Quote:
Originally posted by A Quiet Boom
Moses, I don't agree. Sure the medicine MAY be OK but what if it isn't, you'd be giving false hope to people who could otherwise be taking "fresh" medicine. The state department is correct on this one, knowingly giving expired medicine to the victims is the wrong thing to do. Besides if there are 300,000 doses of expired medicine how many doses of fresh medicine can we spare? My company manufactures OTC transdermal patches and yes we are conservative with our expiration dates, we do all sorts of aging studies on these patches and then add a margin of safety into our expiration date. In our case we aren't talking life and death, just inconvience. I want the people of the affected region to get the very best care our nation can send them.
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Here is the problem. The safety and efficacy of antibiotics long past the expiration date is well established. The very short shelf life of most meds is due to limited aging studies. Much of the third world uses expired meds exclusively because of cost. This must be absolutely clear:
The safety and effictiveness of one-year expired antibiotics are not questioned by any experts.
Time is the critical element. By the time 300,000 new doses of quinolones can be produced, thousands more will die.