WASHINGTON — The military is using expired medications under a testing program that found the drugs often remained safe and potent years beyond the manufacturer's recommended shelf life.
To avoid the cost of regularly replacing its massive stockpile of medicine, the Air Force asked the Food and Drug Administration in 1985 to see if it could extend the effective lifetimes of the drugs it purchased, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said this week.
"The FDA did this and found basically that the expiration dates tended to be very conservative, and as a result, many of these drugs could have a much longer shelf life than the manufacturer said," Bacon said.
Under the Shelf Life Extension Program, the FDA tested more than 100 drugs, prescription and over-the-counter, and found that 90 percent of them were safe beyond the expiration date. The drugs were tested by either the manufacturer or the FDA but always with FDA supervision.
In 1998, the last year for which figures were available, the military spent $664,000 to have drugs tested and saved $49.3 million by not purchasing replacements, Bacon said.
But consumers shouldn't assume their expired drugs are still safe and effective because, unlike prescriptions sitting in medicine cabinets, the military's stockpile has remained sealed in the manufacturer's original packaging, said Thomas McGinnis, the FDA's director of pharmacy affairs.
"The chance of the product not degrading from moisture or heat or light exposure is much better than what consumers get when they bring home a medication from a pharmacy in these amber vials with childproof caps," he said.
Keeping old drugs around can also be confusing and increases the risk that a person will accidentally take the wrong medication, McGinnis said. He added that consumers should discard drugs when their course of treatment is finished.
The military buys about $1.2 billion in prescription and nonprescription drugs every year, and needs reserves that can be drawn upon in large quantities in wartime, Bacon said.
Many of the drugs also are used to take care of families, retirees and others as part of the military's health care program.
Francis Flaherty, a former director of FDA's military drug testing program, said his experience with the program showed him that a manufacturer's expiration date doesn't indicate anything about a drug's effectiveness, The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying in Tuesday's editions.
"Manufacturers put expiration dates on for marketing, rather than scientific reasons," he said. "It's not profitable for them to have products on a shelf for 10 years. They want turnover."
On The Net: The Food and Drug Administration's guide to maintaining a medicine cabinet and storing drugs: www.fda.gov/fdac/features/2000/200_med.html