You need to know this. More than one quarter of all children and teenagers in the country are on some sort of prescription medication. This staggering new finding comes out of research done by Medco Health Solutions – the largest pharmacy-benefit manager in the country. Kids are increasingly prescribed medications for a number of conditions - from asthma to attention deficit disorder – to diabetes, sleep disorders, and even hypertension. Even more troubling, many of these medications are lab tested for adults but not kids – so their long-term effects in children aren’t fully known yet. This giant, nationwide experiment of using untested drugs on one in four of our children for years at a time points to a potentially deadly problem that's the direct result of our privatized, for-profit health care system that only makes more money with more diagnoses and more prescriptions. Of course there are also other issues. Obesity and its possible relationship to high-fructose corn syrup, for example, a chemical substance that until the 1970s had never before been in our food supply in the history of humanity, and coincides with the beginning of our childhood obesity epidemic. Not to mention increasing pollution and drug residues - including hormones like estrogen - in our drinking waters. However you look at it, the United States is becoming a sickly nation. And never in the history of the world has there been a great nation with an unhealthy population. This should be a huge wake-up call to us all.