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posted ago by ShalomRPh ago by ShalomRPh +43 / -0

I'm a pharmacist. One of the drugs I occasionally see prescribed is finasteride, which is used for enlarged prostate in older men. It has no use at all in women, who don't have prostates to get enlarged, and furthermore it can cause birth defects if taken while pregnant, or if dust from a broken tablet is ingested. When my tech was pregnant I wouldn't let her go near those tablets, filling them myself by hand instead of the tablet counter.

Our computer used to print out a warning label that said "Pregnant women should avoid contact with this medication.", which we would stick on the bottle.

This week, we got an update on our software, and I suddenly noticed that the label has changed. Now it says "Pregnant people should avoid contact," etc.

Now what kind of "people" can get pregnant? I couldn't tell you, I'm not a biologist.

I tried to get this switched back by my software vendor, but they said they have no way of modifying the official labels. I did find a workaround (put a new aux label on at the top with the original wording, which caused the offending one to scroll off the bottom). I just find it annoying and offensive that this kind of change has been made, and I work in an ultra-conservative neighborhood so my patients wouldn't be happy about this either.