Does paracetamol do you more harm than good?

GPs write millions of prescriptions for this painkiller each year and millions more packets are bought over the counter. It has generally been considered cheap, safe and effective. But should we think harder before we pop another pill?

You have a headache after a glass of wine too many. Your back aches from another day hunched over a keyboard. That old shoulder injury is playing up again. What do you do? There is a good chance that you will reach for the unglamorous white pills lurking in your medicine cabinet.

Paracetamol is the workhorse painkiller. GPs wrote 22.5m prescriptions for it in 2013. Around 200m packets of it are sold annually, accounting for two-thirds of the UK market for over-the-counter painkillers. It is widely viewed as cheap, safe and effective.