Every time we take a drug, we take a calculated risk. All drugs are 'useful poisons' and some are more useful than others.
Medicines have a touch of magic - a genie in the bottle; a pill for every ill. And each time we take the tablets we expect them only to do us good.
Every day we in Britain collect one million prescriptions; every year we swallow 7,000 million pills. In a very real sense we are all on drugs.
Last month the Government launched a campaign to persuade us to cut down on our demands for unnecessary drugs. Our society's addiction costs millions of pounds a year in wasted pills.
In tonight's programme Caroline Medawar presents four aspects of the pharmaceutical industry. The film tells the story of four vitally important drugs in use today, and shows how the powder on the laboratory bench becomes the pill in the chemist's shop; how danger lurks in even the most familiar bottle; how the drug industry has become one business apparently certain of profit; how doctors, industry and patient all conspire to promote powerful drugs that many people don't really need. Narrator William Franklyn.