The article starts with "Given medicine’s poor record, physicians should prescribe and patients consume far fewer medications, a new book argues." : on the contrary, I think the current state of medicine is outstanding, regarding what is was only two centuries ago. Thousands of illnesses have a cure, and for many others, we know what we can do to minimize their effects, infant mortality is very low in most of the western world, etc. And paradoxically, although most of the "alternative medicines" zealots criticize conventional medicine for insufficient results and/or side effects, none of them keep track of some indicators such as the cure rate. ANd this is one of the only relevant metric that can assess the efficiency of a cure.

I'm not saying that the conventional medicine is far from any criticism, but one has first to understand the difference between the current knowledge available, and the way it is used : some drugs/treatments are promoted by some countries, while not in others. I'm also convinced he drugs prices (which are going crazy) should be regulated for the benefit of everyone. And of course, modern medicine should be used wisely. People should not take drugs each time they have a cold.

That being said, of course, there are still room for improvement, there are a load of illnesses that cannot be cured by modern medicine, and yes, some doctors think themselves as Gods. But this should not question the many successes of conventional medicine.