This reliance has been a boon for pharmaceutical companies in recent years, as consumers in increasing numbers look to their neighborhood drug stores for relief from hay fever, allergies, headaches, nausea, colds, flus, arthritis and a seemingly endless list of other maladies. Physicians prescribe medication for their patients so routinely that the practice almost seems designed to placate, rather than cure. This situation is troubling, particularly since many prescription drugs are either useless or dangerous to their users. But the mysticism of medical treatment remains from an earlier time.
Most patients are too intimidated to even ask about their own treatment, much less influence it.
Many patients cannot name the drugs they've been prescribed and have no idea just what those drugs are supposed to do or how. Nor is it an easy subject for the lay person to master. All of these problems combine to make Worst Pills Best Pills a valuable resource for people using prescription drugs. More important, the book labels 104 of those drugs as either ineffective or potentially dangerous to their users, and suggests alternatives. Readers can use the book as an encyclopedia, using the extensive index and cross-referencing to find the drugs they are currently using.