1) while your wife does compounding on a daily basis, she's probably not held to the same standards as the guys & gals doing the same work for humans.
My wife writes the prescriptions. The actual compounding work is done by the *same people* as who do it for humans. Veterinarians and physicians for humans use the exact same pharmacies.
While what works for humans may be given to animals- I'm sharing an OTC allergy med with one of our Border Collies (both of us on doctors' orders)- it doesn't go the other way. One of my prescriptions is also used in the care of livestock. I see it in feed stores and veterinary practices all over here in Texas. The same daily dose I take at @$200/month (before insurance) is @$6 a jar.
Yep. But not for the reason you think.
But it is not deemed suitable for human consumption. Different additives, different purity levels.
Sorry, Danny, but you're wrong. See my previous note about using the same pharmacies - those pharmacies are pulling from the same bottles for Aunt May as for Fluffy.
Most specifically on the "purity level" thing. If your vet knowingly prescribed an "impure" drug for your dog, and that dog died, your veterinarian would get sued, and lose their licence, just like your human doctor would. In general, if the drug is used in both humans and animals, they use the same source. It isn't worth the extra cost to run two different production streams for the same stuff. And no, it is not that the batches that don't meet QA requirements become animal drugs - that would get someone sued for selling inferior product.
You do see them for different prices, yes. Humans get charged more due to the impact of health insurance companies on human medicine pricing, not because the drug is different.
2) while compounding occurs on a daily basis even for humans, the vast majority of pharmaceuticals consumed by humans are not customized but standardized at the paint of manufacture. We simply don't have the tech right now to customize every prescription for every patient in the USA. This could change that.
They are standardized at the point of manufacture because, for the most part, that's sufficient. Changing your dose of Advil a few milligrams one way or another isn't going to make it work phenomenally better. If you need very detailed dosing (by body mass, for example), we can do that via oral liquid or injectable medications, or patch-delivery in some cases.
Remember that while we know a great deal of how drugs work on people, in general, that's by way of statistical sampling. In order to do better, you need to have more detailed information on how the individual patient interacts with the drugs in question - and to date we don't have that. We usually don't have the information and understanding of the individual biochemistry required to make use of very detailed dosing.
It could be all pie in the sky musings, but the Scots prof isn't exactly a nobody.
Yes. And Einstein wasn't a nobody, but he got it wrong about quantum mechanics.
He's got serious trophies on his mantle for his achievements in chemistry. If the man claims to have created ibuprofen with a 3D printer of some kind, I'm not in a position to debunk him.
So, he could make a very specific machine to make a very specific compound. Big whoop. We have those already that operate with economies of scale. We don't *need* a printer to make the drug. Except in areas not served by the usual distribution systems, the value-add is in customized dosing and compounding, so Grandpa can take one pill a day instead of seven. But, there are limits with what you can do there, for reasons previously noted.
If you need to get a wide variety of drugs into, say, much of Africa today, then having a machine that can do it all is darned useful. But in most of North America, standard production is far more efficient.
