Cholesterol drugs urged for kids with heart risks

Cholesterol drugs urged for kids with heart risks

www.cnn.com

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- For the first time, an influential doctors group is recommending that some children as young as 8 be given cholesterol-fighting drugs to ward off future heart problems.



[edit on 7-7-2008 by Silenceisall]

That's right, let's put our kids on a massive cocktail of preventative drugs. In fact, why not start putting drugs in baby formula? Never mind that children are already ingesting pharmaceuticals through regular tap water.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well I'm on cholesterol-fighting drugs myself for about 1 year now. I'm 26 years old, am not overweight, work out/play soccer 3 times a week, eat relatively healthy and drink almost no alcohol.

Yet without these drugs I could be dead in 4 years. My grandfather died of high colesterol and my dad has been on these kind of drugs for about 30 years.

So I think that for people which inherited the high cholesterol this can actually be a good thing. I underwent tests since I was 5 years old but we held off the meds for as long as possible.

Don't get me wrong I'm absolutely not saying that we should just give all our children these kind of drugs, but for certain people this could mean the difference between life and death. For these people diets and such do not help at all, only medication unfortunately.

Since no adequate long-term studies of the effects of these drugs on prepubescent and developing adolescents has been conducted this is a perfect way for the Pharmaceutical industry to avoid the expense and the delay in maximizing their cash-flow.

For some reason, preventative medicine is being forged into a drug craze medical establishment - considering both parties only profit when one is ill..., I don;t trust them with such a decision.

Kids on pills from the moment their able to swallow - who's plan is that?

Keep your eyes on the CODEX people! They will make true global health goals unattainable, and the sponsors, Big Pharma, Health care, and Insurance industries will laugh all the way to the bank.

i am 37 a few years ago my doctor put me on high blood pressure medicine and antichlestrol drugs because i was admitted to a hospital for chest pains the whole time i was on the drugs i felt lousy and still had the chest pain . well finally one time i was a walkin at my doctors office i got a younger doctor because my doc was too busy with other patient the young doctor diagnosed me with acid reflux so they put me on the "wonder drug nexium " i still felt like crap with pain in my chest so after a year of that i got my doctor to send me too a gastorintestinal specialist to see if surgery would fix things he pulled me off nexium and give a drug called zegrid
which is a combination of prilosec and bakingsoda well that got rid of chest pain but i still felt real tired and week all the time come too find out i didn't need blood pressure medicine . it was making blood pressure too low.
my point most doctors offices are full of pharactuical sales people telling the doctors if you shell out my drug you get this or that. its a big scam.
diet and exercise usually works much better!

Diet and exercise do work better, not on all though. There is a very small group of people who needs to be treated with drugs. However i suspect that the issue is not that group, but simply kids who do not exercise as much. Gladly i am yet to see prescription with statins for a kid, not in US though.
So i have a small question. How about sport education in school? State looses a lot of many due to higher percentage of certain medical conditions in overweight/obese? State better give now more money to sport education and reduce future costs.
But since government is not interested in this and pharma companies are interested in profits - this is how it is going to be.
Statins are usually well tolerated,serious side effects are rare. However taking it while body (muscles,brain) is only developing might be different, as Maxmars mentioned. Going to be big phase 4.