Pharmacy: Career Advice

Wa Alaykum Assalaam,

The problem is having to sell Haram products as a Pharmacist.

Salaam Muhammad
what do you consider Haram products?

my sister has her doctorate in Pharmacology and works in a major university hospital making cancer meds..
I am not aware that there are Haram products in medicine or pharmacology but interested in learning what you consider them to be?

I wonder if you mean things like the Morning-After contraceptive pill?

My apologies if I'm barking up the wrong tree.....

morning after pills are nothing but birth control pills in high dosage. A doctor may decline to prescribe them if they go against his/her ethics and may refer the pt. to another doctor who will.. they are usually given with some supervision. A pharmacist may have no knowledge of why they are being given for.. high dosages or hormones may be given for any number of things, anti-neoplastic meds like methotrexate maybe given to induce abortion cases with a medical purpose.. drugs like Misoprostol is an E1 prostaglandin analogue given for a gastric ulcer may also induce abortion, so technically there is no ONE abortion inducing med, and those are usually given in clinics, for both follow up and counseling!

Jazakallaahu khayran for your replies - all of you are right. It's about those issues. Here are quotes from the links to expand a little more:

Some of the issues having to do with medicine need to be contemplated; for example, if a medicine contains alcohol and would intoxicate a person if a large amount was drunk (i.e. of the medicine itself), then it is haraam; otherwise it is not haraam. Similarly there are questions surrounding the impurities that form the ingredients of some medicines: is the structure of the impure substance changed in totality when it is mixed with the other ingredients, or does it remain the same? Surely you are not unaware that there are medicines taken from the urine of pregnant women, or blood, or from body parts removed from humans, such as placentas, to which the rulings concerning dead meat apply. The rulings governing all of these things need to be investigated, and consequently the rulings regarding their sale; the matter needs to be studied both from the point of view of Islamic Sharee'ah and of chemical analysis.

Regarding selling contraceptive measures:

We advise you not to sell them if you know that the people who are using them are either women who want to avoid getting pregnant if they commit zinaa (unlawful sexual relationships) or men who want to avoid having children, or men whose wives have got pregnant and they want to put an end to the pregnancy. All of these are haraam. If he has to study pharmacy, then let him study it, then when he wants to sell these things, let him tell the would-be purchasers that this is not permissible; it is not permissible to abort a pregnancy or to prevent pregnancy except in cases of necessity. Let him advise them, then whoever does not accept this advice, the sin will be on them. And if he can find a way to avoid selling these things, that will be better.

I must admit that pharmacology/pharmacy has little to do with sales. A pharmacist isn't a sales person usually the cashier at the front does that, as well a technician inside counts the pills.
Pharmacists generally supervise, use their expertise to suggest drugs to doctors, or point out medications that are in conflict with one another, they also make compounds, as well certain medications need to be handled in a way to expansive for me to point out now, but especially for cancer pts where a pharmacist has to make the preparations for the nurse to administer.. clinical pharmacists are actually on the floors along side doctors working with pts. who have low plasma clearance, are a polypharmacy and need to be managed very carefully etc. really very little to do with selling pills...

Doctors don't usually prescribe 'Alcohol' and even in cases where an ingestion of an alcohol derivative, where general convention was to use ethanol to occupy the alcohol dehydrogenase, Fomepizole and Hemodialysis are now used in its stead.

Doctors usually and ethically only have the pts best interest at heart, ethanol (drinking alcohol) isn't usually a component of medications .. the term alcohol when comes to O.chem in general denotes any compound with -OH in it, which covers many compounds..

and Allah swt knows best

By the way Br. Muhammad as an addendum..
how would a pharmacist know if someone is committing Zina or taking BCP's to avoid getting pregnant? BCP's are taken for any number of things including serious medical conditions, women with polycystic ovary disease for instance are usually put on BCP's... Also I am not aware that avoiding getting pregnant is necessarily Haram .. I believe that coitus interruptus was used during the time of the prophet?
a pharmacists would never stand there and asks people of their sexual relations or why they are taking these pills...It is absurd!

The best scholars to speak of medicine in my humble opinion are ones who are studied both in Islamic jurisprudence as well medical science...and I am well aware that there are quite a few of them in the world..

so I'll end with Allah swt knows best

People have to know what the medications are used for, that is why the go to school and that is what they study hence the name of the course title.. the problem is the afore mentioned meds. Have more than one usage, most of them medicinal not recreational!

What we perceive to be 'alcohol-based' medicine doesn't contain drinking alcohol at all and should be safe for consumption for Muslims?
Does that apply to all alcohol based medicine or just some?

format_quote Originally Posted by learningislam

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And Allah swt knows Best.

Thank you, learningislam. That's very helpful.

format_quote Originally Posted by Whatsthepoint

I thought alcholol is only haraam when used as an intoxicant.

So did I - and that would make sense.
But I think sometimes Muslims err on the side of caution. Better safe than sorry, I suppose.
I spoke to a muslimah friend at work, and she said she doesn't use perfume, creams and lotions, antibacterial wipes etc if they contain alcohol. (Not sure what kind of 'alcohol' she meant)