In a year where federal regulatory agencies have come under sharp criticism for their delays in protecting American consumers, the business community decided to solve its own issues this week.
The federal Food and Drug Administration has scheduled hearings for next week regarding the safety of children under two using over the counter medicines that treat cold symptoms. The manufacturers of popular brands such as Dimetapp, Tylenol and Robitussin have all voluntarily begun pulling their infant formulations from grocery and drugstore shelves.
Even if the science proves that their formulations were wrong to begin with, we continue to question the effectiveness of nearly every federal agency charged with protecting consumers, especially the USDA and FDA. Attacking the CPSC is a more popular sport these days, but they appear to us to show a bias to action. Meanwhile, the FTC continues doing very well in shutting down the most egregious business operators, and the FCIC does a fine job educating consumers.
If consumer safety does not warrant a cabinet-level position, then what does? These are the clothes we wear, the appliances we use, the food we eat and the medicine that heals us. Shouldn't there be some level of oversight at a macro level that helps consumers? Having already done away with the federal Consumer Affairs office, we're left with a bowl of alphabet soup that doesn't work very well.
We would have saved news of an action like this for our weekly recall feature debuting this week, but can't because too much of this medication is not on store shelves, but on medicine cabinet shelves throughout the country. Help your children. Get rid of it now, and ask your pediatrician how to care for your small child.
Last month it was lead in toys -- an understandable if inexcusable issue. Then it was cribs that kill children and playpens that could hurt them. Now the medicine we give them to ease their colds (infant formulations of the medicine tens of millions of Americans ingest each year) are under fire.
And no one is watching out for the children. Let's reinvent government the other way for a change and put some consumer advocates in charge of the helter-skelter, hit and miss efforts of the individual agencies.
Labels: children, government, medical, safety
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