Busy primary care doctors, especially those who see children, prescribe it ten times a day, sometimes more. For over thirty years it's been our old steady friend, our go-to medication for bacterial ear infections, pneumonia, strep throat, and sinusitis. Evidence-based literature has its back. It's the "pink medicine," the yummy "bubble gum medicine," to which even obstinate toddlers will grudgingly capitulate.Doctors use it so often (when medically indicated, of course) that we barely even think about it. The anesthetic of the routine has been induced. But if we allow that anesthetic to be lifted, for a bit, the lifted curtain reveals a medication with a momentous history, mind-numbing amount of human good, and probably doomed future. [More]
