Clinical pharmacology and optimal therapeutics in developing countries: aspirations and hopes of the Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology Subcommittee.

By the year 2000 the world's population will exceed 6 billion people, of whom one-half will be under the age of 15. Many of these children will die unnecessarily from diseases readily treatable with pharmaceutical agents. The discipline of pediatric clinical pharmacology has the potential to provide significant benefit to the world's children. Critical to the recognition of this potential is the blending of the expertise to be found in the disciplines of pediatrics, toxicology, clinical pharmacology, pharmacogenetics and clinical epidemiology. Through a marriage of these disciplines and an appropriate admixture of social sciences we may create a strong discipline focused on the encouragement of optimal drug therapy for children and for their protection from inappropriate drug exposure in utero. Such a development is the prime objective of the Pediatric Clinical Pharmacology Subcommittee: International Union of Pharmacology, Section of Clinical Pharmacology.