Do medicines really expire?

All medicines have an expiry date printed on their package. Do these expiry dates have any meaning? Do the drugs lose their potency after the expiry date? Are they dangerous to use after the expiry date?

Numerous experts have addressed these issues and their articles are available on the internet. Some such websites are sciencebasedmedicine.org (the journal "Science Based Medicine"), health.harvard.edu (Harvard Medical School) and rense.com (Dr. Richard Altschuler, Professor, University of Michigan Medical School). All of them seem to agree on the surprising answer "No" to the above questions

The purpose of printing the expiry date on medicines is to make sure that the medicine does not lose its potency before the expiry date and so the consumer does not waste his money on a worthless product. Most medicines do not lose their potency long after the expiry date, but no one seems really interested in determining exactly when a medicine starts losing its potency.

Expired drugs present a serious economic and environmental problem. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration collects expired drugs from the public in the month of April every year. This year, it collected in one month 276 tons of expired medicines. This much medicine costs a huge amount of money and disposing it poses a big environmental problem.

Why Drug Companies Are Not Interested in Determining The Expiry Dates Accurately

There are two basic reasons, lack of time and desire for higher profits. Let us say that a drug has a life of 10 years. To determine the life, the drug company will have to test the drug for at least 10 years. If it does not release the drug till the testing is finished, rival companies will release competing drugs and steal the market. So drugs are put through accelerated testing, but it is not clear how accurate these tests are.

Even if the accelerated tests are accurate and the life of the drug is found to be 10 years, will the company admit it? If it does so, once people buy the drug, they will not buy it again for 10 years. Any profit-driven company can not afford to do it. Declaring the life of the drug is only 2 years is financially quite beneficial to the company. People will throw it away after 2 years and buy a fresh supply. According to Francis Flaherty, former director of the drug testing programme at the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) of USA, "Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific reasons".

Bayer aspirin has a declared life of 2 years, but when Bayer tested 4-year old aspirin, it found that it was 100% effective. But the declared life of Bayer aspirin remains unchanged. And Bayer has never tested aspirin beyond four years! According to Dr. Jens Carstensen who has written the definitive book on drug stability, aspirin lasts a long long time.

The drug companies may underdeclare the life of their drugs, but how do we know that they retain their potency after the declared life? For that information, we have to depend on the only published material till now on the determination of the expiration periods of drugs, namely, the non-accelerated tests conducted by the FDA on more than 300 drugs between 1993 and 2008. In its studies, FDA found that 90% OF THE DRUGS WERE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE EVEN 15 YEARS BEYOND THE EXPIRATION DATES!

According to Joel Davis, a former FDA expiration-date compliance chief, most drugs are probably as durable as those tested by FDA. Noted exceptions to this include nitroglycerin (used to treat heart conditions), insulin and some liquid antibiotics. 

Are Expired Drugs Still Safe?
There is no published data which shows that expired drugs have caused any harm. A case of kidney failure caused by expired tetracycline was reported in 1963 in the Journal of American Medical Association, but this paper has been seriously disputed by experts.

Expiration Dates for Ayurvedic and Homeopathic Medicines
Determining the expiration date for a drug involves identifying the "Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient" of the drug and measuring how it decays in time. Ayurvedic and homeopathic medicines diluted to typical concentrations, have no identifiable active ingredients and so can not have expiration dates. But the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 makes it mandatory to print expiration dates for Ayurvedic and homeopathic drugs also.

What Should The Consumer Do With Expired Drugs?
Experts feel that if the expiration date passed a few years ago and it's important that your drug is absolutely 100% effective, you might want to consider buying a new bottle. But if your life does not depend on an expired drug (such as head ache, allergy, etc.), take it and see what happens.

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Government prepares ground to raise property tax

The government of Karnataka has amended the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act by a gazette notification dated 28-4-12. It prepares the ground for increasing the property tax in cities including Mysore. It is surprising that this amendment has drawn little attention in general.

Before the amendment, the maximum rate of property tax that could be levied by Mysore City Corporation on commercial properties was 2% of the total capital value of the property. The amendment increases it to 3% (an increase of 50%). Similarly, the amendment increases the maximum rate of property tax on vacant land less than 1000 sq. m in area from 0.2% to 0.5% (an increase of 250%), vacant land between 1000 sq.m. and 4000 sq.m. in area from 0.05% to 0.1% (an increase of 100%) and vacant land larger than 4000 sq.m. in area from 0.02% to 0.1% (an increase of 500%). There is no change in the property tax rates for sites on which residential and industrial buildings exist.

The law prescribes both the minimum rate and the maximum rate at which property tax can be levied and the City Corporations can opt for any rate between these limits, but it is the historical fact that the Corporations always choose the highest rate allowed to maximize their revenue. Since the allowed maximum rates have been increased, it is almost guaranteed that the Corporations including MCC will increase their property tax rates soon to take advantage of the amendment. Therefore, owners of commercial properties and vacant sites can expect to pay a much higher property tax from 2013-14.

The gazette notification also permits City Corporations to exempt 50% of the property tax for ex-servicemen and families of deceased servicemen (but MCC has not yet passed any resolution in this matter). It also mandates rainwater harvesting for all existing buildings built on a site larger than 2400 sq.ft. and on all proposed buildings on sites larger than 1200 sq.ft. This condition can be easily enforced on future buildings through building licences, but it is not clear how it can be enforced on existing buildings. It is also surprising that using non-metric units has been prohibited by law since 1962, but the amendment still speaks of sq.ft.

B.S. Vanishree, Mysore Grahakara Parishat

Supreme Court takes up PIL on milk adulteration

The Supreme Court has admitted a PIL (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 159/2012) filed by Swami Achyutanand Tirth on behalf of Swami Bhumanand Dharmarth Chikitsalaya and Research Institute of Haridwar and issued notices to the central government and the state governments of Delhi, Haryana, Rajastan, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand about formulating a comprehensive policy on the production, supply and sale of healthy, hygienic and natural milk.   

The PIL follows the shocking revelations of The National Survey on Milk Adulteration 2011 conducted by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to ascertain the quality of milk and identify different type of milk adulteration throughout the country. The survey tested nearly 1800 milk samples from all over the country to see if they conformed to FSSA standards. The survey found that an astonishingly high percentage (68%) of the samples failed the test. The percentages of failed test samples in various states were: Bihar (100%), Chhattisgarh (100%), Daman and Diu (100%), Jharkhand (100%), Orissa (100%), West Bengal (100%), Mizoram (100%), Manipur (96%), Meghalaya (96%), Tripura (92%), Gujarat (89%), Sikkim (89%), Uttrakhand (88%), Uttar Pradesh (88%), Nagaland (86%), Jammu & Kashmir (83%), Punjab (81%), Rajasthan (76%) Delhi (70%), Haryana (70%), Arunachal Pradesh (68%), Maharashtra (65%), Himachal Pradesh (59%), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (58%), Assam (55%), Chandigarh (48%), Madhya Pradesh (48%), Kerala (28%), Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%), Andhra Pradesh (6.7%), Goa 0%) and Puducherry (0%).   

It is interesting to note that in seven states, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Daman and Diu, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Mizoram, none of the samples passed the test. In Gujrat, the home of the white revolution, the failure rate is quite high (89%). The level of milk adulteration in the south is much less than in the rest of the country. If you want pure milk, you should go to Goa or Puducherry, where all the samples passed the test. In Karnataka, 22% of the samples (11 out of 51) failed the test.  

One normally assumes that milk sold in packets is safe. But this is not the case. Nearly one third of the failed samples came in packets.  

The FSSA survey proved the common sense guess that adding water to milk was the common form of adulteration. What was shocking was that one in every 12 samples tested contained detergents. It is well-known that unscrupulous elements make cheap synthetic milk by mixing urea, caustic soda, oil and detergent. Such "milk" is obviously quite harmful to human health. 

B.V. Shenoy, Mysore Grahakara Parishat 

Photos from the June 2012 issue of Grahaka Patrike

 (B.V.Shenoy)

MGP had arranged a public meeting at People's Park on 24-6-12 to protest against the construction of a public library in the park. Students from several high schools participated with their banners and placards.

(Dwarkanath Narayan) 

The letters on most concrete name-boards for roads in the city have disappeared rendering the boards useless.

(B.V.Shenoy)

A street play about protecting trees was enacted by the troupe "Ranga Sinchana" at the meeting held by MGP on 24-6-12 at People's Park.

(Dwarkanath Narayan) 

Many concrete name-boards for roads in the city are blank. 

(B.V.Shenoy)

Several artists painted on environmental themes at the meeting held by MGP on 24-6-12 at People's Park.

(Dwarkanath Narayan)

Even though the road names on many concrete name-boards are illegible, the names of sponsors can be clearly read.

(B.V.Shenoy)

Discussions about protecting the environment were held with students of various schools at the meeting held by MGP on 24-6-12 at People's Park.

(Dwarkanath Narayan)

If metal name plates for roads are installed at a height of several feet from the ground, they can be protected from vandalism.