FDA Should Recall all Antidepressants for their Hand in Deaths to Users

"The FDA urges consumers to discontinue use of Hydroxycut products in order to avoid any undue risk. Adverse events are rare, but exist," said Dr. Linda Katz, interim chief medical officer in the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The FDA has received 23 reports of liver problems ranging from jaundice to damage that required a liver transplant, Katz said. One person died.
Hydroxycut is a diet supplement used by many to cut appetite and lose weight. Now the FDA recalls Hydroycut products because of one death from the product, yet thousands died from suicide and mass murder from the use of psychotropic antidepressants like Prozac, Paxal, Zoloft, and Exfexor yet these drugs are not recalled.
Perhaps cases like the probe in Plymouth County will shed more light the effects of these drugs. Lane Lambert of the Patriot Ledger wrote on Friday May, 1, 2009. The Plymouth County grand jury probe of Dr. Kayoko Kifuji came to light on Thursday, in court documents from the Suffolk County civil case. This is the case in the death of Rebecca Riley.
It’s not clear how long the grand jury has been examining Kifuji’s action. A spokeswoman for District Attorney Tim Cruz declined to confirm or deny whether a grand jury is investigating Kifuji. The former Tufts-New England Medical Center psychiatrist criminally liable for Rebecca Riley’s death, she could face involuntary-manslaughter charges. Rebecca’s parents, Michael and Carolyn Riley, will go on trial later this year on first-degree murder charges in the little girl’s overdose death at their Hull home in December 2006.
Conviction for involuntary manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, though Massachusetts sentences typically are 3 to 5 years. But legal experts say a criminal conviction would be highly unlikely for Kifuji. They indicate it will be a very hard case to make. Kifuji diagnosed Rebecca as bipolar with attention deficit disorder when she was 2½. Kifuji prescribed the powerful blood pressure medication Clonidine and anti-seizure drug Depakote. A medical examiner ruled that Rebecca died from an overdose of those drugs and over-the-counter cold medicine. Carolyn Riley says her daughter died of pneumonia, not the drugs. Kifuji voluntarily gave up her medical license in February 2007, after Rebecca’s parents were charged.
Court evidence of the grand jury investigation surfaced amid fresh legal action in both the civil and criminal cases. Recently, Kifuji’s lawyers asked a Suffolk County judge to postpone her deposition in the civil case indefinitely, and close the entire court record to the public. Kifuji’s attorney, Bruce Singal, said a deposition would force the doctor to claim her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself while the grand jury was looking at the case. But the judge denied both motions.
Ben Novotny, an attorney for Rebecca Riley’s estate, says Kifuji is scheduled to give her deposition on July 6, after the grand jury is finished. She was to have given the deposition May 1, 2009. For the deposition Novotny said Kifuji will be asked about “pretty much all her (medical) conduct,” starting with explaining the bipolar diagnosis. In the court document that mentions the grand jury, Singal says Kifuji “strenuously denies any allegations that her treatment of Rebecca was negligent, let alone criminal.”
We at Stop Foundation Inc are perplexed to find how any parent can condone the use of psychotropic drugs on a child who is 21/2 years old. It is also a wonder how the FDA chooses to recall Hydroxycut for one death when there are numerous deaths like that of Rebecca Riley for malpractice, and FDA malpractice in keeping dangerous drugs out of circulation. The three headed monster of BigPharma, the FDA and Psychiatry continues to march down Main Street like Godzilla reeking havoc wherever they roam.