[BITList] MEDICATIONS DON'T EXPIRE!

[franka]

at your own risk, just forwarding the post
frank
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    >  *MEDICATIONS DON'T EXPIRE!*
    >  Some reassuring and very useful information...
    >  By Richard Altschuler
    >
    >  Does the expiration date on a bottle of a medication mean anything?
    >  If a bottle of Tylenol, for example, says something like "Do not use
    >  after June 1998," and it is August 2002, should you take the Tylenol?
    >  Should you discard it? Can you get hurt if you take it? Will it
    simply
    >  have lost its potency and do you no good?
    >
    >  In other words, are drug manufacturers being honest with us when they
    >  put an expiration date on their medications, or is the practice of
    >  dating just another drug industry scam, to get us to buy new
    >  medications when the old ones that purportedly have "expired" are
    still perfectly good?
    >
    >  These are the pressing questions I investigated after my
    mother-in-law
    >  recently said to me, "It doesn't mean anything," when I pointed out
    >  that the Tylenol she was about to take had "expired" 4 years and a
    few
    >  months ago. I was a bit mocking in my pronouncement -- feeling
    >  superior that I had noticed the chemical corpse in her cabinet -- but
    >  she was equally adamant in her reply, and is generally very sage
    about medical issues.
    >
    >  So I gave her a glass of water with the purportedly "dead" drug, of
    >  which she took 2 capsules for a pain in the upper back. About a half
    >  hour later she reported the pain seemed to have eased up a bit. I
    >  said, "You could be having a placebo effect," not wanting to simply
    >  concede she was right about the drug, and also not actually
    knowing what I was talking about.
    >  I was just happy to hear that her pain had eased, even before we had
    >  our evening cocktails and hot tub dip (we were in "Leisure World,"
    >  near Laguna Beach, California, where the hot tub is bigger than most
    >  Manhattan apartments, and "Heaven," as generally portrayed, would be
    >  raucous by comparison).
    >
    >  Upon my return to NYC and high-speed connection, I immediately
    scoured
    >  the medical databases and general literature for the answer to my
    >  question about drug expiration labeling. And voila, no sooner than I
    >  could say "Screwed again by the pharmaceutical industry," I had my
    answer.
    >  Here are the simple facts:
    >  First, the expiration date, required by law in the United States,
    >  beginning in 1979, specifies only the date the manufacturer
    guarantees
    >  the full potency and safety of the drug -- it does not mean how long
    >  the drug is actually "good" or safe to use.
    >
    >  Second, medical authorities uniformly say it is safe to take drugs
    >  past their expiration date -- no matter how "expired" the drugs
    >  purportedly are. Except for possibly the rarest of exceptions, you
    >  won't get hurt and you certainly won't get killed.
    >  Studies show that expired drugs may lose some of their potency over
    >  time, from as little as 5% or less to 50% or more (though usually
    much
    >  less than the latter). Even 10 years after the "expiration date,"
    most
    >  drugs have a good deal of their original potency.
    >
    >  One of the largest studies ever conducted that supports the above
    >  points about "expired drug" labeling was done by the US military 15
    >  years ago, according to a feature story in the Wall Street Journal
    >  (March 29, 2000), reported by Laurie P. Cohen.
    >  The military was sitting on a $1 billion stockpile of drugs and
    facing
    >  the daunting process of destroying and replacing its supply every
    2 to
    >  3 years, so it began a testing program to see if it could extend the
    >  life of its inventory.
    >  The testing, conducted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA),
    >  ultimately covered more than 100 drugs, prescription and
    over-the-counter.
    >  The results showed, about 90% of them were safe and effective as far
    >  as 15 years past their expiration date.
    >  In light of these results, a former director of the testing program,
    >  Francis Flaherty, said he concluded that expiration dates put on by
    >  manufacturers typically have no bearing on whether a drug is usable
    >  for longer.
    >  Mr. Flaherty noted that a drug maker is required to prove only that a
    >  drug is still good on whatever expiration date the company chooses to
    >  set. The expiration date doesn't mean, or even suggest, that the drug
    >  will stop being effective after that, nor that it will become harmful.
    >  "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than
    >  scientific, reasons," said Mr. Flaherty, a pharmacist at the FDA
    until
    >  his retirement in 1999. "It's not profitable for them to have
    products
    >  on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."
    >  The FDA cautioned there isn't enough evidence from the program, which
    >  is weighted toward drugs used during combat, to conclude most
    drugs in
    >  consumers' medicine cabinets are potent beyond the expiration date.
    >  Joel Davis, however, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief,
    >  said that with a handful of exceptions -- notably nitroglycerin,
    >  insulin, and some liquid antibiotics -- most drugs are probably as
    >  durable as those the agency has tested for the military.
    >  "Most drugs degrade very slowly," he said. "In all likelihood, you
    can
    >  take a product you have at home and keep it for many years." Consider
    >  aspirin. Bayer AG puts 2-year or 3-year dates on aspirin and says
    that
    >  it should be discarded after that.
    >  However, Chris Allen, a vice president at the Bayer unit that makes
    >  aspirin, said the dating is "pretty conservative"; when Bayer has
    >  tested 4-year-old aspirin, it remained 100% effective, he said. So
    why
    >  doesn't Bayer set a 4-year expiration date? Because the company often
    >  changes packaging, and it undertakes "continuous improvement
    programs,"
    >  Mr. Allen said. Each change triggers a need for more expiration-date
    >  testing, and testing each time for a 4-year life would be impractical.
    >  Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond 4 years, Mr. Allen said. But
    >  Jens Carstensen has.
    >  Dr. Carstensen, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin's
    >  pharmacy school, who wrote what is considered the main text on drug
    >  stability, said, "I did a study of different aspirins, and after 5
    >  years, Bayer was still excellent".
    >  Aspirin, if made correctly, is very stable.
    >
    >
    >  Okay, I concede. My mother-in-law was right, once again.
    >  And I was wrong, once again, and with a wiseacre attitude to boot.
    >  Sorry mom.
    >  Now I think I'll take a swig of the 10-year dead package of Alka
    >  Seltzer in my medicine chest to ease the nausea I'm feeling from
    >  calculating how many billions of dollars the pharmaceutical industry
    >  bilks out of unknowing consumers every year who discard perfectly
    good
    >  drugs and buy new ones because they trust the industry's
    "expiration date labelling."



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