WANT TO GET INVOLVED? Go to www.Consumers Union.org to learn about our campaigns and to share your story.

Working for change: Three stories

In 2003, 26-year-old Kelsen Young packed her life into a rental truck to begin her move from Washington to Montana. The next morning, the parking space outside her hotel room was empty. The truck and everything in it, including her bank records, birth certificate, and checks, were gone. Young called the police, her bank, and her credit-card issuer, doing everything right and fast. But the thieves were faster; within hours they had stolen funds from her bank account. Three years later, the theft still plagues her credit record. Now Young is working to protect other victims of identity theft. It’s not easy.

Young’s is one of the few voices standing up to powerful business interests that benefit from easy access to consumers’ credit files. She has joined AARP’s efforts and Consumers Union’s Financial Privacy Now campaign to fight for legislation that includes security freezes to stop thieves from opening new accounts with stolen information. Thanks to those efforts, an ID-theft bill will be on the agenda in the next session of the Montana legislature, beginning Jan. 3, 2007.

When Raquel Claveria Sanchez’s 88-year-old father, Joaquin Claveria, experienced fatigue and chest pain, the family checked him into the Houston hospital where he’d had bypass surgery three years earlier. An intravenous insertion led to an infection. Despite courses of antibiotics, three months and three hospitalizations later, Claveria died.

The death certificate listed the cause as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Lab reports showed that he had MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant infection most commonly acquired in hospitals. Sanchez was furious that hospitals in Texas aren’t required to disclose infection rates to the public. She joined forces with CU’s Stop Hospital Infections campaign, lobbying Texas legislators for an infection-reporting system so that consumers can choose the safest places to go for their health care. She and CU serve as consumer representatives on a legislative advisory committee. Advocates are aiming for passage of a bill in the Texas legislative session beginning Jan. 9, 2007.

In the fall of 2002, Marion Goff’s 9-year-old daughter began losing weight and exercising excessively. Doctors recommended antidepressants. Soon after she started taking Paxil, her parents faced a child who had become self-abusive and suicidal. Doctors responded, Goff says, by raising the dosage.

Goff and her husband began their own research and learned that the drug’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline, had submitted to the FDA results from three clinical trials that, when combined, showed an increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and adolescents who took Paxil. The parents insisted that doctors wean their daughter off the drug. In October 2004, the FDA announced that strong warnings were to be required on Paxil and similar drugs.

Concerned that other families were also suffering, and angered into action, Goff testified at government hearings, began working with CU’s Prescription for Change campaign, and will fight for disclosure of all clinical trials until a law is passed. Two prescription-drug-safety bills are now in Congress. Hearings may be held this summer.