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Re: clonodine

Posted by Omaha on September 14, 2000 at 21:30:06:

In Reply to: Re: clonodine posted by LuAnn on September 14, 2000 at 18:39:13:

Hi, LuAnn,

Ritalin and Clonodine are not the same drug, or even in the same class of drugs (Ritalin is an amphetamine, which is a stimulant, and Clonodine is an alpga-adrenergic, which acts like a sedative.) However, both are used to treat things such as Attention Deficit Disorder. Yahoo health has a little write-up on Ritalin in lay terms (http://health.yahoo.com/health/Drugs_Tree/Medication_or_Drug/0255) but this next website is much more in depth, albeit with a whole lot more unfamiliar terms (http://www.rxmed.com/monographs/ritalin.html)

Note that Ritalin is in the same general group of drugs that are being prescribed for very young children without enough information regarding how much to give them and what age is bad to give them, etc. If you type in the name Ritalin into a search engine, you'll get a whole slew of info regarding it.

There is right now a class action lawsuit in the works against drug manufacturers because of the belief that these drugs are wrong for children, and though I don't agree with the reason for the lawsuit (there are amphetamines that are bad, so all amphetamines are bad and shouldn't be given to children) I think that the lack of information regarding Ritalin, clonodine (Catapres,) etc makes it unethical to give to children without *fully* informing the parents as to the risk (which I think that a lot of doctors do not do...see the essay that I mentioned in the previous post.) Doctors spend less and less time trying non-medicated means to control ADD, narcolepsy, etc, perhaps because it is easier and quicker (which means more patients to see in one day and less research work on each patient in a day...therefore more money from each day as a whole) to just prescribe the meds.

Hope this helps.

Omaha

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