It’s a wonder we’re all alive, if we’ve taken any prescription drugs. Can you believe the attorneys’ advertisements encouraging those who have taken one medication or another who are now experiencing medical problems to give them a call and sue, or get a portion of the money which has already been set aside to satisfy claims? There are some pretty common names on their lists, which leads us to believe that thousands of us have taken medications later determined to be unsafe. In our own household, several pills prescribed by our doctor were later replaced by another, with nary a word indicating they had been found to be dangerous.

We’re always amused when we hear TV ads for one particular cure or another, followed by the disclaimer as to what adverse symptoms we may encounter. The list of what’s wrong with the medication almost always outlasts the amount of time devoted to promoting it.

It’s really sad that it takes years for the Food and Drug Administration to finally determine that a popular solution to a particular ailment isn’t really helping at all, but may be endangering the lives of hundreds of patients.

A number of years ago, a fellow employee cut her hand at work, and when she declined to go to our local clinic to have It checked, we asked her to be sure to have her own doctor check it out later. “I don’t have one,’’ she replied.  No doctor, and she was probably in her late fifties, at the time. She said she’d never really needed one, and found she could handle most simple medical problems herself when they occurred. We envied her for obviously taking good care of herself to the point where she was able to avoid many of the all-too-common ailments of middle-aged folks — high blood pressure, high cholesterol, arthritis, etc.

Our prescription drug system seems to be sadly lacking in this country. Some meds are approved only to be found unsafe years later, and some cures and medications which are being used very successfully in other countries have yet to be prescribed  here. Some frustrated patients break the law or find a way around it so that they can take advantage of treatments elsewhere.

We seem to have a pill for everything in our country. We’re definitely a little pill-crazy and most of us will admit it. We’re sure there’s got to be “something’’ to cure our ills and we find ourselves looking back in history to the many unorthodox methods used for various treatments. Of course, many of them didn’t do any good at all, but when you stop to think about it, neither do many of today’s medicines. Somewhere, there’s a happy medium between our “there’s a pill for everything’’ attitude and finding more natural cures for what ails us.