010/04/20/radio-broadcast-online-april-22-child-protective-services-and-organized-criminal-enterprises/
Paul A. Drockton, M.A. will interview sociologist James Roger Brown of The Sociology Center.
The topic: Child Protective Services and Organized Criminal Enterprises
The link: The Paul Drocton Radio Show
Listen in… the original broadcast will be on April 22, 2010, 4-5 pm PST – 7-8 pm EST (Live)
Rebroadcasts: 11-12 pm PST – 2-3 pm EST (Encore 1) and 7-8 am PST – 10-11 am EST (Encore 2)
A few articles about child protective services by sociologist James Roger Brown:
Child Protection: Do you know why the hair is standing up on the back of your neck?
National Advisory: Organized Crime Operating in the Child Protection System
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part One
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Two
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Three
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Four
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Five
Organized Crime Management in Government – Part Six
http://fightcps.com/2010/04/20/radio-broadcast-online-april-22-child-protective-services-and-organized-criminal-enterprises/
DO YOU KNOW WHY THE HAIR IS STANDING UP ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK?
PART I
DO YOU KNOW WHY THE HAIR IS STANDING UP ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK?
by
James Roger Brown
In disaster, peace, or war, we must survive under the circumstances in which we find ourselves. In doing so, we do not have to be provincial. It is easy to take comfort in the familiarity of a place, with people we have known for some time, shared political and religious ideology, or even with people who just speak the same language. However, history demonstrates to us that changes occasionally occur in the world that render being provincial a fatal flaw. In such times of crisis it may be advisable to closely scrutinize the survival value of intellectual structures through which information is organized about the external world. Provincialism may become a luxury we cannot afford under circumstances existing at a specific time. If an evaluation of the intellectual tools we use to deal with the world determines a certain thing is unreliable, it would be foolish to rely upon others who continue using it
As experienced by citizens of previous civilizations that no longer exist, we may arrive at a time when a clever enemy finds some means to turn everything we are familiar with into a death trap. If this occurs, the scales may fall from our eyes and we may at last perceive that a false sense of security blinded us to fatal dangers present all along. Undetected weaknesses may exist in each of our daily routines, just waiting for someone with malicious intent to exploit them.
We may discover that leaders in whose hands we have placed our lives are deceiving, hypocritical, protective business partners in economic and political league with the very people seeking to kill us all. Worse, we may discover that both our enemies and leaders have a shared common interest in hiding the same things from our eyes and understanding. We may have individuals in positions of responsibility who create a facade of normality behind which they avoid solutions that will save our lives, because they have contrary personal interests or appetites. Instead, in the face of our complete destruction, they may blindly engage in their own rape, pillage, and plunder operations on the foolish presumption the enemy will not also slit their throats in the end.
The example of the Vandals may demonstrate to us that we have something in common with the last citizens of the Roman Empire. Prior to 442 AD, Vandals were official allies of Rome with status to settle in Roman territory. Our term “vandalize” is derived from the treachery exhibited by the Vandals who turned on their former allies and in 455 AD actually sacked and nearly destroyed the city of Rome. Unlike citizens of the Roman Empire, or of governments run by despots and monarchs, participants of democracies such as ours cannot legitimately claim powerlessness.
As with passengers on the airplanes turned into suicide bombs September 11, some never grasp the reality of their situation until the scales are pried from their eyes with the lever of fatal experience. Their folly may be the last thing they comprehend. Although some on the September 11, United Flight 93 gained sufficient enlightenment to recognize that the Government Policy of complying with highjackers was moronic from its inception, enlightenment did not occur in sufficient time to save themselves, just in time to prevent further damage to others. There are many lessons to be learned from the multiple disasters of September 11, but you will only hear from government those lessons that serve the interests of government officials.
When it comes to being aware of what is happening in the world around them, there are people who have stone heads of the finest quality granite. Some individuals in a burning building may choose not to leave without their property because of emotional attachments, or greed. Two historical events may also serve as instructive parallels, the sinking of the Titanic and the attack on Pearl Harbor. To their fatal experience, passengers and crew on the Titanic believed and relied upon false assurances of corporate and government officials that nothing could sink a ship human beings designed to be unsinkable. Pearl Harbor demonstrates the risks ordinary citizens, both private and military, are subjected to when they rely upon arrogant, “Great Game” playing political and military leaders. Intelligence warnings that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to Japanese attack began in 1926 at the court-martial of Col. Billy Mitchell.
At some point, the stone heads may have to be left to their fate in order that others may be saved. Substituting motives of emotional attachment or greed for good sense, even after having reality explained to them in sufficient detail the infamous “average person” should understand, some people may refuse to participate in the changes necessary to save the rest of their fellow citizens. Such individuals may have to be left to whatever natural fate results from being on the wrong side of necessary changes. No matter how tempting, one should not add their own foolishness by expediting the demise of such persons. Instead, the focus must be maintained on true National and Constitutional interests and on the safety of our families in future democracy management and policy decisions (elections and ballot initiatives). There can be no more irrelevant emotional attachments or greed in how we vote and in the demands we make of elected officials. If we do not want corrupt government, we must each refrain from corrupting it ourselves.
We now have an ugly situation that demands our attention. Without our knowledge or permission, Federal and State Government Officials have been playing fatal games with our lives. While entrusted with use of our national assets to secure our territory and lives, they have instead secretly played no-limit Greed Poker in a smoke-filled back room. Exploiting the criminal greed, negligence and incompetence of our self-preoccupied leadership, the Vandal tribes of our day seek our destruction. These various modern Vandal tribes have flooded into our land in unknown numbers with the malicious intent to wreak havoc in pursuit of their various tribal goals. Some entered our borders with pure malevolent intent, while others selfishly never intended to lift a finger in benefit of anyone’s interest other than their own. In the wake of the failure of government officials to do their jobs, ordinary citizens are on their own in sorting out the good, bad and ugly among our adopted citizen brothers and sisters and the itinerant visitors.
For some in positions of national responsibility, their actions have gone beyond negligence and incompetence. A few Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents escaped the severe moral corruption and brain rot produced by the political prions of CRD (Clinton-Reno Disease). When these unaffected FBI agents tried to investigate the legality and legitimacy of some foreign poker players in that smokey back room, they were ordered away by George Bush.
Which brings us to an important dark question, how many FBI agents does it take to change a light bulb? That depends on whether George Bush wants it changed. Which George Bush you ask? Good question.
In spite of everything that has happened since September 11, at least one Vandal tribe is still being protected from accountability while we are robbed of our remaining rights and liberties by the very Leaders who have previously betrayed us for money. The diplomatic joke, “You cannot buy an Afghani, but you can rent one,” circulated during war preparations as a derogatory characterization of Afghanistan’s tribal and militia leaders, is an equally pertinent characterization of America’s Democrats and Republicans, both elected and appointed. The rental fee for some may not require money at all, just physical contact with one part of their anatomy or another.
We did not come to this dire predicament as a consequence of honest men and women in Washington, D.C., and in our State Capitals faithfully executing the duties of their offices. How we arrived at this point is an ugly, treacherous tale of unsavory deeds. Through betrayal and perfidy the United States has become the next war zone for militant Zionists and militant Muslims conducting their mutual hatred campaigns. On the leading edge of this crisis, some foolishly look to Zionist terrorists currently in control of Israel for model leadership in how to deal with Muslim terrorists. The only relevant history lesson the political leadership of Israel can currently provide the world is the negative example of how to incite and motivate Muslims to create and sustain their own worldwide terrorist operation.
Historian Jan C. Sarna served as a consultant in preparing Part I.
© Copyright by James Roger Brown, December 27, 2001.
Author Contact Information:
James Roger Brown
Director
THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER
220 North Willow, Suite 222
North Little Rock, AR 72114
(501) 374-1788
thesociologist@aol.com
http://thesociologycenter.com/EighthCity/HairStanding.html
DO YOU KNOW WHY THE HAIR IS STANDING UP ON THE BACK OF YOUR NECK?
by
James Roger Brown
In disaster, peace, or war, we must survive under the circumstances in which we find ourselves. In doing so, we do not have to be provincial. It is easy to take comfort in the familiarity of a place, with people we have known for some time, shared political and religious ideology, or even with people who just speak the same language. However, history demonstrates to us that changes occasionally occur in the world that render being provincial a fatal flaw. In such times of crisis it may be advisable to closely scrutinize the survival value of intellectual structures through which information is organized about the external world. Provincialism may become a luxury we cannot afford under circumstances existing at a specific time. If an evaluation of the intellectual tools we use to deal with the world determines a certain thing is unreliable, it would be foolish to rely upon others who continue using it
As experienced by citizens of previous civilizations that no longer exist, we may arrive at a time when a clever enemy finds some means to turn everything we are familiar with into a death trap. If this occurs, the scales may fall from our eyes and we may at last perceive that a false sense of security blinded us to fatal dangers present all along. Undetected weaknesses may exist in each of our daily routines, just waiting for someone with malicious intent to exploit them.
We may discover that leaders in whose hands we have placed our lives are deceiving, hypocritical, protective business partners in economic and political league with the very people seeking to kill us all. Worse, we may discover that both our enemies and leaders have a shared common interest in hiding the same things from our eyes and understanding. We may have individuals in positions of responsibility who create a facade of normality behind which they avoid solutions that will save our lives, because they have contrary personal interests or appetites. Instead, in the face of our complete destruction, they may blindly engage in their own rape, pillage, and plunder operations on the foolish presumption the enemy will not also slit their throats in the end.
The example of the Vandals may demonstrate to us that we have something in common with the last citizens of the Roman Empire. Prior to 442 AD, Vandals were official allies of Rome with status to settle in Roman territory. Our term “vandalize” is derived from the treachery exhibited by the Vandals who turned on their former allies and in 455 AD actually sacked and nearly destroyed the city of Rome. Unlike citizens of the Roman Empire, or of governments run by despots and monarchs, participants of democracies such as ours cannot legitimately claim powerlessness.
As with passengers on the airplanes turned into suicide bombs September 11, some never grasp the reality of their situation until the scales are pried from their eyes with the lever of fatal experience. Their folly may be the last thing they comprehend. Although some on the September 11, United Flight 93 gained sufficient enlightenment to recognize that the Government Policy of complying with highjackers was moronic from its inception, enlightenment did not occur in sufficient time to save themselves, just in time to prevent further damage to others. There are many lessons to be learned from the multiple disasters of September 11, but you will only hear from government those lessons that serve the interests of government officials.
When it comes to being aware of what is happening in the world around them, there are people who have stone heads of the finest quality granite. Some individuals in a burning building may choose not to leave without their property because of emotional attachments, or greed. Two historical events may also serve as instructive parallels, the sinking of the Titanic and the attack on Pearl Harbor. To their fatal experience, passengers and crew on the Titanic believed and relied upon false assurances of corporate and government officials that nothing could sink a ship human beings designed to be unsinkable. Pearl Harbor demonstrates the risks ordinary citizens, both private and military, are subjected to when they rely upon arrogant, “Great Game” playing political and military leaders. Intelligence warnings that Pearl Harbor was vulnerable to Japanese attack began in 1926 at the court-martial of Col. Billy Mitchell.
At some point, the stone heads may have to be left to their fate in order that others may be saved. Substituting motives of emotional attachment or greed for good sense, even after having reality explained to them in sufficient detail the infamous “average person” should understand, some people may refuse to participate in the changes necessary to save the rest of their fellow citizens. Such individuals may have to be left to whatever natural fate results from being on the wrong side of necessary changes. No matter how tempting, one should not add their own foolishness by expediting the demise of such persons. Instead, the focus must be maintained on true National and Constitutional interests and on the safety of our families in future democracy management and policy decisions (elections and ballot initiatives). There can be no more irrelevant emotional attachments or greed in how we vote and in the demands we make of elected officials. If we do not want corrupt government, we must each refrain from corrupting it ourselves.
We now have an ugly situation that demands our attention. Without our knowledge or permission, Federal and State Government Officials have been playing fatal games with our lives. While entrusted with use of our national assets to secure our territory and lives, they have instead secretly played no-limit Greed Poker in a smoke-filled back room. Exploiting the criminal greed, negligence and incompetence of our self-preoccupied leadership, the Vandal tribes of our day seek our destruction. These various modern Vandal tribes have flooded into our land in unknown numbers with the malicious intent to wreak havoc in pursuit of their various tribal goals. Some entered our borders with pure malevolent intent, while others selfishly never intended to lift a finger in benefit of anyone’s interest other than their own. In the wake of the failure of government officials to do their jobs, ordinary citizens are on their own in sorting out the good, bad and ugly among our adopted citizen brothers and sisters and the itinerant visitors.
For some in positions of national responsibility, their actions have gone beyond negligence and incompetence. A few Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents escaped the severe moral corruption and brain rot produced by the political prions of CRD (Clinton-Reno Disease). When these unaffected FBI agents tried to investigate the legality and legitimacy of some foreign poker players in that smokey back room, they were ordered away by George Bush.
Which brings us to an important dark question, how many FBI agents does it take to change a light bulb? That depends on whether George Bush wants it changed. Which George Bush you ask? Good question.
In spite of everything that has happened since September 11, at least one Vandal tribe is still being protected from accountability while we are robbed of our remaining rights and liberties by the very Leaders who have previously betrayed us for money. The diplomatic joke, “You cannot buy an Afghani, but you can rent one,” circulated during war preparations as a derogatory characterization of Afghanistan’s tribal and militia leaders, is an equally pertinent characterization of America’s Democrats and Republicans, both elected and appointed. The rental fee for some may not require money at all, just physical contact with one part of their anatomy or another.
We did not come to this dire predicament as a consequence of honest men and women in Washington, D.C., and in our State Capitals faithfully executing the duties of their offices. How we arrived at this point is an ugly, treacherous tale of unsavory deeds. Through betrayal and perfidy the United States has become the next war zone for militant Zionists and militant Muslims conducting their mutual hatred campaigns. On the leading edge of this crisis, some foolishly look to Zionist terrorists currently in control of Israel for model leadership in how to deal with Muslim terrorists. The only relevant history lesson the political leadership of Israel can currently provide the world is the negative example of how to incite and motivate Muslims to create and sustain their own worldwide terrorist operation.
Historian Jan C. Sarna served as a consultant in preparing Part I.
© Copyright by James Roger Brown, December 27, 2001.
Author Contact Information:
James Roger Brown
Director
THE SOCIOLOGY CENTER
220 North Willow, Suite 222
North Little Rock, AR 72114
(501) 374-1788
thesociologist@aol.com
http://thesociologycenter.com/EighthCity/HairStanding.html
Foster Kids Are Lab Rats
Foster Kids Are Lab Rats
Psychiatrist Warned by FDA
Mar 16th, 2010
Posted by Beverly Tran
http://beverlytran.blogspot.com/2010/04/foster-kids-are-lab-rats.html
Miami Herald
March 16, 2010
MENTAL HEALTH
The psychiatrist who treated the Broward foster child who killed himself last year is now in hot water with the FDA.
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
A South Florida psychiatrist who was treating a 7-year-old foster child before the boy committed suicide last year has received a warning from federal drug regulators who say he failed “to protect the rights, safety and welfare” of children enrolled in clinical drug trials.
In a strongly worded letter dated Feb. 4, regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Dr. Sohail Punjwani over-medicated children who were enrolled in clinical trials for undisclosed drugs. One girl, the letter said, slashed her wrists while hallucinating.
Another, a 13-year-old, “experienced sedation and dizziness during the study,” the letter said.
The warning letter, a harsh and rare form of discipline by the agency, says Punjwani failed to “adhere to the applicable statutory requirements and FDA regulations governing the conduct of clinical investigations.”
“Your failure to conduct the requisite safety measures contributed to the unnecessary exposure of pediatric subjects to significant overdoses, which jeopardized the subjects’ rights, safety and welfare,” the letter says.
Punjwani did not return calls from The Miami Herald seeking comment.
Punjwani, who practices in Tamarac and has offices elsewhere in South Florida, was treating 7-year-old Gabriel Myers when the boy hanged himself with a shower cord in a Margate foster home. The boy’s death prompted a yearlong probe by a Department of Children & Families task force, as well as proposed legislation before the Florida Senate.
Before Gabriel’s death, Punjwani had prescribed several powerful mental health drugs — some of which had not been approved by the FDA for use on children and had been linked to dangerous side effects, including an increased risk of suicide among children.
Punjwani also was sued last summer by a Tamarac mother who claims her son, 16-year-old Emilio Villamar, died after being over-medicated with a group of mental health drugs at a Fort Lauderdale psychiatric hospital.
The letter mailed to Punjwani does not specify the names or types of drugs the doctor was testing, and a spokeswoman for the FDA, Sandy Walsh, said such details are kept confidential to protect drug companies.
Walsh said the FDA does not send out such warning letters often, and the agency considers breaches of its regulations to be “very serious.” The letter was signed by Leslie K. Ball, a doctor who heads the compliance office of the Division of Scientific Investigations, and Constance Cullity, a doctor who is also a compliance officer.
For years, drug makers did not study most medications on children, largely due to ethical concerns over using kids as test subjects. More recently, however, Congress passed laws to encourage pharmaceutical companies to test their drugs for safety and efficacy with children by extending patents on drugs approved for adults.
In a trial for one drug that was not identified, Punjwani gave one child dosages “in excess of… specified limits,” the letter says.
The child was discontinued from the trial before it was completed, the letter says, “due to worsening auditory hallucinations that apparently caused the subject to lacerate her wrists.” The girl was “overdosed” on the drug for more than two weeks.
The letter says Punjwani submitted a corrective action plan to the FDA and revised his procedures to better protect his research subjects from dosing missteps. “However,” the letter says, “we are concerned that the response is not adequate to prevent future recurrence of the violation.”
The clinical trials for a different drug were to adhere to a series of protocols that specified what dosage of the drug was to be used, depending on the child’s weight, the letter states. But for six of seven children — chosen at random — who received one of the tested drugs in Punjwani’s study, the dosage exceeded what was spelled out in the protocol.
One child who weighed 103 pounds, for example, “was overdosed on study medication for 20 consecutive days while participating in the study,” the letter states. The child is identified only as “Subject 1001.”
A child identified as “Subject 1003,” who was 15 at the time of the trials, “was overdosed on study medication for 21 consecutive days while participating in the study,” the letter says. “Subject 1004,” a 16-year-old, “received doses in excess of the maximum target dose for 3 consecutive days while participating,” the letter says.
A 10-year-old, identified as “Subject 1007,” was “overdosed” for nearly two weeks while on the study, the letter states.
Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon, who appointed a task force last year to study Gabriel’s death, said Monday he is asking the FDA to compare a list of Florida foster children with lists ofchildren enrolled in Punjwani’s clinical trials. Sheldon said he was acting on concerns that children in state care may have been involved in clinical trials, which is against state law.
The FDA letter, Sheldon said, “raises clear ethical issues and judgment issues that we need to clearly understand.” If foster kids were enrolled in clinical trials, he said, “we will need to take it to another level.”
This is why foster kids are lab rats:
OUR MOST PRECIOUS TREASURE
By Beverly Tran
May 3, 2007
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
Adolph Hitler, 1943
There have been much heated discussions in the area of the psychological well-being of children. Children are time and time again found in our government’s rhetoric as the most precious resource of our nation, and this responsibility of protecting children is entrusted in our government.[i] Unfortunately, attention is strictly focused on the aftermath of adopting these policies for mandatory psychological screening, evaluation, and the medication of children. Diatribes from supporters for mandatory psychotropic medication of children (i.e. pharmaceutical industries, psychiatrists, social workers, educators) are embroidered on waving banners in the lobbying charge on legislatures promising the glorious victory of children growing up to better function in society. The other voice in the battle against mandatory psychotropic medication of children hails from the parents. Parents cry out their stories of horror of watching their children mentally and physically deteriorate, to the point of life long suffering and even death, from the side effects of these medications, and in many cases, unnecessary and overmedication of our children. The time has come for both professionals and families to reconcile for the “best interests of the child” and redirect national perspectives to preserve the “best interests of the family”.
The genus of the “best interests of the child” philosophy has classified federal policy into a taxonomic category of ranked organisms, where these “ranked organisms” are better understood as federal agencies.
FEDERAL RANKED ORGANISMS
The Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children[ii] and Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics[iii] were created to co-integrate federal statistic and research agencies to produce an “annual compendium” of the most important indicators of the well-being of the Nation's children and families to be published by the Forum in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Since then, the Task Force added environmental health in schools and coordinated federal efforts to highlight the importance of protecting children's health during Children's Health Month in October 2002.
National Children's Study and Children's Health Month were incorporated into its interagency activities. The National Governor's Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, supported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), examines the relationship between smart community design and improved public health. With Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) support, NGA is building on this work to help strengthen the connection between state smart growth initiatives and the protection of children's environmental health.
In an unexpected move, the Office of Children’s Health Protection was dismantled and reorganized as a “national security and intelligence”[iv] operation in the new reorganization under the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency under the auspices of the environmental education bureau.
The creation of the “national security and intelligence” function was soon to be placed within the Office of Homeland Security to advise the Administrator and other senior EPA officials on matters related to national security and intelligence; to serve as the principal Agency liaison to the U.S. intelligence community; and to coordinate with EPA programs and Regions on matters related to classified and other sensitive information. This expanded regulatory authority through these federal mandates in the states, for the issue of child abuse and neglect. In Michigan, this protective obligation was assigned to the Department of Environmental Quality, Environmental Science Board and the Department of Community Health, now, a state agency of Michigan Homeland Security[v].
THE FALLACY OF PARENTAL AUTHORIZATION
As parents and caregivers, it is a falsely assumed that parental authorization of medical care is an inherent, fundamental right. Federal policy for the Protection of Children From Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks supra, was formulated from a body of scientific knowledge that comported with abuse and neglect polices. It was at this point that the design of future child protection policies was to assume the nurturing role of the parent. Concerns of health and safety risks were broadly determined to be “attributable to products or substances that the child is likely to come in contact with or ingest (such as the air we breath, the food we eat, the water we drink or use for recreation, the soil we live on, and the products we use or are exposed to.) Under this interpretation, states have been able to usurp parental authorization under the guise of functioning for the well-being of children.
The federal government went a step further in circumventing parental authorization by allowing Institutional Review Boards to establish certain protocol for conducting human research on children. If a parent does not give consent for medication, waiver mechanisms are substituted for parental authorization. These mechanisms are to be found in policies of child protection as conditions of future risk of abuse and neglect. This means that if a parent does not consent to the medication of his and/or her child, there is nothing they may do about it because it would be considered an act of placing the child at risk of future health and environmental harms.
Children who are wards of the state, agency, institution, or entity, where entity has been identified as schools, camps, hospitals, or similar settings in which the majority of children involved as subjects are not wards, can be participants in human subject research without notification or authorization of parents. Authorization is then assigned, as previously stated as waiver mechanisms, to an institutional guardian. As stated in the Code of federal Regulations Title 45, Public Welfare, Department of Health and Human Services, Part 46, Protection of Human Subjects, 2003, requirements for permission by parents or guardians and for assent by children has made it possible to authorize and approve alternative mechanisms to obtain permission from an adult who would better represent the child’s interests, “The inability of obtaining permission from a parent or guardian could not be basis for excluding a child from research that held out the prospect of benefit to the child.” Simply put, there is nothing a parent can do but watch his and/or her child become a human guinea pig, if the parent is even lucky enough to be told what is happening.
REDIRECTION OF DISCUSSIONS
Instead of pitting the government’s side of “preventing future risks” against the parents’ and caregivers’ side of “present harms” of the children, we, as a nation, need to come to a general consensus and begin to address how the nation has been allowed to usurp the fundamental rights of parents in “the best interests of the child”. Children are not the most precious resources of a nation; children are the most precious treasures of OUR families. Until we, as citizens of the United States of America, stand up and hold our elected officials accountable for such egregious violations of the Constitution, the only ones to blame for the unnecessary death and medical torture of our children, is ourselves.
This article is dedicated to the brave souls of children who have lived the torture and life long suffering from unnecessary psychiatric medication mandated by our government.
Adrian survived. Richmond did not.
[i] State of Michigan. Children's Memorial Day.
Whereas, Each day in America many children young people under age 20 commit suicide, are victims of violence, or are lost as a result of accidents or illness; and,
Whereas, Now, more than ever, when violence and tragic events are taking place in our schools with increased frequency, we should all reflect on our children and ourselves; and,
Whereas, We hold sacred the trust of our nation's most valuable resource, our children; and now therefore be it,
Resolved, That I, Jennifer M. Granholm, Governor of the State of Michigan, do hereby proclaim April 27, 2007, as Children's Memorial Day. Pursuant to Public Act 213 of 2003, I call upon the citizens of Michigan to recognize Children's Memorial Day as a day to remember those children we have lost this past year.
[ii] Executive Order 13045 of April 21, 1997. Protection of Children From Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks.
1-102. Each independent regulatory agency is encouraged to participate in the implementation of this order and comply with its provisions.
Sec. 2. Definitions. The following definitions shall apply to this order.
2-201. ``Federal agency'' means any authority of the United States that is an agency under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1) other than those considered to be independent regulatory agencies under 44 U.S.C. 3502(5). For purposes of this order, ``military departments,'' as defined in 5 U.S.C. 102, are covered under the auspices of the Department of Defense.
2-202. ``Covered regulatory action'' means any substantive action in a rulemaking, initiated after the date of this order or for which a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is published 1 year after the date of this order, that is likely to result in a rule that may:
(a) be ``economically significant'' under Executive Order 12866 (a rulemaking that has an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more or would adversely affect in a material way the economy, a sector of the economy, productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety, or State, local, or tribal governments or communities); and
(b) concern an environmental health risk or safety risk that an agency has reason to believe may disproportionately affect children.
2-203. ``Environmental health risks and safety risks'” mean risks to health or to safety that are attributable to products or substances that the child is likely to come in contact with or ingest (such as the air we breath, the food we eat, the water we drink or use for recreation, the soil we live on, and the products we use or are exposed to).
Sec. 3. Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children.
3-301. There is hereby established the Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children (``Task Force'').
3-302. The Task Force will report to the President in consultation with the Domestic Policy Council, the National Science and Technology Council, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
3-303. Membership. The Task Force shall be composed of the:
(a) Secretary of Health and Human Services, who shall serve as a Co-Chair of the Council;
(b) Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who shall serve as a Co-Chair of the Council;
(c) Secretary of Education;
(d) Secretary of Labor;
(e) Attorney General;
(f) Secretary of Energy;
(g) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;
(h) Secretary of Agriculture;
(i) Secretary of Transportation;
(j) Director of the Office of Management and Budget;
(k) Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality;
(l) Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission;
(m) Assistant to the President for Economic Policy;
(n) Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy;
(o) Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(p) Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and
(q) Such other officials of executive departments and agencies as the President may, from time to time,
designate.
Members of the Task Force may delegate their responsibilities under this order to subordinates.
3-304. Functions. The Task Force shall recommend to the President Federal strategies for children's environmental health and safety, within the limits of the Administration's budget, to include the following
elements:
(a) statements of principles, general policy, and targeted annual priorities to guide the Federal approach to achieving the goals of this order;
(b) a coordinated research agenda for the Federal Government, including steps to implement the review of research databases described in section 4 of this order;
(c) recommendations for appropriate partnerships among Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and the private, academic, and nonprofit sectors;
(d) proposals to enhance public outreach and communication to assist families in evaluating risks to children and in making informed consumer choices;
(e) an identification of high-priority initiative that the Federal Government has undertaken or will
undertake in advancing protection of children's environmental health and safety; and
(f) a statement regarding the desirability of new legislation to fulfill or promote the purposes of this
order.
3-305. The Task Force shall prepare a biennial report on research, data, or other information that would enhance our ability to understand, analyze, and respond to environmental health risks and safety risks to children. For purposes of this report, cabinet agencies and other agencies identified by the Task
Force shall identify and specifically describe for the Task Force key data needs related to environmental health risks and safety risks to children that have arisen in the course of the agency's programs and activities. The Task Force shall incorporate agency submissions into its report and ensure that this report is publicly available and widely disseminated. The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science and Technology Council shall ensure that this report is fully considered in establishing research priorities.
3-306. The Task Force shall exist for a period of 4 years from the first meeting. At least 6 months prior to the expiration of that period, the member agencies shall assess the need for continuation of the Task Force or its functions, and make appropriate recommendations to the President.
Sec. 4. Research Coordination and Integration.
4-401. Within 6 months of the date of this order, the Task Force shall develop or direct to be developed a review of existing and planned data resources and a proposed plan for ensuring that researchers and Federal research agencies have access to information on all research conducted or funded by the Federal Government that is related to adverse health risks in children resulting from exposure to environmental health risks or safety risks. The National Science and Technology Council shall review the plan.
4-402. The plan shall promote the sharing of information on academic and private research. It shall include recommendations to encourage that such data, to the extent permitted by law, is available to the public, the scientific and academic communities, and all Federal agencies.
Sec. 5. Agency Environmental Health Risk or Safety Risk Regulations.
5-501. For each covered regulatory action submitted to OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review pursuant to Executive Order 12866, the issuing agency shall provide to OIRA the following information developed as part of the agency's decisionmaking process, unless prohibited by law:
(a) an evaluation of the environmental health or safety effects of the planned regulation on children; and
(b) an explanation of why the planned regulation in preferable to other potentially effective and reasonably feasible alternatives considered by the agency.
5-502. In emergency situations, or when an agency is obligated by law to act more quickly than normal review procedures allow, the agency shall comply with the provisions of this section to the extent practicable. For those covered regulatory actions that are governed by a court-imposed or statutory deadline, the agency shall, to the extent practicable, schedule any rulemaking proceedings so as to permit sufficient time for completing the analysis required by this section.
5-503. The analysis required by this section may be included as part of any other required analysis, and shall be made part of the administrative record for the covered regulatory action or otherwise made available to the public, to the extent permitted by law.
Sec. 6. Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics.
6-601. The Director of the OMB (``Director'') shall convene an Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (``Forum''), which will include representatives from the appropriate Federal statistics and research agencies. The Forum shall produce an annual compendium (``Report'') of the most important indicators of the well-being of the Nation's children.
6-602. The Forum shall determine the indicators to be included in each Report and identify the sources of data to be used for each indicator. The Forum shall provide an ongoing review of Federal collection and dissemination of data on children and families, and shall make recommendations to improve the coverage and coordination of data collection and to reduce duplication and overlap.
6-603. The Report shall be published by the Forum in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The Forum shall present the first annual Report to the President, through the Director, by July 31, 1997. The Report shall be submitted annually thereafter, using the most recently available data.
Sec. 7. General Provisions.
7-701. This order is intended only for internal management of the executive branch. This order is not intended, and should not be construed to create, any right, benefit, or trust responsibility, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by a party against the United States, its agencies, its officers, or its employees. This order shall not be construed to create any right to judicial review involving the compliance or noncompliance with this order by the United States, its agencies, its officers, or any other person.
7-702. Executive Order 12606 of September 2, 1987 is revoked.
[iii] Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks, September 2, 1987
[iv] CFR TITLE 45, PUBLIC WELFARE, DHHS, PART 46, PROTECTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTS Effective June 23, 2005
(iii) Adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of children and the permission of their parents or guardians, as set forth in §46.408.
§46.408 Requirements for permission by parents or guardians and for assent by children.
(a) In addition to the determinations required under other applicable sections of this subpart, the IRB shall determine that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of the children, when in the judgment of the IRB the children are capable of providing assent. In determining whether children are capable of assenting, the IRB shall take into account the ages, maturity, and psychological state of the children involved. This judgment may be made for all children to be involved in research under a particular protocol, or for each child, as the IRB deems appropriate. If the IRB determines that the capability of some or all of the children is so limited that they cannot reasonably be consulted or that the intervention or procedure involved in the research holds out a prospect of direct benefit that is important to the health or well-being of the children and is available only in the context of the research, the assent of the children is not a necessary condition for proceeding with the research. Even where the IRB determines that the subjects are capable of assenting, the IRB may still waive the assent requirement under circumstances in which consent may be waived in accord with §46.116 of Subpart A.
(b) In addition to the determinations required under other applicable sections of this subpart, the IRB shall determine, in accordance with and to the extent that consent is required by §46.116 of Subpart A, that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the permission of each child's parents or guardian. Where parental permission is to be obtained, the IRB may find that the permission of one parent is sufficient for research to be conducted under §46.404 or §46.405. Where research is covered by §46.406 and §46.407 and permission is to be obtained from parents, both parents must give their permission unless one parent is deceased, unknown, incompetent, or not reasonably available, or when only one parent has legal responsibility for the care and custody of the child.
(c) In addition to the provisions for waiver contained in §46.116 of subpart A, if the IRB determines that a research protocol is designed for conditions or for a subject population for which parental or guardian permission is not a reasonable requirement to protect the subjects (for example, neglected or abused children), it may waive the consent requirements in Subpart A of this part and paragraph (b) of this section, provided an appropriate mechanism for protecting the children who will participate as subjects in the research is substituted, and provided further that the waiver is not inconsistent with federal, state, or local law. The choice of an appropriate mechanism would depend upon the nature and purpose of the activities described in the protocol, the risk and anticipated benefit to the research subjects, and their age, maturity, status, and condition.
(d) Permission by parents or guardians shall be documented in accordance with and to the extent required by §46.117 of subpart A.
(e) When the IRB determines that assent is required, it shall also determine whether and how assent must be documented.
§46.409 Wards.
(a) Children who are wards of the state or any other agency, institution, or entity can be included in research approved under §46.406 or §46.407 only if such research is:
(1) Related to their status as wards; or
(2) Conducted in schools, camps, hospitals, institutions, or similar settings in which the majority of children involved as subjects are not wards.(b) If the research is approved under paragraph (a) of this section, the IRB shall require appointment of an advocate for each child who is a ward, in addition to any other individual acting on behalf of the child as guardian or in loco parentis. One individual may serve as advocate for more than one child. The advocate shall be an individual who has the background and experience to act in, and agrees to act in, the best interests of the child for the duration of the child's participation in the research and who is not associated in any way (except in the role as advocate or member of the IRB) with the research, the investigator(s), or the guardian organization.
[v] FR: February 6, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 24), Rules and Regulations, Page 6137-6178 and EPA, 40 CFR Parts 9 and 26 [EPA-HQ-OPP-2003-0132; FRL-7759-8], RIN 2070-AD57, Protections for Subjects in Human Research. The final rule also: (1) Categorically prohibits any EPA research involving intentional exposure of human subjects who are pregnant women or children to pesticides or any substances; and (2) adapts regulations of the Department of Health and Human Services providing additional protections beyond those of the Common Rule to pregnant women and children as subjects in EPA observational research--i.e., research which does not involve intentional exposure to any substance. (Research conducted by EPA is referred to as ``first-party'' research, and ``second-party'' research refers to research supported by EPA but performed by others.) Finally, this rule forbids EPA to rely, in its actions under the pesticide laws, on intentional-exposure human research that either involves pregnant women or children or is otherwise considered unethical, except in narrowly defined circumstances. For example, if children were at risk from unsafe exposure to a substance, the Agency would be permitted to rely on otherwise unacceptable research to justify setting a more restrictive standard to protect them. Proposed Sec. 26.408 adopted, essentially verbatim, the text of the HHS regulation in 45 CFR 46.408 establishing special requirements for obtaining permission by parents or guardians and for assent by children. Among other provisio
POSTED BY BEVERLY TRAN AT 12:02 AM
Psychiatrist Warned by FDA
Mar 16th, 2010
Posted by Beverly Tran
http://beverlytran.blogspot.com/2010/04/foster-kids-are-lab-rats.html
Miami Herald
March 16, 2010
MENTAL HEALTH
The psychiatrist who treated the Broward foster child who killed himself last year is now in hot water with the FDA.
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
A South Florida psychiatrist who was treating a 7-year-old foster child before the boy committed suicide last year has received a warning from federal drug regulators who say he failed “to protect the rights, safety and welfare” of children enrolled in clinical drug trials.
In a strongly worded letter dated Feb. 4, regulators at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Dr. Sohail Punjwani over-medicated children who were enrolled in clinical trials for undisclosed drugs. One girl, the letter said, slashed her wrists while hallucinating.
Another, a 13-year-old, “experienced sedation and dizziness during the study,” the letter said.
The warning letter, a harsh and rare form of discipline by the agency, says Punjwani failed to “adhere to the applicable statutory requirements and FDA regulations governing the conduct of clinical investigations.”
“Your failure to conduct the requisite safety measures contributed to the unnecessary exposure of pediatric subjects to significant overdoses, which jeopardized the subjects’ rights, safety and welfare,” the letter says.
Punjwani did not return calls from The Miami Herald seeking comment.
Punjwani, who practices in Tamarac and has offices elsewhere in South Florida, was treating 7-year-old Gabriel Myers when the boy hanged himself with a shower cord in a Margate foster home. The boy’s death prompted a yearlong probe by a Department of Children & Families task force, as well as proposed legislation before the Florida Senate.
Before Gabriel’s death, Punjwani had prescribed several powerful mental health drugs — some of which had not been approved by the FDA for use on children and had been linked to dangerous side effects, including an increased risk of suicide among children.
Punjwani also was sued last summer by a Tamarac mother who claims her son, 16-year-old Emilio Villamar, died after being over-medicated with a group of mental health drugs at a Fort Lauderdale psychiatric hospital.
The letter mailed to Punjwani does not specify the names or types of drugs the doctor was testing, and a spokeswoman for the FDA, Sandy Walsh, said such details are kept confidential to protect drug companies.
Walsh said the FDA does not send out such warning letters often, and the agency considers breaches of its regulations to be “very serious.” The letter was signed by Leslie K. Ball, a doctor who heads the compliance office of the Division of Scientific Investigations, and Constance Cullity, a doctor who is also a compliance officer.
For years, drug makers did not study most medications on children, largely due to ethical concerns over using kids as test subjects. More recently, however, Congress passed laws to encourage pharmaceutical companies to test their drugs for safety and efficacy with children by extending patents on drugs approved for adults.
In a trial for one drug that was not identified, Punjwani gave one child dosages “in excess of… specified limits,” the letter says.
The child was discontinued from the trial before it was completed, the letter says, “due to worsening auditory hallucinations that apparently caused the subject to lacerate her wrists.” The girl was “overdosed” on the drug for more than two weeks.
The letter says Punjwani submitted a corrective action plan to the FDA and revised his procedures to better protect his research subjects from dosing missteps. “However,” the letter says, “we are concerned that the response is not adequate to prevent future recurrence of the violation.”
The clinical trials for a different drug were to adhere to a series of protocols that specified what dosage of the drug was to be used, depending on the child’s weight, the letter states. But for six of seven children — chosen at random — who received one of the tested drugs in Punjwani’s study, the dosage exceeded what was spelled out in the protocol.
One child who weighed 103 pounds, for example, “was overdosed on study medication for 20 consecutive days while participating in the study,” the letter states. The child is identified only as “Subject 1001.”
A child identified as “Subject 1003,” who was 15 at the time of the trials, “was overdosed on study medication for 21 consecutive days while participating in the study,” the letter says. “Subject 1004,” a 16-year-old, “received doses in excess of the maximum target dose for 3 consecutive days while participating,” the letter says.
A 10-year-old, identified as “Subject 1007,” was “overdosed” for nearly two weeks while on the study, the letter states.
Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon, who appointed a task force last year to study Gabriel’s death, said Monday he is asking the FDA to compare a list of Florida foster children with lists ofchildren enrolled in Punjwani’s clinical trials. Sheldon said he was acting on concerns that children in state care may have been involved in clinical trials, which is against state law.
The FDA letter, Sheldon said, “raises clear ethical issues and judgment issues that we need to clearly understand.” If foster kids were enrolled in clinical trials, he said, “we will need to take it to another level.”
This is why foster kids are lab rats:
OUR MOST PRECIOUS TREASURE
By Beverly Tran
May 3, 2007
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
Adolph Hitler, 1943
There have been much heated discussions in the area of the psychological well-being of children. Children are time and time again found in our government’s rhetoric as the most precious resource of our nation, and this responsibility of protecting children is entrusted in our government.[i] Unfortunately, attention is strictly focused on the aftermath of adopting these policies for mandatory psychological screening, evaluation, and the medication of children. Diatribes from supporters for mandatory psychotropic medication of children (i.e. pharmaceutical industries, psychiatrists, social workers, educators) are embroidered on waving banners in the lobbying charge on legislatures promising the glorious victory of children growing up to better function in society. The other voice in the battle against mandatory psychotropic medication of children hails from the parents. Parents cry out their stories of horror of watching their children mentally and physically deteriorate, to the point of life long suffering and even death, from the side effects of these medications, and in many cases, unnecessary and overmedication of our children. The time has come for both professionals and families to reconcile for the “best interests of the child” and redirect national perspectives to preserve the “best interests of the family”.
The genus of the “best interests of the child” philosophy has classified federal policy into a taxonomic category of ranked organisms, where these “ranked organisms” are better understood as federal agencies.
FEDERAL RANKED ORGANISMS
The Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children[ii] and Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics[iii] were created to co-integrate federal statistic and research agencies to produce an “annual compendium” of the most important indicators of the well-being of the Nation's children and families to be published by the Forum in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Since then, the Task Force added environmental health in schools and coordinated federal efforts to highlight the importance of protecting children's health during Children's Health Month in October 2002.
National Children's Study and Children's Health Month were incorporated into its interagency activities. The National Governor's Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, supported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), examines the relationship between smart community design and improved public health. With Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) support, NGA is building on this work to help strengthen the connection between state smart growth initiatives and the protection of children's environmental health.
In an unexpected move, the Office of Children’s Health Protection was dismantled and reorganized as a “national security and intelligence”[iv] operation in the new reorganization under the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency under the auspices of the environmental education bureau.
The creation of the “national security and intelligence” function was soon to be placed within the Office of Homeland Security to advise the Administrator and other senior EPA officials on matters related to national security and intelligence; to serve as the principal Agency liaison to the U.S. intelligence community; and to coordinate with EPA programs and Regions on matters related to classified and other sensitive information. This expanded regulatory authority through these federal mandates in the states, for the issue of child abuse and neglect. In Michigan, this protective obligation was assigned to the Department of Environmental Quality, Environmental Science Board and the Department of Community Health, now, a state agency of Michigan Homeland Security[v].
THE FALLACY OF PARENTAL AUTHORIZATION
As parents and caregivers, it is a falsely assumed that parental authorization of medical care is an inherent, fundamental right. Federal policy for the Protection of Children From Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks supra, was formulated from a body of scientific knowledge that comported with abuse and neglect polices. It was at this point that the design of future child protection policies was to assume the nurturing role of the parent. Concerns of health and safety risks were broadly determined to be “attributable to products or substances that the child is likely to come in contact with or ingest (such as the air we breath, the food we eat, the water we drink or use for recreation, the soil we live on, and the products we use or are exposed to.) Under this interpretation, states have been able to usurp parental authorization under the guise of functioning for the well-being of children.
The federal government went a step further in circumventing parental authorization by allowing Institutional Review Boards to establish certain protocol for conducting human research on children. If a parent does not give consent for medication, waiver mechanisms are substituted for parental authorization. These mechanisms are to be found in policies of child protection as conditions of future risk of abuse and neglect. This means that if a parent does not consent to the medication of his and/or her child, there is nothing they may do about it because it would be considered an act of placing the child at risk of future health and environmental harms.
Children who are wards of the state, agency, institution, or entity, where entity has been identified as schools, camps, hospitals, or similar settings in which the majority of children involved as subjects are not wards, can be participants in human subject research without notification or authorization of parents. Authorization is then assigned, as previously stated as waiver mechanisms, to an institutional guardian. As stated in the Code of federal Regulations Title 45, Public Welfare, Department of Health and Human Services, Part 46, Protection of Human Subjects, 2003, requirements for permission by parents or guardians and for assent by children has made it possible to authorize and approve alternative mechanisms to obtain permission from an adult who would better represent the child’s interests, “The inability of obtaining permission from a parent or guardian could not be basis for excluding a child from research that held out the prospect of benefit to the child.” Simply put, there is nothing a parent can do but watch his and/or her child become a human guinea pig, if the parent is even lucky enough to be told what is happening.
REDIRECTION OF DISCUSSIONS
Instead of pitting the government’s side of “preventing future risks” against the parents’ and caregivers’ side of “present harms” of the children, we, as a nation, need to come to a general consensus and begin to address how the nation has been allowed to usurp the fundamental rights of parents in “the best interests of the child”. Children are not the most precious resources of a nation; children are the most precious treasures of OUR families. Until we, as citizens of the United States of America, stand up and hold our elected officials accountable for such egregious violations of the Constitution, the only ones to blame for the unnecessary death and medical torture of our children, is ourselves.
This article is dedicated to the brave souls of children who have lived the torture and life long suffering from unnecessary psychiatric medication mandated by our government.
Adrian survived. Richmond did not.
[i] State of Michigan. Children's Memorial Day.
Whereas, Each day in America many children young people under age 20 commit suicide, are victims of violence, or are lost as a result of accidents or illness; and,
Whereas, Now, more than ever, when violence and tragic events are taking place in our schools with increased frequency, we should all reflect on our children and ourselves; and,
Whereas, We hold sacred the trust of our nation's most valuable resource, our children; and now therefore be it,
Resolved, That I, Jennifer M. Granholm, Governor of the State of Michigan, do hereby proclaim April 27, 2007, as Children's Memorial Day. Pursuant to Public Act 213 of 2003, I call upon the citizens of Michigan to recognize Children's Memorial Day as a day to remember those children we have lost this past year.
[ii] Executive Order 13045 of April 21, 1997. Protection of Children From Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks.
1-102. Each independent regulatory agency is encouraged to participate in the implementation of this order and comply with its provisions.
Sec. 2. Definitions. The following definitions shall apply to this order.
2-201. ``Federal agency'' means any authority of the United States that is an agency under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1) other than those considered to be independent regulatory agencies under 44 U.S.C. 3502(5). For purposes of this order, ``military departments,'' as defined in 5 U.S.C. 102, are covered under the auspices of the Department of Defense.
2-202. ``Covered regulatory action'' means any substantive action in a rulemaking, initiated after the date of this order or for which a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is published 1 year after the date of this order, that is likely to result in a rule that may:
(a) be ``economically significant'' under Executive Order 12866 (a rulemaking that has an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more or would adversely affect in a material way the economy, a sector of the economy, productivity, competition, jobs, the environment, public health or safety, or State, local, or tribal governments or communities); and
(b) concern an environmental health risk or safety risk that an agency has reason to believe may disproportionately affect children.
2-203. ``Environmental health risks and safety risks'” mean risks to health or to safety that are attributable to products or substances that the child is likely to come in contact with or ingest (such as the air we breath, the food we eat, the water we drink or use for recreation, the soil we live on, and the products we use or are exposed to).
Sec. 3. Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children.
3-301. There is hereby established the Task Force on Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children (``Task Force'').
3-302. The Task Force will report to the President in consultation with the Domestic Policy Council, the National Science and Technology Council, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
3-303. Membership. The Task Force shall be composed of the:
(a) Secretary of Health and Human Services, who shall serve as a Co-Chair of the Council;
(b) Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, who shall serve as a Co-Chair of the Council;
(c) Secretary of Education;
(d) Secretary of Labor;
(e) Attorney General;
(f) Secretary of Energy;
(g) Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;
(h) Secretary of Agriculture;
(i) Secretary of Transportation;
(j) Director of the Office of Management and Budget;
(k) Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality;
(l) Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission;
(m) Assistant to the President for Economic Policy;
(n) Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy;
(o) Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(p) Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and
(q) Such other officials of executive departments and agencies as the President may, from time to time,
designate.
Members of the Task Force may delegate their responsibilities under this order to subordinates.
3-304. Functions. The Task Force shall recommend to the President Federal strategies for children's environmental health and safety, within the limits of the Administration's budget, to include the following
elements:
(a) statements of principles, general policy, and targeted annual priorities to guide the Federal approach to achieving the goals of this order;
(b) a coordinated research agenda for the Federal Government, including steps to implement the review of research databases described in section 4 of this order;
(c) recommendations for appropriate partnerships among Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and the private, academic, and nonprofit sectors;
(d) proposals to enhance public outreach and communication to assist families in evaluating risks to children and in making informed consumer choices;
(e) an identification of high-priority initiative that the Federal Government has undertaken or will
undertake in advancing protection of children's environmental health and safety; and
(f) a statement regarding the desirability of new legislation to fulfill or promote the purposes of this
order.
3-305. The Task Force shall prepare a biennial report on research, data, or other information that would enhance our ability to understand, analyze, and respond to environmental health risks and safety risks to children. For purposes of this report, cabinet agencies and other agencies identified by the Task
Force shall identify and specifically describe for the Task Force key data needs related to environmental health risks and safety risks to children that have arisen in the course of the agency's programs and activities. The Task Force shall incorporate agency submissions into its report and ensure that this report is publicly available and widely disseminated. The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science and Technology Council shall ensure that this report is fully considered in establishing research priorities.
3-306. The Task Force shall exist for a period of 4 years from the first meeting. At least 6 months prior to the expiration of that period, the member agencies shall assess the need for continuation of the Task Force or its functions, and make appropriate recommendations to the President.
Sec. 4. Research Coordination and Integration.
4-401. Within 6 months of the date of this order, the Task Force shall develop or direct to be developed a review of existing and planned data resources and a proposed plan for ensuring that researchers and Federal research agencies have access to information on all research conducted or funded by the Federal Government that is related to adverse health risks in children resulting from exposure to environmental health risks or safety risks. The National Science and Technology Council shall review the plan.
4-402. The plan shall promote the sharing of information on academic and private research. It shall include recommendations to encourage that such data, to the extent permitted by law, is available to the public, the scientific and academic communities, and all Federal agencies.
Sec. 5. Agency Environmental Health Risk or Safety Risk Regulations.
5-501. For each covered regulatory action submitted to OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review pursuant to Executive Order 12866, the issuing agency shall provide to OIRA the following information developed as part of the agency's decisionmaking process, unless prohibited by law:
(a) an evaluation of the environmental health or safety effects of the planned regulation on children; and
(b) an explanation of why the planned regulation in preferable to other potentially effective and reasonably feasible alternatives considered by the agency.
5-502. In emergency situations, or when an agency is obligated by law to act more quickly than normal review procedures allow, the agency shall comply with the provisions of this section to the extent practicable. For those covered regulatory actions that are governed by a court-imposed or statutory deadline, the agency shall, to the extent practicable, schedule any rulemaking proceedings so as to permit sufficient time for completing the analysis required by this section.
5-503. The analysis required by this section may be included as part of any other required analysis, and shall be made part of the administrative record for the covered regulatory action or otherwise made available to the public, to the extent permitted by law.
Sec. 6. Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics.
6-601. The Director of the OMB (``Director'') shall convene an Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (``Forum''), which will include representatives from the appropriate Federal statistics and research agencies. The Forum shall produce an annual compendium (``Report'') of the most important indicators of the well-being of the Nation's children.
6-602. The Forum shall determine the indicators to be included in each Report and identify the sources of data to be used for each indicator. The Forum shall provide an ongoing review of Federal collection and dissemination of data on children and families, and shall make recommendations to improve the coverage and coordination of data collection and to reduce duplication and overlap.
6-603. The Report shall be published by the Forum in collaboration with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The Forum shall present the first annual Report to the President, through the Director, by July 31, 1997. The Report shall be submitted annually thereafter, using the most recently available data.
Sec. 7. General Provisions.
7-701. This order is intended only for internal management of the executive branch. This order is not intended, and should not be construed to create, any right, benefit, or trust responsibility, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or equity by a party against the United States, its agencies, its officers, or its employees. This order shall not be construed to create any right to judicial review involving the compliance or noncompliance with this order by the United States, its agencies, its officers, or any other person.
7-702. Executive Order 12606 of September 2, 1987 is revoked.
[iii] Executive Order 13045: Protection of Children from Environmental Health Risks and Safety Risks, September 2, 1987
[iv] CFR TITLE 45, PUBLIC WELFARE, DHHS, PART 46, PROTECTION OF HUMAN SUBJECTS Effective June 23, 2005
(iii) Adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of children and the permission of their parents or guardians, as set forth in §46.408.
§46.408 Requirements for permission by parents or guardians and for assent by children.
(a) In addition to the determinations required under other applicable sections of this subpart, the IRB shall determine that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the assent of the children, when in the judgment of the IRB the children are capable of providing assent. In determining whether children are capable of assenting, the IRB shall take into account the ages, maturity, and psychological state of the children involved. This judgment may be made for all children to be involved in research under a particular protocol, or for each child, as the IRB deems appropriate. If the IRB determines that the capability of some or all of the children is so limited that they cannot reasonably be consulted or that the intervention or procedure involved in the research holds out a prospect of direct benefit that is important to the health or well-being of the children and is available only in the context of the research, the assent of the children is not a necessary condition for proceeding with the research. Even where the IRB determines that the subjects are capable of assenting, the IRB may still waive the assent requirement under circumstances in which consent may be waived in accord with §46.116 of Subpart A.
(b) In addition to the determinations required under other applicable sections of this subpart, the IRB shall determine, in accordance with and to the extent that consent is required by §46.116 of Subpart A, that adequate provisions are made for soliciting the permission of each child's parents or guardian. Where parental permission is to be obtained, the IRB may find that the permission of one parent is sufficient for research to be conducted under §46.404 or §46.405. Where research is covered by §46.406 and §46.407 and permission is to be obtained from parents, both parents must give their permission unless one parent is deceased, unknown, incompetent, or not reasonably available, or when only one parent has legal responsibility for the care and custody of the child.
(c) In addition to the provisions for waiver contained in §46.116 of subpart A, if the IRB determines that a research protocol is designed for conditions or for a subject population for which parental or guardian permission is not a reasonable requirement to protect the subjects (for example, neglected or abused children), it may waive the consent requirements in Subpart A of this part and paragraph (b) of this section, provided an appropriate mechanism for protecting the children who will participate as subjects in the research is substituted, and provided further that the waiver is not inconsistent with federal, state, or local law. The choice of an appropriate mechanism would depend upon the nature and purpose of the activities described in the protocol, the risk and anticipated benefit to the research subjects, and their age, maturity, status, and condition.
(d) Permission by parents or guardians shall be documented in accordance with and to the extent required by §46.117 of subpart A.
(e) When the IRB determines that assent is required, it shall also determine whether and how assent must be documented.
§46.409 Wards.
(a) Children who are wards of the state or any other agency, institution, or entity can be included in research approved under §46.406 or §46.407 only if such research is:
(1) Related to their status as wards; or
(2) Conducted in schools, camps, hospitals, institutions, or similar settings in which the majority of children involved as subjects are not wards.(b) If the research is approved under paragraph (a) of this section, the IRB shall require appointment of an advocate for each child who is a ward, in addition to any other individual acting on behalf of the child as guardian or in loco parentis. One individual may serve as advocate for more than one child. The advocate shall be an individual who has the background and experience to act in, and agrees to act in, the best interests of the child for the duration of the child's participation in the research and who is not associated in any way (except in the role as advocate or member of the IRB) with the research, the investigator(s), or the guardian organization.
[v] FR: February 6, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 24), Rules and Regulations, Page 6137-6178 and EPA, 40 CFR Parts 9 and 26 [EPA-HQ-OPP-2003-0132; FRL-7759-8], RIN 2070-AD57, Protections for Subjects in Human Research. The final rule also: (1) Categorically prohibits any EPA research involving intentional exposure of human subjects who are pregnant women or children to pesticides or any substances; and (2) adapts regulations of the Department of Health and Human Services providing additional protections beyond those of the Common Rule to pregnant women and children as subjects in EPA observational research--i.e., research which does not involve intentional exposure to any substance. (Research conducted by EPA is referred to as ``first-party'' research, and ``second-party'' research refers to research supported by EPA but performed by others.) Finally, this rule forbids EPA to rely, in its actions under the pesticide laws, on intentional-exposure human research that either involves pregnant women or children or is otherwise considered unethical, except in narrowly defined circumstances. For example, if children were at risk from unsafe exposure to a substance, the Agency would be permitted to rely on otherwise unacceptable research to justify setting a more restrictive standard to protect them. Proposed Sec. 26.408 adopted, essentially verbatim, the text of the HHS regulation in 45 CFR 46.408 establishing special requirements for obtaining permission by parents or guardians and for assent by children. Among other provisio
POSTED BY BEVERLY TRAN AT 12:02 AM
US adoptive parents seek girls, non-black kids—study
US adoptive parents seek girls, non-black kids—study
unhappygrammy: And this is the reason why DCYF caseworkers(Nashua,N.H. caseworkers any way), tell parents not to tell anyone that their newborn baby is bi-racial, when the baby look's white! Bi-racial children are much harder to place, especially in NH. How do you think this child is going to feel being brought up by white foster stranger's? How will this child feel when other children ask her why she isn't the same color as her supposed mother and father?
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 09:26:00 04/21/2010
Filed Under: Society, Children, Family, Americas - Canada
WASHINGTON DC, United States—US parents looking to adopt a child prefer girls over boys, and non-black children over African-Americans, according to a new study carried out by a group of economists.
The team from the California Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics, and New York University studied five years worth of data from 2004-2009 culled from a website run by an adoption intermediary.
They were able to see which babies attracted most applications from adoptive parents, and how much the parents would need to pay to finalize the adoption.
They found that a non-African-American baby was seven times more likely to "attract the interest and attention of potential adoptive parents than an African-American baby," said Leonardo Felli, an economics professor at LSE.
But there was not a similar preference in favor of Caucasian babies over Hispanic babies, even though all the adoptive parents in the sample were Caucasian, Felli said.
The research also uncovered an unexpectedly strong preference in favor of girls, which were a little over a third more likely to attract the attention of adoptive parents than a boy, he said.
"With biological children, the literature shows that there's a slight but significant preference for boys over girls," said Leeat Yariv, an associate professor of economics at Caltech. "But in adoption, there's a very strong preference for girls over boys."
The bias in favor of girls and non-black children was seen across all categories of adoptive parents, and the gender bias against boys was even slightly stronger among gay men and lesbian couples seeking to adopt a child.
The study also found that interest in a child was highest just before birth, but dropped off dramatically immediately afterwards and was also low when the birth mother was still in the early stages of pregnancy.
Mariagiovanna Baccara, an assistant professor at NYU, said it suggested that "bureaucratic obstacles disrupting an adoption plan at the time of birth are extremely detrimental to the future prospects of the child."
Felli said the adoption system in the United States remains doubly imbalanced.
"On the one hand, a considerable number of potential adoptive parents are left unmatched. On the other hand, the number of children who are not adopted and end up in the foster-care system is disproportionately high."
The researchers said their data showed that obstacles to adoption of US children by gay couples or foreigners stood to significantly increase the number of children who would end up in foster care after failing to find an adoptive family.
"And statistically," Yaariv added, "long-term foster care leads to bad outcomes."
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20100421-265597/US-adoptive-parents-seek-girls-non-black-kidsstudy
unhappygrammy: And this is the reason why DCYF caseworkers(Nashua,N.H. caseworkers any way), tell parents not to tell anyone that their newborn baby is bi-racial, when the baby look's white! Bi-racial children are much harder to place, especially in NH. How do you think this child is going to feel being brought up by white foster stranger's? How will this child feel when other children ask her why she isn't the same color as her supposed mother and father?
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 09:26:00 04/21/2010
Filed Under: Society, Children, Family, Americas - Canada
WASHINGTON DC, United States—US parents looking to adopt a child prefer girls over boys, and non-black children over African-Americans, according to a new study carried out by a group of economists.
The team from the California Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics, and New York University studied five years worth of data from 2004-2009 culled from a website run by an adoption intermediary.
They were able to see which babies attracted most applications from adoptive parents, and how much the parents would need to pay to finalize the adoption.
They found that a non-African-American baby was seven times more likely to "attract the interest and attention of potential adoptive parents than an African-American baby," said Leonardo Felli, an economics professor at LSE.
But there was not a similar preference in favor of Caucasian babies over Hispanic babies, even though all the adoptive parents in the sample were Caucasian, Felli said.
The research also uncovered an unexpectedly strong preference in favor of girls, which were a little over a third more likely to attract the attention of adoptive parents than a boy, he said.
"With biological children, the literature shows that there's a slight but significant preference for boys over girls," said Leeat Yariv, an associate professor of economics at Caltech. "But in adoption, there's a very strong preference for girls over boys."
The bias in favor of girls and non-black children was seen across all categories of adoptive parents, and the gender bias against boys was even slightly stronger among gay men and lesbian couples seeking to adopt a child.
The study also found that interest in a child was highest just before birth, but dropped off dramatically immediately afterwards and was also low when the birth mother was still in the early stages of pregnancy.
Mariagiovanna Baccara, an assistant professor at NYU, said it suggested that "bureaucratic obstacles disrupting an adoption plan at the time of birth are extremely detrimental to the future prospects of the child."
Felli said the adoption system in the United States remains doubly imbalanced.
"On the one hand, a considerable number of potential adoptive parents are left unmatched. On the other hand, the number of children who are not adopted and end up in the foster-care system is disproportionately high."
The researchers said their data showed that obstacles to adoption of US children by gay couples or foreigners stood to significantly increase the number of children who would end up in foster care after failing to find an adoptive family.
"And statistically," Yaariv added, "long-term foster care leads to bad outcomes."
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20100421-265597/US-adoptive-parents-seek-girls-non-black-kidsstudy
Psych Drugging Foster Children Florida Senate Comm Pt1 – Gabriel Myers Bill
Psych Drugging Foster Children Florida Senate Comm Pt1 – Gabriel Myers Bill
by ADMIN on APRIL 20, 2010
Florida Senate Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs – Psychotropic Drug Use Among Foster Children. Oct 7, 2009. Senators committee to discuss SB2718 after death of Gabriel Myers. Children are not given traditional therapy but instead are subjected to extreme psychotropic drugging. Point made that psychiatry is not what it used to be and has resorted to drugging; the move away from psychiatry which should be replaced with more traditional use of psychologists for therapy if needed – attachment disorder, trauma therapy.
Florida Senate 2010 SB 2718. By Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs; and Senator Storms. A bill to be entitled An act relating to the provision of psychotropic medication to children in out-of-home placements.
http://www.flsenate.gov/data/session/2010/Senate/bills/billtext/pdf/s2718c1.pdf
In Memory of 7 Year Old Gabriel Myers: In wake of childs suicide, Legislature moves to limit foster cares reliance on psychiatric drugs. March 19, 2010. St. Petersburg Times, By Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer.
TALLAHASSEE, Fl. – A year after a 7-year-old boy heavily medicated on powerful psychiatric drugs hanged himself in his Margate foster home, lawmakers are pushing to reform state medical requirements for foster children.
The Senates Children, Families, and Elder Affairs Committee unanimously approved a measure Thursday designed to curb the prescription of mental-health drugs to children in state care.
The proposed law would require the state Department of Children and Families to assign volunteer guardians to oversee each childs mental health care. It prohibits foster children from being the subject of clinical drug trials and raises the age at which children are allowed to take these drugs from 6 to 11 in many cases.
The measure (SB2718 and HB1567) would also give children some say in the drugs they take.
We are not just going to medicate them until they turn 18 and then dump them into adulthood, said sponsor Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, chairwoman of the Children, Families, and Elder Affairs Committee.
The states growing use of adult medication on emotionally and mentally troubled children has sparked debate for years.
Multiple state studies show child-welfare doctors and case managers routinely failed to follow legally required treatment plans or properly document when and why drugs were given to foster children, creating a network of youth sedated by chemical straitjackets, Storms said.
The death of Gabriel Myers in April further revealed the shortcomings of 2005 legislation that required more information sharing, parental involvement and second-party review of doctors prescriptions for the youngest children.
Because foster children are often cared for by multiple service contractors, communication lapses and fragmented mental health care are still rampant, a recent state report on Myers death determined.
Our response to him was to medicate him, and medicate him, and medicate him, Storms said.
Under the bill, proposed medical treatment plans must be explained to a child and the child must consent to the treatment in many cases before taking the drugs.
What this means is less medication and more behavior analysis so that they are not just sedated little zombies, said Jan Montgomery, president of the Florida Association for Behavior Analysis, which would train legal guardians to observe and treat behavioral problems.
Still, Montgomery said she did not expect a sudden culture shift, given failed past efforts to track foster childrens medical records.
Its going to be a slow slide toward what we are hoping is the right way, Montgomery said.
http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/in-wake-of-childs-suicide-legislature-moves-to-limit-foster-cares-reliance-on-psychiatric-drugs/
FDA warns psychiatrist who treated dead foster child.
http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/fda-warns-psychiatrist-who-treated-dead-foster-child/
Duration : 0:6:59
http://www.deathrecordsnow.org/florida-death-records/psych-drugging-foster-children-florida-senate-comm-pt1-gabriel-myers-bill
by ADMIN on APRIL 20, 2010
Florida Senate Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs – Psychotropic Drug Use Among Foster Children. Oct 7, 2009. Senators committee to discuss SB2718 after death of Gabriel Myers. Children are not given traditional therapy but instead are subjected to extreme psychotropic drugging. Point made that psychiatry is not what it used to be and has resorted to drugging; the move away from psychiatry which should be replaced with more traditional use of psychologists for therapy if needed – attachment disorder, trauma therapy.
Florida Senate 2010 SB 2718. By Committee on Children, Families, and Elder Affairs; and Senator Storms. A bill to be entitled An act relating to the provision of psychotropic medication to children in out-of-home placements.
http://www.flsenate.gov/data/session/2010/Senate/bills/billtext/pdf/s2718c1.pdf
In Memory of 7 Year Old Gabriel Myers: In wake of childs suicide, Legislature moves to limit foster cares reliance on psychiatric drugs. March 19, 2010. St. Petersburg Times, By Cristina Silva, Times Staff Writer.
TALLAHASSEE, Fl. – A year after a 7-year-old boy heavily medicated on powerful psychiatric drugs hanged himself in his Margate foster home, lawmakers are pushing to reform state medical requirements for foster children.
The Senates Children, Families, and Elder Affairs Committee unanimously approved a measure Thursday designed to curb the prescription of mental-health drugs to children in state care.
The proposed law would require the state Department of Children and Families to assign volunteer guardians to oversee each childs mental health care. It prohibits foster children from being the subject of clinical drug trials and raises the age at which children are allowed to take these drugs from 6 to 11 in many cases.
The measure (SB2718 and HB1567) would also give children some say in the drugs they take.
We are not just going to medicate them until they turn 18 and then dump them into adulthood, said sponsor Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, chairwoman of the Children, Families, and Elder Affairs Committee.
The states growing use of adult medication on emotionally and mentally troubled children has sparked debate for years.
Multiple state studies show child-welfare doctors and case managers routinely failed to follow legally required treatment plans or properly document when and why drugs were given to foster children, creating a network of youth sedated by chemical straitjackets, Storms said.
The death of Gabriel Myers in April further revealed the shortcomings of 2005 legislation that required more information sharing, parental involvement and second-party review of doctors prescriptions for the youngest children.
Because foster children are often cared for by multiple service contractors, communication lapses and fragmented mental health care are still rampant, a recent state report on Myers death determined.
Our response to him was to medicate him, and medicate him, and medicate him, Storms said.
Under the bill, proposed medical treatment plans must be explained to a child and the child must consent to the treatment in many cases before taking the drugs.
What this means is less medication and more behavior analysis so that they are not just sedated little zombies, said Jan Montgomery, president of the Florida Association for Behavior Analysis, which would train legal guardians to observe and treat behavioral problems.
Still, Montgomery said she did not expect a sudden culture shift, given failed past efforts to track foster childrens medical records.
Its going to be a slow slide toward what we are hoping is the right way, Montgomery said.
http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/in-wake-of-childs-suicide-legislature-moves-to-limit-foster-cares-reliance-on-psychiatric-drugs/
FDA warns psychiatrist who treated dead foster child.
http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/fda-warns-psychiatrist-who-treated-dead-foster-child/
Duration : 0:6:59
http://www.deathrecordsnow.org/florida-death-records/psych-drugging-foster-children-florida-senate-comm-pt1-gabriel-myers-bill
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