Investigators are scouring the site of the Beirut Port explosion, looking for clues and evidence that could explain what caused the Ammonium Nitrate to blow up.
But, what they found instead opens up a new series of questions…
Expired “Rheumatrex” medications were just lying around the demolished port. This medicine is used on certain cancer, psoriasis, and Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Rheumatrex/Methotrexate is a chemotherapy agent and immune system suppressant. In conclusion, many cancer patients need this medicine alongside chemotherapy.
As reported, these oral tablets have been stored at the Beirut Port since 2005.
A Twitter user commented, “In Lebanon, you eat expired chicken, you get sick, you go take medicines, it comes out that they expired 15 years ago.”
According to another Twitter user, her pharmacist friend told her that pharmacists are not allowed to destroy expired meds in their pharmacies and company. They must be sent to the port instead to be destroyed.
A matter that raises the question, nonetheless, of why these meds were kept for so long in the port, occupying unnecessarily large space. Did they have a certain unlawful purpose for those who kept them or is it just a matter of negligence?
Fifteen years, that’s a lot of time.
For certain, the Lebanese are not happy about this revelation. They have two possible theories for that discovery:
Either the port’s officials were changing the expiration date of meds and selling them to the Lebanese, or someone in the port was doing so and trading them or smuggling them into other countries.
