Health Freedom Action

Protect Pregnant/New Moms and Babies From Drugging: Oppose S. 1375

Mothers and Babies - Big Pharma's New Market

Pregnant mothers and their unborn babies are at risk if Congress passes the seriously misguided "Mother's Act", S. 1375, which calls for mandatory screeding of all pregnant and new mothers and subsequent "treatment" of Postpartum Blues, Depression and Psychosis with drugs. These drugs carry a considerable risk for babies whose mothers take them when they are pregnant or nursing.

These conditions are presented as medical conditions which require drug therapy when there is little or no evidence of any such requirement or success in treatment with these drugs. However, there is a great deal of evidence showing that these anti-depressant and anti-psychotic drugs carry serious risks of suicidal and homicidal thougths and actions (not a good idea in a sleep deprived and possibly worried pregnant or new mother). They also pose a serious risk to the fetus or nursing baby.

Psychiatric drugs carry strong warning lables advising doctors to avoid their use in pregnant women and babies, including nursing infants, for good reason. In fact, the warning lables and PDR entries state clearly that these drugs are not to be used in women of child bearing age who even might become pregnant because of the dangers of fetal death, malformation, congenital birth defect, neurological damage to the baby and other long term dangers to the child, including dangers which are noted to not yet be clearly identified since their use in young children is to be stringently avoided. The American Pediatrics Association, in its position paper on the use of these drugs, makes the dangers clear and supports the idea that these drugs are dangerous for babies and fetuses. The supporters of the bill do not appear to take these warnings seriously.

Please write to your Senators and Representatives advising them of your strong opposition to this misguided marketing tool of the pharmaceutical industry. And please let oter people know about the threat to mothers and babies, both born and unborn, as Big Pharma looks for new markets.

Yours in health and freedom,

Dr. Rima

Rima E. Laibow, MD

Medical Director

Natural Solutions Foundation

www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

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December 02, 2009

Subject:

Dear Legislator:

I am writing to you at the suggestion of the Natural Solutions Foundation, a private not for profit tax exempt organization, to urge you in the strongest possible terms to use your influence to defeat the so-called "Mother's Act", S 1375 now before the Senate HELP Committee. I want you, my Congressional representatives, to protect mothers from being intimidated or coerced into using psychiatric drugs without their fully informed, voluntary written consent. That fully informed consent should include a clear understanding of the fact that post partum depression or psychosis is generally a self-limiting condition which passes rapidly on its own, that there are many ways to deal with it, that drugs are one way to deal with it, but that psychiatric drugs carry significant risks to both the mother and the child and carry warnings against their use in pregnancy or when nursing.  The hazards to the child include both long and short term damage, and the possibility of future neurological damage which is currently poorly understood.

The health hazards, and the assault on health freedom embodied in the proposed legislation to screen and drug pregnant and new mothers with powerful psychoactive drugs represent pose a significant hazard to babies, mothers and health freedom advocates. Mental health decisions, like other health decisions, should be a private, not a state, matter. Psychiatric drugs carry significant risks for adults and more risks for babies which have never been fully characterized but those which are known are extremely serious.  This risk profile is clearly articulated in the American Pediatric Association's policy statement on the use of these drugs in pregnant and nursing mothers and death, fetal malformation, obstetrical complications, damage to the nervous system and other hazards are noted by that august organization in advising against their use in this population.

The "Mother's Act" is, in reality, a marketing ploy for the Pharmaceutical industry to mine a new market. While postpartum depression, a condition whose causes are unknown, does, in fact, occur in women around the time they give birth, it is generally a self-limited and temporary condition. The proposed screening and "treatment" of pregnant women (and their fetuses) and new mothers with psychiatric medication is fraught with dangers to the woman and the babies. The so called "Screening" proposed in this bill will simply mean that normal variations in emotional state, a predictable part of pregnancy and the immediate period after birth, will be turned into pathology and a profit center for the drug industry.

The drugs in question, however, have been used only with extreme caution in women of child bearing age since they entered the market because of their dangers to the developing child. They carry strong warnings urging doctors to avoid their use in women of child bearing age because of the dangers they pose to the fetus and nursing child. These dangers include birth deformities and congenital malformations, obstetrical complications, hypotonia ("floppy baby syndrome"), long term behavioral changes in the infant, withdrawal symptoms at birth (which can be deadly to the child) and death. In addition, these drugs, which carry warning risks of suicidal and homicidal thoughts or ideation can cause children to be born with organs outside of their bodies when they are exposed during gestation. This requires immediate surgery for any possibility of survival for the child. These are preventable emergencies, tragedies and dangers.

Mothers exposed to these drugs will be at increased risk of suicide and homicide, the very conditions which the Mother's Act says it seeks to reduce the dangers of in this vulnerable population.

I urge you in the strongest possible terms to do everything in your power to make sure that this dangerous drug marketing concept does not capture the Federal Government's ability to create public health measures and enforce them. This is not a measure designed to promote health, but to promote drug profits at the expense of health.

Thank you for your vigorous support of the rights of mothers and babies to remain free of both the coercion and the toxic effects of these drugs at the hands of the Federal Government.

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