Slashdot Mirror
The New School Nurse Is Nurse Ratched
theodp writes "In Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched maintained order in the mental institution by dispensing antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs to the patients. Fifty years later, the NY Times reports that some physicians are prescribing stimulants to struggling students in schools starved of extra money, not to treat ADHD, necessarily, but to boost their academic performance. 'We as a society have been unwilling to invest in very effective nonpharmaceutical interventions for these children and their families,' said Dr. Ramesh Raghavan, an expert in prescription drug use among low-income children. 'We are effectively forcing local community psychiatrists to use the only tool at their disposal, which is psychotropic medications.'"
As no one seems to believe these numbers are real, I'll quote the source: The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000, authored by Dr Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.
That study, which is twelve years old -- and drug deaths have risen considerably since then -- documents 106,000 deaths per year from the "adverse effects" of FDA-approved prescription medications.
To reach this number from outbreaks of violent shootings, you'd have to see an Aurora Colorado Batman movie massacre take place every HOUR of every day, 365 days a year.