Everything Is Comming Up Bad...

From Americablog:
How's deregulation working these days? Wasn't industry supposed to self-regulate? You know it's bad when the Bush FDA gets off its butt and actually says something that alerts consumers to a problem.

A chemical blamed for sickening infants in China has been found in candy on American shelves.

Connecticut consumer protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr. said Wednesday that tests on White Rabbit Creamy Candy found melamine.

The candy has been found in stores in Connecticut. It was imported from China and sold primarily at Asian markets.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended last week that consumers not eat White Rabbit candy and that retailers remove it. Queensway Foods Company Inc. of California distributed the candy and says it is recalling it.

Melamine is used in plastics manufacturing and has been associated with contaminated infant formula and other Chinese products containing milk protein.

Not only is candy potentially something to make you sick, now pediatricians are requesting that the FDA recalls child's cold medicine.

Pediatricians are urging the Food and Drug Administration, which scheduled a public hearing Thursday on the issue, to demand a recall of the medicines for children younger than 6.

"Parents should know that there is less evidence than ever to support the use of over-the-counter cough and cold medicines for young children," said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore's health commissioner. "There is nothing that is holding the FDA back from asking for a voluntary recall now of products marketed to kids under 6."

Of course this will never happen since parents spend more than $286 million on this type of medicine.

It turns out that when the FDA set standards for cough and cold medicines some 30 years ago, no separate studies were done for kids.

Cough and cold medicines send about 7,000 children to hospital emergency rooms each year with symptoms ranging from hives and drowsiness to unsteady walking. Low doses of a medicine are not likely to cause a problem; the main risk comes from unintentional overdoses.

The same ingredients usually are found in different products. For example, giving a child a cough syrup and a decongestant could inadvertently lead to an overdose.

How scary is that.
Read the rest of the story here

Update: The FDA has REJECTED the request for a ban on child's cold medicine. FDA thinks people are stupid enough to give adult medicine to kids (which do not work either - see video below). Continuing story here.