Let’s talk pills. To treat everything from allergies to heart problems, half of Americans take a prescription medicine every day, and nearly all of us reach for the pill bottle on occasion.

It’s perfectly safe, though, because the Food and Drug Administration regulates the ingredients that go into those medicinal compounds, right? Yes – assuming they’re produced in the USA.

Uh, aren’t they?*

So…The story is that most of the ingredients in our prescriptions come from out of the country. Most come from China and India.

Since most of these ingredients are company secretes, the FDA doesn’t even know what they are or where they come from. The manufacturers of these ingredients are unregulated and uninspected. So exactly who is it that guarantees the safety of these ingredients?

I mean the whole PHARMA argument about not allowing American citizens to buy and import drugs from Canada is about regulated safety…And now we find out there is no regulated safety in American drug manufacturing.

How about this…

America’s last producer of penicillin’s ingredients, for example, shut down in 2004, leaving us dependent on China.*

We seem to be getting really good at putting all of  our eggs in that one China basket. Considering the political/economic circumstances we are finding ourselves in these days, I really have to question the wisdom in that…Don’t you?

*via Jim Hightower | WHO’S MAKING OUR MEDICINE?.