Psychiatry Makes War on "Bipolar Children"

The Huffington Post

Dr. Peter Breggin

The front cover of the May 26, 2008 Newsweek has a banner headline, "Growing Up Bipolar" with a split-face photograph of a ten-year-old boy. The headline should have read, "Victim of Psychiatric Assault."

In daycare 18-month old Max kicked, bit and spat on his larger peers. Apparently before he was two years old, his overwhelmed parents took him to a famous Boston psychiatrist -- having been trained in psychiatry at Harvard, I can confirm that famous Boston psychiatrists are among the most arrogantly pro-drug -- and within an hour the toddler had been diagnosed as bipolar. Right away he was put on the adult "mood stabilizer," Depakote. Depakote is an anti-seizure drug that is so sedating that it can, however briefly, subdue a child, at least until the effect wears off.

According to the parents, the doctor told them that the bipolar diagnosis was a "life sentence." It was a life sentence -- to being pharmacologically abused by psychiatrists. At the age of ten, Max is now eight years into his sentence, and getting increasingly abused by his physicians.

The doctor must have put Max on a lot of drugs because a second famous psychiatrist wanted to "streamline" the meds. Reducing anyone's drugs is nowadays a rarity in psychiatry; Max's first psychiatrist must have been over the top.

A mere ten years old, Max has already been on 38 different psychoactive drugs. "His parents aren't happy about it, but they have made their peace with it." Newsweek concludes, "Max will never truly be OK" because of his "disease." In reality, toxic chemicals are impairing and distorting the growth of Max's brain. Psychiatric drugs commonly drive suicidality in children and Max now leaves suicide notes. Tragically, he has become so afraid of psychiatry that after writing his last suicide note he sobbed, "Please don't send me to the hospital."

From now on, Max, his family and his doctors will almost certainly have to face an increasingly impossible dilemma common to children who are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs for a period of years. When trying to withdraw these children from multiple psychiatric medications, they almost certainly go through severe withdrawal problems with extreme emotional instability and the risk of worsening violence and suicidality. In fact, we are told that an attempt to take Max off his medications resulted in his displaying hallucinations and delusions, which Newsweek attributes to his worsening condition and his need for drugs. The odds are overwhelming, instead, that he went through a severe withdrawal reaction. So it can be very difficult to withdraw children like Max from multiple psychiaric drugs, but if they are kept on drugs
indefinitely, their brain, mind and overall condition is almost certain to deteriorate.(1)

It can be relatively easy and safe to withdraw a child from one or even two psychiatric drugs, especially if the parents are willing to learn improved methods of discipline. But when multiple drugs are involved, when the drugs have been taken for a long time, and when the parents are deeply distressed or cannot agree on how to raise their child, withdrawing the child from psychiatric medication can be difficult and hazardous.

Newsweek makes clear that Max's parents have serious conflicts over how to raise their son, but they have not pursued therapy, marriage counseling or, apparently, not even parenting classes. In every case of an out-of-control child I have seen in my psychiatric practice, either the parents were unable to reach agreement on a consistent approach to disciplining their child, or a single working mom was trying to raise a young boy without the aid of a male adult in the child's life.

In glimpses that we are given of this family, Max's father is somewhat like his son; he doesn't deal well with feelings, and he thinks his wife is much too permissive, calling her a "Caspar Milquetoast." Reading between lines, it appears that Mom is left with the lion's share of trying to discipline the desperate child, and perhaps has her hands full with her husband who has a "temper" and is "inflexible." While not have the opportunity to personally evaluate Max and his family, we can speculate that Max might have trouble figuring out how he is supposed to behave. Meanwhile, this family's story sounds like a clarion call for a combination of therapy, marriage counseling and parenting classes.

Newsweek declares "At least 800,000 children in the United States have been diagnosed as bipolar, no doubt some of them wrongly," but then immediately adopts the extremist psychiatric viewpoint, "The bipolar brain is miswired ... " After warning in passing that the drugs inflicted on these children can be useless and even dangerous, Newsweek then justifies them by declaring, "Yet untreated bipolar disorder can be disastrous; 10 percent of sufferers commit suicide."

Drug companies wrote this script and none of it is true.

First, all of these preadolescent children are being wrongly diagnosed by conventional psychiatric standards. We have no evidence at all that temper tantrums and other unruly behavior, however extreme, is a precursor to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder as an adult.

Second, since there is no known connection between children diagnosed bipolar growing into adults diagnosed bipolar, the data about a 10% risk of suicide is misleading and irrelevant.

Third, there's no evidence whatsoever that individuals diagnosed "bipolar" have a "miswired brain." There's not even any such evidence for a biological flaw in adults who suffer from full-blown manic-like episodes, let alone children whose parents and teachers cannot control them. (1)

The concept that children have bipolar disorder and should be treated with highly toxic adult psychiatric drugs is strictly a drug-company marketing ploy. If it's true that 800,000 children have been diagnosed, it has become an enormously successful marketing strategy with tragic results for children and their families.

There's an even more sinister aspect to all this. There has been a real increase in teenagers and young adults who display episodes of manic-like symptoms such as insomnia, excessive energy, racing thoughts, grandiose ideas about themselves, irrational and outrageous behaviors, extreme irritability, paranoia, and psychosis. However, in my three and one-half years of intensive psychiatric training in the 1960s, I saw only one case of a young person suffering from these symptoms. In the following years through approximately 1990, I saw few other cases. Yet nowadays I evaluate many teens and young adults with manic-like symptoms in my medical and forensic practice. The reason for the change? As I document in detail in Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry (2008), antidepressant drugs, so freely given to children and youth, cause a high rate of manic-like behaviors.

According to Newsweek, Max already makes excuses for himself by saying "I don't have control." Setting aside that the drugs may indeed be causing him to lack self-control and impulse control, the idea that he cannot control himself is one of the most adverse effects of diagnosing and medicating children. They begin to believe that they have no self-control. This is a prescription for failure in life.

These changes -- diagnosing children bipolar and driving other youngsters into states of drug-induced mania -- has not occurred by chance. Joseph Biederman, one of those famous Boston psychiatrists, has led the way in pinning the bipolar diagnosis on children who are having temper tantrums and outbursts of rage. Biederman, well situated at Harvard, is a long-time henchman of the drug companies, so much so that even the Wall Street Journal found it necessary to comment on his deep financial connections to his industry patrons. (2)

The promotion of drugging "bipolar children," has been enormously successful. Before the 1990s, doctors hardly ever diagnosed bipolar disorder in children. In fact, I do not recall hearing the diagnosis given to any children prior to the 1990s. A recent survey in the scientific literature showed that there was a forty-fold increase in diagnosing bipolar children between 1994 and 2003. (3) The survey found that 90.6% were receiving psychiatric medications, including 60.3% on mood stabilizers like Depakote and 47.7% on antipsychotics like Risperdal and Zyprexa, with most on combinations. To compound the tragedy, the study found that more children were being given the most toxic psychiatric drugs, the so-called antipsychotic drugs, than a similar group of adults labeled bipolar. Psychiatry is bombarding children more heavily than adults with similar diagnoses, even though the drugs are not approved for these purposes in children.

The advantages to the drug companies are obvious. If most "bipolar" children get several drugs at once, several dozen over their childhoods, they transform from being patients into being cash cows from psychiatry and the drug companies. Further administration of multiple psychiatric drugs at once complicates the clinical picture so that it is impossible to pinpoint which drugs may be most responsible for the adverse reactions the child experiences. Because so many doctors and so many drug companies will share the blame for mistreating these children, they will be unable to seek redress against individual perpetrators through the courts when they grow up.

It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for any child to outgrow his early behavior problems, and become a normal adult, while being pharmacologically overwhelmed with toxic agents for most of his childhood. The growing brain is literally being bathed in substances like antidepressants, stimulants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic drugs that cause severe, and potential permanent biochemical imbalances. All of these drugs have been shown to distort the shape of brain cells (neurons) and in some cases to destroy the cells. (1) Some of the drugs, including Risperdal, Zyprexa, Geodon and other so-called 'anti-psychotics' expose the child to permanent and potentially devastating drug induced neurological injury called tardive dyskinesia. They also cause potentially fatal diabetes and pancreatitis, as well as morbid obesity. (1)

The mass drugging of America's children has become such an outrageous practice with such vast public health and societal implications, it is difficult to know how to conclude my observations. I can understand how parents who feel confused and overwhelmed can be pushed by psychiatrists into trying to control their children's behavior with drugs. But shame, shame, and more shame should be heaped upon a profession that has forsaken its sacred trust to protect and to care for children, and instead has become a major child abuser of epidemic proportions.

(1) Breggin, P. (2008). Brain-disabling treatments in psychiatry: Drugs, electroshock and the psychopharmaceutical complex. New York: Springer Publishing Company.

(2) Abboud, L. (2005, May 25). Treating children for bipolar disorder? Doctors try powerful drugs on kids as young as 4. Wall Street Journal, p. D1.

(3) Moreno, C., et al. (2007). National trends in the outpatient diagnosis and treatment of bipolar disorder in youth. Archives of General Psychiatry, 64, 1032-1039.

Rotenberg records reportedly are seized

Boston Globe

By Patricia Wen

State Police seized documents late last week from the offices of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton that are related to a prank phone call last summer that led two students to wrongfully receive dozens of punishing electrical shocks, according to two people with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The collection of evidence has to do with a yearlong grand jury investigation led by the office of Attorney General Martha Coakley, said Kenneth Mollins, a New York lawyer who has filed several lawsuits against the school and who said he spoke to a representative of Coakley's office about the Rotenberg investigation. Mollins said he was told the grand jury is also examining possible financial improprieties by the school.

The second source, who works for the state and asked to remain nameless because this person is not authorized to speak about grand jury proceedings, said State Police investigators came with a search warrant and left with boxes of documents. The source said the investigation had an ambitious scope and involves multiple government agencies.

Reached last night, Ernest Corrigan, a spokesman for the school, did not confirm that a seizure of documents had occurred last week. He said only that school officials have been cooperative with state and local police ever since they reported the prank phone call to police last summer.

"We've been supportive of the investigation," he said.

A spokesman for Coakley declined to comment, saying the office never confirms or denies an ongoing investigation.

The special-education school, which serves about 250 adults and children from across the country with emotional and behavioral problems, has been the target of numerous government investigations related to its unorthodox behavior-modification methods, including skin-shock treatments to deter inappropriate behavior. Rotenberg officials, who have weathered two attempts by Massachusetts officials to close the center, have defended its treatment methods as effective for some students.

School officials have also said they have instituted numerous safeguards to prevent a repeat of the Aug. 26 incident, in which two emotionally disturbed students wrongfully received dozens of electrical shocks based on instructions from a caller posing as a supervisor. The incident was caught on 24-hour surveillance tapes, which were shown to investigators last summer. The tapes were subsequently destroyed by school officials, even though investigators had instructed them to preserve the tapes.

After hearing about the destruction of the tapes, Senator Brian A. Joyce, a Democrat from Milton who has sought to ban shock therapy at the school, said he intended to ask the attorney general's office to look into the matter.

Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.

Drug death soar in Boston - Substance abuse tally for '06 alarms officials

Boston Globe

By Stephen Smith

Deaths from drugs and alcohol in Boston soared dramatically in 2006, an increase fueled by cheap heroin, the allure of crystal methamphetamine, and the widespread availability of addictive prescription medications.

Boston health authorities are so alarmed by the spike in fatalities - 176 people died from substance abuse in 2006 - that they are scouring medical examiner reports on each case, hunting for clues that might further explain the precipitous rise. In that year, the number of people dying from drugs and alcohol climbed 32 percent, reflecting a decadelong trend sweeping the state.

The findings, detailed in a draft of the annual Health of Boston report obtained by the Globe, ranked substance abuse as the fifth-leading cause of death, with Bostonians three times more likely to succumb from drugs or alcohol than from homicide.

"It's really difficult when you talk to these parents of 25-year-old kids and they don't even suspect their kid has a problem, and then they're dead," Michael Botticelli, director of the state's Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, said, his voice catching. "It's hard when you feel like you're doing everything in your power to make a dent in it - and I do think we're making progress - but the challenges are enormous."

That was evident in just the past week: Boston police are investigating three deaths since last Friday that they suspect were related to drugs, a spokeswoman said. One person was found dead in Franklin Park; another, in a Brighton apartment; and a third crumpled in a stairwell in the South End, a neighborhood where more people die from substance abuse than in any other.
"We easily see an overdose a day," said Rich Serino, chief of Boston's Emergency Medical Services. "And some days, more."

Sometimes the users survive; sometimes they don't. Their arrival at such dire straits reflects the resurgence of heroin, which is an old drug of choice, and, increasingly, the compression of the journey to life-threatening addictions.

Substance-abuse specialists trace the roots of the latest spike in deaths back to the late 1990s, when heroin began to tighten its grip on New England. It was a classic case of market-driven economics: The drug was cheap, with a hit of heroin selling in some neighborhoods for less than a six-pack of beer.

And the heroin was so powerful that novice users didn't have to inject it. They could get high just snorting the powder, erasing some of the stigma that marked heroin in an earlier era, of arms pocked with needle tracks.

But once hooked, users inevitably turned to needles, which promised a more potent delivery method. And when that wasn't enough to satisfy their craving, addicts sought dealers who peddled heroin boosted with other narcotics, such as the powerful painkiller fentanyl, creating an especially potent brew.

"They use it once and they say, 'Oh that was fabulous,' and then it takes hold of a whole group, and it gets passed on," said Rita Nieves, director of substance abuse services for the Boston Public Health Commission. "Then, you see a spike in fatal overdoses."

Those deaths have not been confined to Boston: Statewide, annual opiate-related deaths climbed from 94 to 637 between 1990 and 2006, the latest year for which complete figures are available.

That jump coincides with the arrival of crystal meth in New England. Though not the scourge in the region that it is elsewhere, meth has resulted in more addicts seeking treatment, specialists said.

At the same time another new path to addiction started gaining popularity: prescription pain relievers, easily accessible in many a family bathroom.

"Our youth have become increasingly sophisticated, and they say, 'It's difficult to go buy booze, it's difficult to buy cigarettes, but I can open the medicine cabinet at home and find a whole host of things,' " said Kevin Norton, president of CAB Health & Recovery Services Inc., a Boston-area treatment network.

They find Percocet, OxyContin, and other powerfully habit-forming pain pills. And so the path from casual user to desperate addict - once winding from tobacco to alcohol to marijuana, and then on to more dangerous substances - becomes perilously shortened.

Once cut off from family members' supply, users resort to street dealers who may charge $50 or more for a pill. No longer able to afford that steep price, prescription drug users switch to heroin and other comparatively affordable narcotics, which can sell for as little as $5 or $10 a bag. And they often progress to using multiple drugs at the same time, compounding the dangers.

"I see, across the neighborhoods, people talking about the combinations of drugs," said Beth Rosenshein, coordinator of the Charlestown Substance Abuse Coalition. "Oftentimes, people using heroin are also shooting cocaine or smoking crack or drinking."

Barbara Ferrer, executive director of the city's Public Health Commission, said she expects a team analyzing the fatal overdoses to complete its work within a couple of months.

"We're anxious to get this information. We're anxious to understand this, and we're anxious to look at our programming," Ferrer said.

Already, investigators know that more than three-fourths of the 2006 deaths were caused by drugs, with the remainder attributed to alcohol poisoning or alcohol-related diseases. And while the majority of victims were men - 122 - the number of women dying from substance abuse nearly doubled from 2005, when it was 29, to 54 in 2006.

This year, the state is spending nearly $128 million to treat substance abusers and to prevent people from getting hooked in the first place. That is a 58 percent increase from just five years earlier.

Phyllis Avery, who has spent roughly half her 43 years in the thrall of alcohol and crack cocaine, has seen the dead and near-dead on Boston's streets.

"It did scare me," she said, "but when you are caught up in your disease and you are using constantly, you block that out of your mind."

At a certain point, she said, addiction wears you out. That's when she enrolled in a new city initiative underwritten by $500,000 a year in federal funding, part of a broader campaign by the city to expand services. Like 70 other women this year, Avery is spending 10 to 30 hours a week with counselors and other recovering addicts, learning how to rein in anger and rebuild their lives.

"Life is so much better compared to what you go through when you're right in the middle of addiction," she said.

Maria Cramer of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmith@globe.com.

Advocacy group says too many Vermont kids are on psychiatric drugs

VPR News

John Dillon

(Host) A mental health advocacy group says too many Vermont kids are on psychiatric drugs. The group also says the drug industry has too much influence, and that the state isn't doing enough to correct the problem.

Ken Libertoff is executive director of the Vermont Association of Mental Health.

(Libertoff) "There has been very little attempt to capture who is prescribing these medications, and what the trends are. It's our contention that there has been a staggering increase of the use of psychotropic medications over the past decade.''

(Host) Libertoff was joined at a news conference on Wednesday by Lieutenant Governor Brian Dubie and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin to highlight the problem. Shumlin said the state needs to find out if doctors are over-prescribing the medications.

(Shumlin) "I think it should shock us all that we're sitting back and just accepting that we're using psychotropic drugs for our children at an alarming rate, that we're not looking carefully at why, what the effects are, who's making the money and who's making the decisions.''

(Dillon) Libertoff says the state spent $10 million during six months last year on psychiatric drugs for children and adolescents. He said more than 6,000 kids got the medications.

He says a shortage of mental health professionals in Vermont and aggressive marketing by drug companies have led to over-reliance on medications designed for adults that haven't been tested properly in children

Mental health group: Kids on psychiatric drugs not well monitored

Boston Globe

By Dave Gram, Associated Press

MONTPELIER, Vt. --State government spent nearly $10 million providing psychiatric drugs to more than 6,000 children in a six-month period last year, in a mental health system that an advocacy group on Wednesday labeled "out of control."

"Our contention is that no one is paying attention to a system that is out of control, costly and potentially harmful to some children and adolescents in Vermont," Ken Libertoff, executive director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health, told reporters.

"Drugs have greatly replaced clinical interventions and counseling in the world of children's mental health and we need to change this environment in Vermont," said Libertoff, who got his figures on cost and children's participation from a state report.

Both Mental Health Commissioner Michael Hartman and Joshua Slen, director of the state Office of Health Access, agreed that the use of psychiatric prescription drugs with Vermonters under 18 is a cause for concern.

"This is an area that does need to be looked at, that society needs to be paying attention to," Slen said.

But Hartman disputed Libertoff's assertion that, "Many if not most of these medications have never been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in the treatment of children and adolescents."

Hartman pointed to a list kept by a federal agency, the National Institute of Mental Health, identifying 25 commonly used medications and the ages at which the Food and Drug Administration had determined children may begin taking them.

Among them: Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder may begin taking the stimulants Adderall at 3, Concerta or Ritalin at 6. Depression and anxiety may be treated with Zoloft at 6 or Luvox at 8. The anti-psychotic drug Haldol can be given at 2 and the mood stabilizer Depakote can be given at 3.

Libertoff drew support for his view that the use of psychiatric drugs in children needs careful study from Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, and Kathy Holsopple, executive director of the Vermont Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health.

All acknowledged that medications can be helpful in the treatment of mental health and behavioral challenges in some children as well as adults. Hartman cited a statistic on adolescent suicide on this score.

The national suicide rate for 10- to 19-year-olds was 2.2 per 100,000 in 2003, he said. But after "black box" warnings were placed on some antidepressant drugs about them causing suicidal thoughts in young people, prescriptions of those drugs dropped, and the teen suicide rate jumped by 18.2 percent -- to 2.6 per 100,000 -- the next year, Hartman said.

Libertoff said there had been "staggering" growth in the use of the drugs with young people in recent years. He said part of the reason was heavy promotion by drug companies, citing statistics from the attorney general's office that pharmaceutical manufacturers gave at least $2.17 million in fees, travel expenses and direct payments to Vermont doctors and other health providers in 2006.

Slen said later that some drugs were being used for diagnoses that hadn't been identified 10 or 20 years ago, so that it was difficult to measure year-to-year growth for many of the medications.

Libertoff vowed his association will work with lawmakers next year for legislation directing state agencies to get a better handle on the use of psychiatric drugs by children.

"To be sure, the current lack of public scrutiny and review is not in the best interest of Vermont children," he said.

Rutland Herald

Dubie, Shumlin criticize psychotic drugs for kids

May 1, 2008

By DANIEL BARLOW

MONTPELIER — The top two leaders of the Vermont Senate joined a prominent mental health advocate Wednesday in decrying the growing trend of prescribing medication to children that has only been approved for adults.

Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin said during a Statehouse press conference that Vermont needs to begin investigating how often these mind-altering drugs are given to children and why.

Shumlin said the state needs to get active in stopping the sole reliance on antipsychotic medications for treatment of children and teenagers, just as law enforcement has cracked down on the use of these drugs for recreational use.

"It should shock us all that we as a state have allowed and accepted that we are using powerful psychotic drugs on our children at an alarming rate," said Shumlin, a Democrat from Windham County.

Shumlin and Dubie joined Ken Libertoff, the executive director of the Vermont Association for Mental Health and a sharp critic of the doping trend, at Wednesday's press conference. Libertoff said he tried to jump-start the conversation over medicating children in 2007.

But a letter he wrote in March of that year to the Office of Vermont Health Access — the agency that oversees the state-run insurance programs such as Medicaid — seeking information on how many Vermont children are prescribed mental health drugs wasn't responded to until 11 months later, after a newspaper reporter asked about the delay.

''The question is, who is watching out for our children?" Libertoff said. "And my answer right now would be no one."

That information from OVHA, which Libertoff released to reporters Wednesday, gives a troubling snapshot of the trend in the state: Between April and September 2007, the state spent $10 million on anti-psychotic drugs for children through its insurance programs.

In addition, the documents show at least 6,200 Vermonters under the age of 18 who were taking at least one mental health drug. Libertoff said those numbers could be even higher because it only includes reimbursements through the state insurance programs.

He also bristled at what he called an inaccuracy in OVHA's letter this year to him that stated the "medications are approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of psychiatric disorders including those of children." Libertoff said most of the drugs in question have only been FDA-approved for adults.

"We raised a number of issues that should have been looked at, but were not," Libertoff said.

A call to OVHA was not returned Wednesday, but in its letter to Libertoff on Feb. 14, Deputy Director Ann Rugg apologized for not responding in a timely fashion.

Commissioner of Mental Health Michael Hartman agreed with Libertoff that the mental health system has a serious problem with prescribing psychiatric medications to children with little or no follow-up counseling.

That situation is compounded by the fact that the FDA often makes its regulation decisions based on studies and findings sponsored by the makers of the drugs, he added.

"It's not a good situation from top to bottom," Hartman said.

In response to the concerns, Hartman announced he is launching an inter-agency review of Vermont's medication prescribing patterns for children and teenagers. There is no timeline yet on this review, he said, and comparing the final data to what other states are experiencing will be difficult because there is no standardized reporting method.

"What we know is that as a country we have been escalating the use of these medications well above what was used a decade ago," Hartman said. "We have to stop this train.

"Allowing children, whose bodies and brains are still developing, to take medications approved only for adults can be disastrous because of all the unknown consequences attached, according to Kathy Holsopple, executive director of the Vermont Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health, a nonprofit group.

More information needs to be supplied to parents before a child is prescribed psychiatric medications, she said. More research is also needed in this area, she added, to determine what the long-term consequences of this early drug use are.

"Children are not just little adults," Holsopple said. "We can't just give them adult medication."

Dubie, a Republican, took a more cautious tone than the others at the press conference Wednesday. He said he was troubled by the alleged overuse of psychiatric medications across the board — from children to prison inmates to senior citizens.

He pledged to be part of that dialogue at the state level aimed at "reducing the overall use of psychiatric medications in all areas."

"We must ensure that parents have access to timely and informed facts on the benefits and the risks of taking psychiatric medications," Dubie said.

Shumlin went one step further ashe vowed that lawmakers would look at the issue when they return to Montpelier in January 2009. He pointed to a newspaper report last month that the state spent $4 million on the drug Zyprexa in 2006, a medication that at least 10 states are suing the drugmakers over (Vermont is not involved in that litigation).

"We spent $4 million on this single drug when we all know that it has been challenged by many as a drug that has serious health consequences that were covered up by the maker," Shumlin said.

Contact Daniel Barlow at daniel.barlow@rutlandherald.com.