The pharmaceutical companies in North American are quite poor with their consistency with proper SI. A common abbreviation (not symbol) used is "mcg" for "�g" (microgram). Health Canada used the "industry standard" excuse and wasn't willing to entertain the idea of revising their policies, even though most of my co-workers at the time (<30 years, all with undergraduate or graduate degrees in genetics and/or molecular biology) could not even guess what "mcg" stood for. Recently I made a fuss with the company Vita Health (the Canadian branch in Winnipeg MB) about their continued use of "minims" rather than millilitres or microlitres for the sale of cod-liver oil. They used the "international industry standard" excuse even though members here on the list outside of North American did not see the "minim" used on any product on the pharmacy shelf. All the pharmacists I questioned about the actual size of a "minim" were unable to give me a proper definition in either Imperial, American, or SI. It was merely "an old-fashioned unit of measurement". greg >>> Harry Wyeth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2000-12-21 05:43:13 >>> Someone mentioned something about erroneous capitalizations on some kind of labels (GM or GR or some such). I recently noticed that on a number of prescription labels we have the ingredients are listed as xxx MG, not mg. Seems to be common, and the labels are on pill bottles from a number of different pharmacies. Is this as common as it appears? The labels appear be be generated by some sort of computer or word-processing program. Is this a product of the pharmaceutical profession in the US? HARRY WYETH
