All very clever, even smug.

But then again if someone reads this, misconstrues the smart message, goes off one/some of their medications, loses their physical or mental balance, then is rushed to hospital, who is to blame?

Although not a professional medical person i find this article refreshingly frank and in my experience - accurate.
I am a fit and active seventy year old and take no drugs at all other than the very minimum dose of Allopurinol - an anti uric acid medication - and only take that as an outcome of two very painful renal colic attacks, and after much soul searching.
After experiencing very bad health in my younger years - teenager and as a young man - and after mainstream medicine had completely failed me (although never forgetting to charge) I went down the path of any number of 'alt med' protocols with indifferent results. After much reading and self analysis I have reached two conclusions:
1. So called 'alternative medicine' - that is medicine that is practiced without reference to scientific analysis and/or verification ( massage, vitamin supplementation, energy modalities in general)- is by and large a confidence trick, albeit a well organized one.
2. Despite the wondrous achievements of modern medicine (and there are many), prescribed medication - ie drug therapy - should be restricted to emergency needs only in the interests of overall health, and habitual self prescribed medication - headache tablets etc - should be avoided.
I now rely in general on an eating protocol arising from personal experience, and a well planned exercise routine.

Excellent article.

I carried out an analysis of one clinical trial called JUPITER.

You can find my analyses here:

http://www.mingbaima.com/2009/06/a-reply-to-peter-mansfield-of-healthy-skepticism-part-1/

and here

http://www.mingbaima.com/2009/06/what-is-wrong-with-jupiter/

See also the Healthy Skepticism website:

http://www.healthyskepticism.org/

Am I better off Warfarin to prevent blood clots forming around my prosthetic aortic valve and thereby avoiding a stroke? Of course I am.

And am I better off keeping my blood pressure down with the medication I take? Of course I am.

Do you think I like taking these pills and wouldn't prefer to live without them

The doctor has a good point; a significant number of admissions to hospital are medicine related. Sometimes there is an interaction between the medicines they are taking; sometimes there is an adverse effect with one of the medicines, but very often the patient is admitted because they weren't taking their medicines properly.

I am a pharmacist and I specialise in medication reviews. I have seen hundreds of patients in the last 6 years and am always surprised when I find a patient who is actually taking what the doctor ordered, no more and no less.

In 70% of the cases the asthmatic patient is not taking their puffers properly.
In at least half of the patients on blood pressure/heart medicines, they are taking over the counter medicines that the doctor does not know about.
Many patients take herbal preparations, to manage the side effects of their prescription medicines, without realising that the herbal medicine interacts with one of their prescription medicines.

Sometimes the doctor adds more medicinies, because the first medicine did not work, but that may be because of an over the counter/supermarket product that is acting against the medicine ordered. In other cases, patients stop taking their medicines, because they don't seem to make things better, or the medicine causes unpleasant side effects. It is well known that, in the silent diseases such as high blood pressure or diabetes, patients connect a feeing of improved well being, with effectiveness of the medicine. Unfortunately, a medicine that lowers blood pressure or blood sugar usually does not make you feel better, even when it is doing good.

If any one is concerned about the number of medicines their loved one is consuming, ask your pharmacist or doctor whether they qualify for a medication review. This is a medicare-subsidised service, that costs the patient nothing, but greatly improvers their understanding of why the doctor wants them to be taking the medicines ordered. At the same time, the doctor gets a great snapshot of what is really going on with the patient.

It's an interesting point that a lot of hospital admissions and medicine related problems are caused by mismanagement of prescribed medicine by the patient. I'm sure there are numerous cases where patients seek medicines from more than one doctor as well in an attempt to obtain medication their other doctor has ceased prescribing or will not prescribe.

But surely, in the majority of cases where patients take what a doctor prescribes, the patient is better off with rather than without the medication. I grant there must also be plenty of cases where patients are over medicated but a generalisation is also fair to make here I think, and that would be that medication by prescribed drugs is preferable to no medication at all.