For years, Joshua Sharfstein shuddered whenever he walked down a drugstore aisle lined with cough and cold products for babies and toddlers.
"It never ceased to aggravate me," said Sharfstein, a pediatrician and father of two young boys. "Kids with colds were getting these medicines that had never been shown to be either effective or safe."
So when Sharfstein became Baltimore's health commissioner, he launched a campaign that led an expert panel of the Food and Drug Administration to conclude last week that the products should not be used in children younger than 6, shocking many parents and setting up a possible clash between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry, which is vowing to continue selling the products.
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