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> PDR 99 February 1999 > For those who insist on the complete, official, FDA-approved > description of any drug available for prescription in the U.S., > The annual Physicians' Desk Reference is the way to go. It's > big (over 7 pounds), expensive ($80 retail), and unwieldy > (nearly 3500 pages), but unassailably authoritative. As usual, > for convenience I made a 1-page index for those drugs most > commonly encountered in PD: > As valuable and authoritative as the PDR is, it should be remembered that it is not an official compendium. It is basically a commercial vehicle for advertizing pharmaceutical products. The description of the drugs are those package inserts approved by the FDA. Drug substances are approved by the FDA and defined in monographs for inclusion in the United States Phamacopeia (USP) which are then enforced by the FDA. Michel Margosis