12/3/2001 • STUDIES ON RITALIN ARE CHILD ABUSE
DOUGLAS MONTERO
NEW YORK POST
“They want to see how much these children can tolerate,” said Vera Hassner Sharav, who heads the New York-based Alliance for Human Research Protection. “The research is absolutely child abuse.”
STUDIES ON RITALIN ARE CHILD ABUSE
http://www.nypost.com/cgi-bin/printfriendly.pl
DOUGLAS MONTERO
NEW YORK POST
“They want to see how much these children can tolerate,” said Vera Hassner Sharav, who heads the New York-based Alliance for Human Research Protection. “The research is absolutely child abuse.”
THE federally funded abuse of children, some as young as 3, has begun in New York City, critics charge. The alleged torture chambers are located at two city locations where doctors will conduct Ritalin experiments on more than 80 city kids between the ages of 3 and 8.
Advocates, handcuffed by the lack of money, are waging a battle to stop the nationwide $6 million, 72-week study at the six institutions, which include NYU Medical Center and the New York Psychiatric Institute.
Two-thirds of the 264 kids will be under 5. Researchers want kids with symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who have never been medicated.
Advocates who have seen the protocol describing the study say the experiment will subject kids to a “horrific” psychological hellride.
The kids will start getting Ritalin at small daily dosages, which will gradually increase to 7.5 mg and 10 mg three times a day, depending on how the drug affects them.
The side effects that, in part, determine dosage limits are headaches, abdominal pain, difficulty sleeping, fever, nausea, dizziness, chest pain and, in some rare cases, Tourette’s disorder, depression and psychosis.
The kids who cope with 10 mg will get a dosage of 15 mg – so researchers can see what happens.
“They want to see how much these children can tolerate,” said Vera Hassner Sharav, who heads the New York-based Alliance for Human Research Protection. “The research is absolutely child abuse.”
Once a dosage amount is established, researchers will spend five weeks alternating amounts and sometimes giving placebo sugar pills to see how the kids react. Parents and teachers who record the reaction won’t be told about the dosage change.
Fake classrooms with two-way mirrors will be set up to study the kids like lab rats when researchers wean them off Ritalin. The “child’s behavior could get worse,” the protocol states.
The protocol says kids will be referred by schools, clinics and hospitals. The authors apparently didn’t know recruiting for such experiments in schools violates city laws. In any case, parents can pull their kids out at any time.
An official at the Psychiatric Institute, who didn’t want to be identified, said more than a quarter-million pediatricians already prescribe Ritalin to children under 6, and the study will help doctors “make intelligent decisions.”
Advocates question why nearly 70 percent of the kids in the Psychiatric Institute study are black and Latino. A racial breakdown for the NYU study was unavailable because its researcher, Dr. Howard Abikoff, didn’t return messages left at his office.
Dr. Ellen Isaacs, a member of an advocacy group in Washington Heights, where the Psychiatric Institute is located, plans to meet with the local community board to complain.
“They want poor minority kids because their parents are more easily coerced to sign up,” she said.
Copyright 2001 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
