"Parents' False Beliefs Bring Kids to ER for Colds"

I've been too sick with an annoying winter cold over the past couple days to write anything here, but at least now I know from this helpful Yahoo! News article that I needn't trouble my doctor with my sufferings. It gives survey results showing that people who run to the doctor or the ER for mere colds, demanding antibiotics in spite of the fact that they don't work on viruses, are responsible for the downfall of American medicine, or something like that. Actually, the article doesn't talk about adults going to the doctor, but something more insidious: parents who bring their children to doctors. Imagine the nerve of them, expecting somebody to care that their children are afflicted! This appears to be a continuation of the campaign to blame parents for antibiotics overuse, which I railed about in my very first column on Mothers with Attitude.That was three years ago, and I've still had antibiotics pushed on me by doctors way more often than I've requested them. But hey, let's blame parents -- they're an easy target. They're all too tired or too preoccupied by their children's health or too miserable from catching their children's cast-off colds to complain.