Biologics

MAHA Reports Aims to Improve Kids’ Health

David McFarland

— 2 min read
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The latest Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report, “Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment,” says FDA has a role to play in working with the National Institutes of Health to “build systems for real-world safety monitoring of pediatric drugs and create programs to independently replicate findings from industry-funded studies.” The report focuses on the “stark reality of American children’s declining health, backed by compelling data and long-term trends.”

In addition to the overmedicalization of children, the report looks at poor diet, aggregation of environmental chemicals, and the lack of physical activity and chronic stress.

It says there is a “concerning trend of overprescribing medications to children, often driven by conflicts of interest in medical research, regulation, and practice. This has led to unnecessary treatments and long-term health risks.”

According to the document, today’s children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease, and such preventable trends continue to worsen each year.

Looking at time trends, the report finds that:

  • stimulant prescriptions to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder doubled from 2006 to 2016;
  • antidepressant prescriptions were written for more than two million adolescents in 2022;
  • antipsychotic use in U.S. kids rose eightfold from 1995 to 2005;
  • antibiotics for outpatient children reached 49 million in 2022;
  • asthma controller prescriptions increased 30% from 1999 to 2008; and
  • GLP-1 drug use is increasingly common among U.S. kids, “very likely influenced by the American Academy of Pediatrics’ strong recommendation to use weight loss drugs and surgery ‘early and at the highest available intensity.’”

Looking at vaccines for children, the report notes that since 1986, the number of recommended vaccines on the CDC childhood schedule has increased from three injections to 29. It says the number of vaccinations on the schedule exceeds the number of vaccinations on the schedules of many European countries.

“Despite the growth of the childhood vaccine schedule, it says, “there has been limited scientific inquiry into the links between vaccines and chronic disease, the impacts of vaccine injury, and conflicts of interest in the development of the vaccine schedule. These areas warrant future inquiry.”

The report says evidence suggests that pharmaceutical money strongly influences congressional legislation through lobbying and the manipulation of patient advocacy groups, and exerts considerable financial control over FDA and its employees.

In addition to the recommendation for FDA post-market surveillance, the report lists these additional potential next steps:

  • drug safety research;
  • alternate testing models;
  • addressing the replication crisis;
  • real-world data platform;
  • AI-powered surveillance;
  • GRAS (generally recognized as safe) oversight reform for food ingredients;
  • nutrition trials;
  • large-scale lifestyle interventions; and
  • precision toxicology.

“The overmedicalization of American children, characterized by escalating prescription rates, unwarranted interventions, and declining health outcomes, signals a critical policy failure where corporate profitability supersedes the health of children,” the MAHA commission concludes. “While in the 1960s U.S. healthcare achieved excellent health outcomes for children while spending at a level consistent with other developed nations, today’s system far outspends sister nations while delivering far worse outcomes. This phenomenon is largely propelled by ‘corporate capture,’ in which industry interests dominate and distort scientific literature, legislative actions, academic institutions, regulatory agencies, medical journals, physician organizations, clinical guidelines, and the news media.”

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