> How did they come to an expected shelf-life of 2 years in the first place? By storing it for 2 years and testing it after. > I wonder what other environment

> How did they come to an expected shelf-life of 2 years in the first place? By storing it for 2 years and testing it after. > I wonder what other environmental controls could extend the shelf life of common, expensive medication? Common, expensive is an oxymoron. The vast majority of all medication in use is practically free to produce. The packaging of drugs typically costs more than the drugs themselves. Drug discovery has long concentrated on small-molecular-weight drugs that can be mass-produced for a pittance. The reason drugs cost so much is that proving that they are safe and that they work costs so much. Because of this, there is little economic sense in trying to preserve drugs for longer (which would require more extremely expensive trials), when you can just trash the drugs and order up a new batch that has a combined msrp of $100M for $5k. In their economics, small molecular weight drugs share more with software than with, say, bread. That is, practically all of the economic cost is upfront investment and the replication cost is non-existent.