Stale Drugs

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 12

Stale Drugs

Sir, —Dr. Jepson's reply is worthless. Nothing positive will be done either to protect the less perceptive from stale pharmaceutical products or to see that appropriate warnings are given. Wherever possible, chemists remove or cover the proprietary labels carrying warnings and instructions. Doctors cling to the tradition that their patients are illiterate, so oral instructions are preferred to comprehensive labelling, and quantities of anonymous drugs crowd every bathroom shelf. In ray case the supply of eyedrops was prescribed by a specialist not only for immediate use but to cover a chronic condition, and a new phial, stored as instructed, was used for each recurrence: so 1 resent the insinuation that I have only myself to blame for possible reinfection. Attempts like this to shove the responsibility on to the consumer are symptomatic of the Health Department's own malaise. —Yours, etc., VARIAN J. WILSON. May 30, 1965. [Dr. L. F. Jepson, the district medical officer of health, replies: “If the full explanation now given by Mr Wilson had been given originally, he would have received a reply based on the actual circumstances. I am fully prepared to disuss this with him and investigate the circumstances.”]