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More than 30% of American adults, and about 12% of children utilize health care approaches that were developed outside of conventional medicine.
Most childhood vaccines are 90–99% effective in preventing disease. Side effects are rarely serious.
Aspirin is the most widely used drug in the world. It has even been recognized as such by the Guinness Book of World Records.
In Eastern Europe and Russia, interferon is administered intranasally in varied doses for the common cold and influenza. It is claimed that this treatment can lower the risk of infection by as much as 60–70%.
The use of salicylates dates back 2,500 years to Hippocrates’s recommendation of willow bark (from which a salicylate is derived) as an aid to the pains of childbirth. However, overdosage of salicylates can harm body fluids, electrolytes, the CNS, the GI tract, the ears, the lungs, the blood, the liver, and the kidneys and cause coma or death.