How FDA Collusion’s with Big Pharma over Prozac Continues to Harm America’s Children

     Well known patient advocate and podcaster Dr. Roger McFillin has just revealed facts and statistics that show that the FDA is still allowing millions of children to be prescribed Prozac despite proven evidence of its harm to the young.

     In 2005 European drug regulators reviewed all the available evidence about the effects of Prozac on children and found that youth prescribed the drug had irreversible testicular toxicity, permanent sexual dysfunction, growth retardation, and disrupted cognitive and emotional development.

     They concluded “It is not recommended to grant an indication to fluoxetine (Prozac) for the treatment of depression in children and adolescents because the benefit/risk balance in the claimed indication is deemed negative.”

     They also asked for more safety studies on the drug, but Prozac’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, said that further studies were unrealistic because of the difficulty they would have in recruiting research subjects. In 2003 Eli Lilly had already had their own studies into sexual development difficulties they suspected with young Prozac users.
They found 26 cases of delayed sexual development over 21 years through 2004.

     They then found another 95 cases of impaired sexual functions in youth over the next 5 years (2000-2005). That’s a 365 percent increase. The more Prozac taken, the more harm done.

     The FDA knew the European drug regulators had found evidence of irreversible damage to children’s sexual development, and they may have had access to Eli Lilly’s own research confirming this persistent sexual dysfunction. Yet they did nothing. Only in 2011 did they strengthen the Black Box warning for Prozac’s side
effects, but they have never demanded more studies into these “side effects” of Prozac.

     Today Prozac is still prescribed to children as young as eight years old.

     The FDA has ignored confirmed evidence of this irreversible damage from Prozac for two decades so that Eli Lilly could continue to reap Prozac’s immense profits, which had peaked at $3 billion just for the year 2000. Those are the kind of profits that lets Big Pharma finance – and influence – the FDA by funding seventy-five percent of the FDA’s pharmaceutical department.

     As Dr. McFillin writes, this FDA’s malfeasance is not just a tragedy. It is not even an oversight. It is evil.

     Just ask one of those kids…or their parents.