Word: pharmacopeia
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Take, for example, mistakes with medications. In 2002 about 500 hospitals and health-care facilities across the country reported almost 200,000 mistakes in prescribing and dispensing medicine, according to the United States Pharmacopeia, the organization that sets standards for prescription and nonprescription drugs. More than one-third of these mistakes involved adults 65 and older. "The average hospitalized patient in this age group gets between eight and 14 different medications every day," says Dr. Christine Cassell, president of the American Board of Internal Medicine. "It's not surprising that mistakes occur...
...drug wasn't always so controversial in the scientific establishment. The U.S. Pharmacopeia, a doctors' listing of remedies begun in 1820, first included cannabis in 1870. The Pharmacopeia didn't drop pot until its 1942 edition, the first published after cannabis was outlawed in 1937. Eventually most physicians began to view the drug as little more than a crude intoxicant. They tended to favor new-fashioned drugs that were refined by pharmaceutical firms into pure chemicals. Raw marijuana contains some 400 compounds...
...same product with each new bottle you buy. As any baby boomer who ever smoked more than a single joint knows, potency of herbs can vary from batch to batch. German manufacturers, though, produce identical batches of herbal remedies, as required by their law. This week the U.S. Pharmacopeia, a nonprofit organization, published the first American standards for the potency of nine herbs, including chamomile, feverfew, St. John's wort and saw palmetto. Manufacturers that adhere to those standards can add the letters NF, for national formulary, to their labels...
...trade names as Miltown, hit the tranquilizer market in 1955, it became a runaway bestseller because it seemed to do its work with a minimum of undesirable side effects. Now, Miltown (also marketed as Equanil) is in for a letdown. It is dropped from the U.S. Pharmacopeia new edition, which becomes effective Sept...
Miltown will still be available for doctors to prescribe as they see fit. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is contemplating no action against it. But the U.S. Pharmacopeia privately prepared by an independent committee of physicians and pharmacists, is the most prestigious of the doctor's reference books on drugs...