Ten West,
What about prescription medicines? Put them in your checked baggage and you are in DEEP dodo if that gets lost. Especially if it's something like insulin, which you need shortly after arival at destination. Just imagine the situation - it's 11pm on a Sunday night, and you've arrived at this small country town and your bags haven't, and you've no insulin. Or if you are on steroids - you mustn't stop taking steroids, you have to wind down slowly. Just to get a prescription in the US for diabetic drugs when I had the packages to show the doctor took hours....