For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth, according to the Sanskrit proverb. When it comes to asthma, modern medicine has apparently breathed new life into the old saying, “The cure is worse than the disease.” Researchers at Cornell and Stanford Universities now tell us that the top-selling asthma medications are responsible for four out of every five deaths from asthma. “We estimate that approximately 4,000 of the 5,000 asthma deaths that occur in the U.S. each year are caused by these long-acting beta-agonists, and we urge that (they) be taken off the market,” they said. I don’t know about you, but I find this slightly alarming. It makes me wonder what our fearless defenders at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are going to do to protect us? How is it possible that 80 percent of asthma deaths are actually caused by the drugs already approved by the FDA for treating asthma?