In essence, Kayoko Kifuji, the child psychiatrist who prescribed clonidine to Rebecca, was exonerated with the mother's conviction. Kifuji worked at the Tufts New England Medical Center. She also prescribed two other medications to Rebecca used frequently in children's psychiatric problems, Seroquel, approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating schizophrenia and Depakote, studied and approved for epilepsy. Clonidine, also known as Catapress, was approved and studied for the treatment of hypertension. However, all three drugs are widely used in the treatment of pediatric bipolar disorder - although the FDA has approved none of them for this use. All three are potentially heavily sedating.
Cathie's notes: Here's another great post on the Rebecca Riley murder case by Dr. Lawrence Diller at his blog, The Last Normal Child. I checked out some of his other posts, and decided to add a link to his blog in my blogroll typelist in the sidebar.
If you are interested in these issues, I would also recommend the News page for the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP). I got the heads up on these articles via their email list, which you can sign up for there. They have been especially informative about collusion and conflict of interest between Big Pharma, politicians, medical professionals and universities and the FDA.
