Plea to free children from ‘chemical cages’

A photograph of an unnamed boy in a cage features in Sean O’Carroll’s exhibition about Ritalin.

A BOY crouches naked in a steel animal cage, with the downcast eyes of a prisoner.

This confronting image, meant to represent a ”chemical cage” of drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, is part of an exhibition called Ritalin by photographer Sean O’Carroll.

O’Carroll, a former teacher, said the exhibition expressed his concern about the widespread administering of what he called addictive mind-altering drugs to young boys, which was ”a catastrophic failure on the part of our society to deal with the challenge of raising active, energetic and ‘difficult’ boys”.

WSJ: Feds want $1B settlement in J&J Risperdal probe

Johnson & Johnson could be on the hook for about $1 billion to settle the government probe into its Risperdal marketing. Prosecutors are looking for a settlement about that size, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources. That would be the third-largest marketing settlement between a Big Pharma company and the U.S. government; only Pfizer and Eli Lilly have made larger deals with the feds.

Antipsychotic Drugs Deadly for Elderly Patients, Prescribed Anyway

Antipsychotic drugs prescribed to as many as one in seven patients with dementia at nursing homes increase the risk of death and are not approved for such uses, a government audit has found.

Drugs such as Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon are “potentially lethal” to many of the patients getting them and in many cases, completely unnecessary and unneeded.

Brain Virus Kills Woman After Docs Misdiagnosed Condition as Depression

A British woman died from a rare brain virus after being told by doctors that she was simply depressed because she had not had a baby, a coroner’s investigation heard.

Jane Harrop, 30, went to the hospital in February last year with severe head and neck pains after collapsing suddenly but was told she had a migraine, the Birmingham Mail reported Tuesday.