XOb (FL Foster Child Psycho-Drug Suicide)

Miami Herald: Child's Death was Anything but a Suicide

Calling the death of Gabriel Myers a ''suicide'' lets his killers off the hook.

The 7-year-old was propelled by a vast conspiracy of abuse and neglect and malpractice. The boy only finished the job on April 15, when he locked himself in the bathroom of his Margate foster home and coiled a shower hose around his neck.

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The drugs, which come with a long and sobering list of possible side effects in children, have been doled out to troublesome kids to make them more manageable. Eli Lilly was fined $1.4 billion -- that's billion with a B -- in March for nefariously marketing the unauthorized use of Zyprexa for children, despite the known risks. A big chunk of those kids, like Gabriel, were foster kids, whose lives by definition were inflicted with the kind of trauma apt to cause unruly behavior.

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Foster kids were essentially guinea pigs in a vast, public-financed drug experiment.

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Absent a parent, a judge must give the OK for psychotropics. But the courts and case workers from the Department of Children & Families are all too overwhelmed by caseloads and beset by budget cuts to spend time contesting a doctor's judgment.

''No one was looking out for Gabriel.''

What Gabriel got, instead of real help, were powerful adult drugs laden with dangerous side effects. His cause of death was listed as suicide. It was just another misdiagnosis.