Hacker News Reader

Most medicine has expiration dates. If he needs it only every 3-5 years, it's unlikely the pills will still be usable.

> it's unlikely the pills will still be usable

Pills (and chemicals) are not SSL certificates: they don't cease to work at the expiration date + 1 second.

The US government tested a bunch of old World War II medication they found laying around, and it had something outrageous like 98% efficacy or whatever.

Maybe a liquid medicine would go bad but I suspect pills are forever.

And in the US at least, FDA requires a max expiration date or one year, despite many being shelf stable for probably decades.

I know I read somewhere about morphine pills from WW2 medkits being found to still be useful 60+ years later - like say 30-50% of stated dose.

> it's unlikely the pills will still be usable.

Yes it will. The pills don't actually expire. They will work unchanged for decades.

See: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/drug-expirati...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com