Why a Safety Device That Can Stop Overdoses by Kids Isn't Widely Used

Why a Safety Device That Can Stop Overdoses by Kids Isn't Widely Used

But the industry has neither promised nor delivered such protection on other medicines, which account for more than half of kids’ ER visits stemming from drug accidents, including antihistamines, ibuprofen, and cough and cold preparations. ProPublica purchased more than 50 pediatric versions of these products marketed by nine different brands at outlets in California, New York and Washington, D.C., this month. None of the products we bought had flow restrictors.

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The reason for posting this topic in the social issues forum instead of any other is this:

In my opinion, medicine or drugs that are created for children of any age, are around for a long time.
I know most bottled products here have a child proof lid, however I can't be sure it's how US bottled medical products do also have this feature.

Anyway. All medical and toxic substances should be stored outside of children's reach, no matter what.

Which means that parents are responsible for the safety of their children, and the distribution of any pill, fluid or other form of pharmaceutical substances their children might need.
Any demand or complaint addressed to pharmaceutical companies, by parents, for a safer package, isn't really the responsibility of the producing company in this case.
Because the need is a direct result of a parents failure in their personal responsibility of keeping their children safe.

Despite of the fact that any implemented safety device show they care about the relation with their customers, and deliver a product equipped with any requested safety measures.

It is a lot more important for parents to be responsible with harmful substances around their children.

I'm claiming that pointing fingers to others, is not something to be taken lightly, when it's about the safety of children, where any adult should automatically be thinking about and install everything that will increase a safe environment for the children.

This crawling away from personal responsibilities, making other parties responsible for stuff you need to know yourself, is making me feel very sad for a long time now...

Going down Darwin style as a result is your fault in my opinion.

Your thoughts on this issue please ?

Suing in general is bad to society as is implemented these days, adding another layer of safety is good in any case but i have the impression most of the problems with this stuff is that they last too long in the body and people over dose by taking the meds too often and not following the guidelines.

Perhaps a new layer of safety could be an official license to give birth and pass on your genetic stuff.

Sure, there are parents who don't secure medicines and drugs / chemicals in general. However, much of the problem from my understanding (which may be incorrect, I haven't officially studied it, rather this is based off of observation of reports from the media) is that the problem lays in overdosing by parents who either haven't read the directions or didn't understand them well enough.

For instance, children under three (my wife is now telling me four) can get next to nothing (besides teething medicines) truly medicinal (such as meds that include acetaminophen, ibuprofrin, allergy medication, etc). This was reported as a chance in the media due to misuse by parents.

Now, I was raised such that if you had a cold, you opened your gobb, tilted the big old bottle of nyquil back, and took a mouthful. None of this measuring stuff. But, the medicines have changed since then as well. Nyquil's main ingredient used to be alcohol (the crap was 50 proof), so that you would be able to actually fall asleep. This is why Nyquil doesn't work any longer, because that ingredient is now gone.

Now we have far more advanced, and more deadly drugs in the medicine we use. And the instructions, especially for such small bodies, need to be followed to the letter.


I too, agree with the OP. I believe that the main problem is the parents. It is the parents responsibility to keep things either locked up or out of reach of children. Regardless of safety caps.

I also believe we are dealing with a situation of common sense and, frankly, IQ here. Possibly even age and extended nuclear family dynamic (not enough close and experienced relatives nearby to offer appropriate and correct advice, etc) factors involved.



zeroBelief






*EDIT - But, I completely forgot to add...nobody is responsible for anything these days...so, sue away!!! Heck, sue me while you're at it...surely I am responsible in some way shape or form for some water-headed miracle baby's death....

reply to post by Indigent


They are pretty elaborate about kids that OD when they drink to much stuff, or pop their own ide on the amount of pills needed.

The safety device should make a fluid flow a lot slower out of the bottle.

However I'm more interested on what you think about personal responsibility, then the topic of the article.
I agree that suing would be even worse.

reply to post by zeroBelief


I couldn't agree more. Thanks !

Any time something is being pushed for "safety", it's usually a corporate think tank pushing behind the scenes, lobbying, simply so that company or industry can benefit. If it's via lawsuit, it's ambulance chasers.

The safer you make the world the dumber you make its people. Safety devices for medication? A kid can just as easily drink a bottle of windex thinking it's koolaid. You need to teach your kids not to do this. And don't eat a bottle of aspirin either. It's bad.

Use the measuring cup when you drink cough syrup, it's not a bottle of malt liquor.

When we were kids certain medicines were thought of as poison to us because mom used to tell ghost stories around the campfire about how Timmy ate a bottle of XYZ and didn't wake up the next day. Parenting 101 I suppose.

Sinter Klaas
reply to post by zeroBelief

 

I couldn't agree more. Thanks !

Anytime, my friend



zeroBelief

The whole issue definitely boils down to parenting. I grew up in a household with access to all kinds of things that were bad for me. Medicine being only part of that. I never got into any of it. My mom could leave a bottle of aspirin on the table, and I wouldn't touch it. Why? Good parenting. I had a mother who talked with me, and explained things to me. She educated me. However...

I had a mom who was home every day, all day. She took being a parent seriously. She had the luxury of not having to work. There are a lot of parents out there who don't have that luxury. It is they who need to take advantage of every device available to keep things out of the reach of children, and make it impossible for them to open it, if they do get into it. Unfortunately, I get the impression from some parents, they regret becoming parents, now that they know the job isn't easy.

Klassified
Why? Good parenting. I had a mother who talked with me, and explained things to me. She educated me. However...

I had a mom who was home every day, all day. She took being a parent seriously. She had the luxury of not having to work. There are a lot of parents out there who don't have that luxury. It is they who need to take advantage of every device available to keep things out of the reach of children, and make it impossible for them to open it, if they do get into it. Unfortunately, I get the impression from some parents, they regret becoming parents, now that they know the job isn't easy.

edit on 1/5/2014 by Klassified because: (no reason given)

Sorry...I see your point, but, frankly, don't buy it 100%. I'm not against you, but please allow me to explain....

I grew up in the 70's. As young as myself at oh, 6, and my sister, 9, we were home by ourselves after school as latch key kids until about 6pm when mom and dad would be home.

We had so many chores as well as homework we were expected to have done, we had little time to screw around.

We also had a firm and excellent understanding of what would happen were we to do something like play with medicines, or chemicals, which we were taught not to. Notice, I said TAUGHT NOT TO.

Why, my father even had guns in the house! How sinful could he have been!!!

He showed us PRECISELY where they were!

He said "If you ever want to see them, great....ask, and I'll show them to you! Want to fire them? Well, we'll go target shooting...."

"And if I ever catch you, or even THINK you were screwing around with them without my permission, I'll kill you."

We never touched those gun(S) (emphasis added, because, yes, there were many of them...enough for a columbine style event).......

I never even considered it. Dad's word was Law.


Not today though. Nope.




*Edit - Oh, and with regards to parenting not being easy...tough....sorry, I know it's a rather oppinionated approach to things...but, it IS what it IS. Did they really think that a perfectly behaved and easy thing would pop out of a womb amidst blood and such and be some simple thing to oversee? This is, after all, the REWARD for having sex.......[ insert wicked laugh here ]......

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


Every time a kid die is a horrible thing, but i dont think a company has the fault if something like that happens. a 3 years old nephew of my mother best friend died after drinking a bottle of malathion his father was taking to their ranch, he mistake it with juice bottle and drink it, just took 2 seconds and the damage was done it was an accident, probably could have been avoided but bad things just happen, kids do all kind of stuff and there is not a single thing in a house that its not a potential threat to them, cant sue everyone all the time for anything

Indigent
reply to post by Sinter Klaas

 

Every time a kid die is a horrible thing, but i dont think a company has the fault if something like that happens. a 3 years old nephew of my mother best friend died after drinking a bottle of malathion his father was taking to their ranch, he mistake it with juice bottle and drink it, just took 2 seconds and the damage was done it was an accident, probably could have been avoided but bad things just happen, kids do all kind of stuff and there is not a single thing in a house that its not a potential threat to them, cant sue everyone all the time for anything

Excellent and well founded thought.

reply to post by zeroBelief

I'm not seeing where we have a disagreement.

All those "childproof" safety lids etc are such a joke. Half the time it was adults asking me for figure out how to open/work childproof stuff when I was a kid

Best safety measure invented, a high cabinet, with nothing in the room to drag over to reach it. Been working since forever. For the extra paranoid, just get one that locks.

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


My opinion is that medicines (including medicines prohibited as psychoactive drugs) should be seen as the individual's responsibility. Medicines can be very dangerous, like driving a vehicle or owning a gun. Driving different sizes and complexity vehicles should require different licenses, with clear achievable requirements, that can include physical storage requirements like safes and locked medicine bags.

It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to provide as much information transparency as possible and well made uncontaminated product. Babysitting it's use should not be its responsibility.

I also think that for any potentially dangerous substance, bribing doctors to prescribe it is evil and should result in permanent inclusion of the unethical behavioiur in the information about the product in print eg. The insert and in online databases. Any marketing of potentially dangerous substances is probably a bad idea. If you have the problem it potentially solves, you should look for it and it should be easy to find in databases that provide that kind of information.

reply to post by asciikewl


I agree.

To bad that is's so easy for manufacturers abuse their position without hardly any good overlapping force to prevent these things from happening.