Not what the doctor ordered: every year, millions of prescriptions are filled incorrectly-wrong dose, wrong instructions, even the wrong medicine. How to protect your family.(Good health)

Penny Thurmond of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, suspected something was wrong with her bottle of naproxen soon after she had the prescription refilled. The label was correct, and the pills looked like the ones she'd used before to treat her sinus headaches. But the longer Thurmond took the medicine, the worse she felt. Finally, she took the bottle to her doctor's office, and the physician made a startling discovery: The pills weren't naproxen, but Zoloft, an antidepressant. It wasn't till the medicine was out of her system that Thurmond began to feel OK again.

An infant in the Chicago area wasn't as fortunate: Alex Gehrke suffered permanent brain damage when a Walgreens pharmacist filled her antiseizure prescription with a drug used to treat diabetes. The child, now six, is a spastic quadriplegic, confined to a wheelchair and unable to feed herself. Last year, a jury awarded the Gehrkes $21 million in damages, and the parents are grateful that they'll be able to get their daughter the help she needs. But they're also frustrated because they've never been able to find out how the switch could have happened.

The average pharmacy makes four errors for every 250 prescriptions that go out the door, according…