What do we expect? We promote the consumption of a vast range of costly medicines with modest effect for diseases patients don't even know they have (like high cholesterol and high blood pressure and 'potential for' stroke and heart attack) and then complain when they want pills for diseases which actually make them uncomfortable! Is that a mixed message or what? We like the thought of health care check ups and blood tests and we medicalise the lives of the elderly. We over-regulate OTC medicines so that we force people to go to doctors and get prescriptions. We have educated a pill-popping society - now we have to either wind it back or live with it. And did we mention the vast consumption of opiates in SR forms for non-malignant chronic pain, and the bowel medicines to relieve the constipation they cause ?