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NEWS IS DUMB AND
MAKING US DUMBER
STUDY QUESTIONS NEW
PROZAC-LIKE DRUGS
FOR CHILDREN
Nes makes us dumb by dis- Ne
secting reality, leaving the
public with no idea of what to make
of our times, says a University of
Florida history professor and author
of a new book.
Other writers have criticised
media bias, incompetence and irre-
sponsibility; but in this book, How
the News Makes Us Dumb: The
Death of Wisdom in an Information
Society, C. John Sommerville takes
a different tack, targetting the
essential feature of news: its time-
liness, which has degraded into a
daily and often hourly barrage of
disassociated facts.
"The news began making us
dumber when we insisted on having
it daily," Sommerville says. "Now
we've lost our ability to discern truly sig-
nificant news.
"Because newspapers and news broad-
casts treat each day and its events as being
equally important in giving us daily install-
ments, the reading, viewing and listening
public fail to develop a sense of perspec-
tive about the bigger issues.
"The world hasn't always had a news
industry," he says. "The news used to
come irregularly when something hap-
pened that was really important or interest-
ing. The only reason for making the news
daily is to create an information industry.
If publishers waited for something to hap-
Res recently questioned
the widespread use of Prozac-
like drugs to treat mild or moderate
mental illness in children, despite
lack of scientific evidence about
their safety or effectiveness.
In the USA alone, more than
500,000 prescriptions a year are
written for the newest class of anti-
depressant drugs—serotonin-selec-
tive re-uptake inhibitors, or
SSRIs—without scientific evidence
of the drugs' safety and effective-
ness in children, University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill
researcher Jerry Rushton said.
"Our survey data suggest that
despite a lack of research support,
adequate training and comfort with
the management of depression, SSRIs are
gaining physician acceptance and becom-
ing incorporated into primary care prac-
tice," Rushton said in a statement released
by the university.
Rushton, who presented results of a sur-
vey of physicians’ prescription practices to
a paediatric medical conference in San
Francisco, said SSRIs now account for 69
per cent of prescriptions written to treat
childhood depression.
He said Prozac, the most commonly pre-
scribed SSRI for children, may be follow-
ing Ritalin as the drug of choice in the
controversial treatment of attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder.
Approved by the Food and Drug
Administration for patients over 18 years
of age, SSRIs also are being prescribed for
children to treat obsessive-compulsive dis-
order, aggression-conduct disorder and
even bed-wetting, he said.
Rushton warned that the effects of "psy-
choactive" drugs like SSRIs on developing
central nervous systems are still unknown,
and the drugs have been documented to
cause sleep disturbances and behavioural
changes in children.
"I think these medications are starting to
show promise," he said. "However, they
should be used with caution and monitored
closely, not used haphazardly for transient
symptoms; not for school problems or neb-
ulous behavioural problems."
(Source: Press release, University of
North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, via
Reuters, 2 May 1999)
pen, they might be idle for weeks and their
capital assets would get rusty. So they
have convinced us that every day is worthy
of the same attention."
Paradoxically, the media are not the vil-
lains in these developments, he emphasis-
es.
"Ultimately, it is the consumers of news
who are to blame," says Sommerville.
"We have acquired an addiction, and
newspapers are just supplying the market."
(Source: By Cathy Keen, April 1999 press
release from the University of Florida,
USA, website,