Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-06-Speech-2-357"
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"en.20050906.36.2-357"2
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"Mr President, we are about to vote on a report on regulations on paediatric medicines. The provisions of this report are based on the obvious truth that children are not mini-adults and they must have medicines tailored and tested specifically for their use. There is another, less obvious, truth that underlies this report that I feel I must state in this debate.
This truth is that an alarming number of children are sick and the number suffering from chronic, acute and fatal diseases is on the increase. As the scourge of contagious diseases among children in the West has been largely contained, all other types of illness are increasing, some to epidemic levels.
In my country, it seems that every other child is ill. How many children have inhalers, or have to avoid certain foods or pets because of allergies? Education budgets are straining with the increase in learning, behaviour and communication disorders. Eczema, disabling autism, cerebral palsy, diabetes, epilepsy and arthritis are all increasing, as well as life-threatening leukaemia and tumours – the list goes on and on. Why have children become such a profitable market place for medicines that powerful lobbies should find it worth their while to fight for a few months here and there over extended patents?
In the West, we should have the healthiest children in the history of the world. We have the affluence, we have good sanitation, the wherewithal for proper – even superior – nutrition. Our children should be thriving; they are not.
What are we doing to children? We need to do some serious soul-searching and serious research, not just into drugs and that kind of profitable research, but into children's growth and immune system development, and identify the new factors in our environment, in our food, our birthing and child-rearing practices, in our medical practices and in our lifestyles, and find the culprits that are sickening and even killing our children."@en1
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