HS football player dead at 16 after using controversial flu meds
A 16-year-old athlete committed suicide last week after being prescribed Tamiflu to treat his influenza, according to reports.
Charlie Harp was a high school football player and wrestler at Franklin Township High School in Indiana.
According to the boy’s aunt and uncle, his legal guardians, Charlie was thriving socially and academically before falling ill last Thursday.
Within 24 hours of starting Tamiflu, a prescription medicine used to treat the flu, his guardians found him dead in the garage.
The family believes the drug is what led Charlie to take his own life.
“He’s an amazing child full of life, happy all the time; you just never see him without a smile on his face,” Jackie Ray, Charlie’s aunt, told WXIN-TV in Indianapolis.
A GoFundMe account was started “to help his devastated family honor him like he deserves.” It exceeded its $15,000 goal in five days.
it would mean a lot to me and my family if you could donate and/or share this link. i've known charlie forever and it would be immensely helpful to his family. https://t.co/Y6TXOGhEW9
— aud coop (@audreymcoop) January 27, 2018
“Friday we lost Charlie, and a huge part of my heart,” Ray wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Charlie brought so much to our family, and boy was that kid one of a kind. He was loved by everyone that he came in contact with. I truly can not begin to explain how broken my heart is, as well as Brad [Charlie’s uncle, who found Charlie] and the kids.
“To think that I won’t see him everyday make me physically sick.
She recounted some of what made Charlie special.
“The wrestling matches on the kitchen floor, the story that never ended, boy that kid was detailed, to the txt message just to let me know a grade on a test that he was worry about taking,” Ray said. “I could go on for days about how great that boy was.
“I may not have given birth to him, but I loved him as he was my own. I am honored to have been able to be a mother to him with the time we had. My heart is crush, miss that boy already. I love you Charlie!”
Charlie’s case is not the only Tamiflu incident this year. A 6-year-old Texas girl on the drug tried to jump out of a window, and an 11-year-old — also in Texas — told her father that the devil’s voice was in her head.
In 2007, officials in Japan banned Tamiflu for children and teens after a disturbing number of young people attempted to jump out of windows and vehicles.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved of Tamiflu as one of the three drugs to combat this year’s flu.
The FDA warns that “children and teenagers with the flu may be at a higher risk for seizures, confusion, or abnormal behavior early during their illness.”
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