Children in danger of becoming drug ‘guinea pigs’, warns MEP

Date: 14/02/02

By Martin Banks

CHILDREN are at 'undue risk' from prescription drugs which have not been sufficiently tested for non-adults, an MEP claimed this week.

German deputy Dr Peter Liese told a Brussels medical conference that member states must take a lead in protecting children from being used as 'guinea pigs'.

He said the European Parliament had made its own contribution in this area by supporting the clinical trials directive, which lays down strict rules on how drugs should be tested.

Liese, chairman of the European People's Party working group on bio-ethics, said that children should not be treated as 'small adults' when it came to researching the effects of drugs.

'A child's metabolism differs from an adult and the effects of medications on children cannot always be directly predicted from reactions in adults,' he explained.

'It is not acceptable, for example, to simply give a child half a medicine tablet because they are half as tall as their parents.

'Rather, we need to understand just what effects a specific drug has on children of different ages. We do not want children to be used as guinea pigs; research in this field must develop in a responsible way.'

Liese, a father of two, called for an improved 'framework' for public and private European research while admitting there were realties to be faced as the number of paediatric patients is sometimes very small.

'For that reason, research is often not worth it,' he said.

More than 150 scientists, paediatricians and officials from EU and candidate countries attended the conference.

Children are at 'undue risk' from prescription drugs which have not been sufficiently tested for non-adults, German MEP Peter Liese has claimed.