Sadly, I wasn’t surprised to hear this story on the radio this morning:
http://www.kcbs.com/Infant-Cold-Meds-Pulled-From-Shelves/1079962
About a month ago, my baby had a cold. My pediatrician told me years ago with my first born that there were no safe cold medicines for babies, so when I saw “Infant Cold and Cough” medicine in the pharmacy I was happily surprised. It had a picture of an infant in diapers on the package and all. “They must have found a safe baby medicine!” I excitedly told myself.
Now, at the time I was in the unusual, and fortunate circumstance to be shopping alone, so I took the time to read the back of the package. “Not for children under 2 years old”.
Sorry. I thought it was for “Infants” as displayed in the title. Since when did 2 year olds qualify as infants?
I’m sure that had I had my two wonderful, yet distracting children, I would have bought the medicine without reading the fine print. Yes, I would have read the dosing instructions before giving it to my baby and then would have seen I couldn’t use it, (and been damn mad that I’d been tricked into buying it!) I’m not excusing the parents who didn’t bother to read instructions or who changed the dosage they were supposed to give, but I think the drug companies are obviously trying to be deceitful in their marketing.
After I returned the package to the shelf, I saw there were many other brands (probably all part of this recall now) that had similar deceptive labeling. The Bold front packaging implying or outright stating that the medicine was for babies, and only in the fine print in the rear do they admit it really isn’t.
Not cool.
Karabu Creations 