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Ahem, Parents Still Giving Cough Medicines
Can’t stand your kid coughing in the next room? Lean in a little closer, we’ve got a secret.
Most of us are still giving our kids cough medicine. Which wouldn’t be so bad, if the FDA hadn’t told us to stop two years ago. Oops.
A new study found eighty-six percent of parents are giving kids under two the medicines that the FDA has put the kibosh on without a doctor’s permission. According to researchers out of Vanderbilt, the University of Miami and the University of Wisconsin, the parents are largely just misunderstanding labels.
Ooh, bad, bad parents, right? Right?
Come in, lean in again. Not really. The FDA has been getting particularly gung ho on this issue in the last few years because parents weren’t using the proper dosages. Not because they’ll kill our kids. Because we aren’t reading the dang bottle. It started with recalls back in 2007 because parents were overdosing their kids. That’s when they called for cough and cold meds to be yanked for kids under two. The age was upped to four last year again for the same issue.
OK, so what about those of us who know how to read the bottle and really just want our kids to stop coughing? You can check out my colleague Shannon’s handy little list of medicine-free cough suppresants (written as the bans were being put in place). Or you can check with your doctor. Because no one ever said the doctor can’t prescribe them.
image: webmd
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1 Comment
Sxmdnglj commented on Jun 22 09 at 10:45 amn0rGzL comment3 ,
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