Galveston County Daily News, March 18, 2007 By Howard Brody  ABC World News headlined one March 8 story "Hospital Health Threat to Children." It reported that the vast majority of drugs used on hospitalized kids had never been properly tested in children. Pediatricians had to use drugs and doses shown to work in adults and pretty much guess how to apply those drugs to their patients' care.  The news story suggested that Congress give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to demand that drug companies properly test their drugs in the pediatric age group. ABC happens to be wrong about this. The FDA already has that authority. But it won't use it. One reason the FDA won't face down the companies is that the FDA now relies on industry user fees for more than half its budget for new drug approvals. What Congress ought to do is fully fund the FDA so that the FDA is not financially beholden to the industry it is supposed to regulate. Un-child tested drugs for hospitalized kids is a sliver of a much bigger problem. The reason most drugs used in children aren't tested in children is that drug research is about marketing and sales, not about medical science.  The drug companies fund about 90 percent of all drug research in the United States. They operate on the so-called "blockbuster model." Either a drug sells $1 billion worth a year, or as far as the industry (and Wall Street) is concerned, it's chopped liver. Few drugs aimed at hospitalized kids are blockbusters. So the industry simply does not do the research.