Hacker News Reader

Comment by vidarh | Hacker News Reader

But you can add a C just as easily as adding a zero, and now you've turned 10 into 110 or 90 depending on whether there was space before or after the X. I guess adding a D or M would be a bit more suspicious.

View on HN

The cited text has an extra detail:

  «… and it is customary to draw a line above all the letters making up the number, the dots of i and j being put above this line; for example, xviij»

So, XVIII would have been written likes this:

  _____
  XVIII
  -----

Lines would clearly delineate the beginning and the end of the number. This is how I have written the Roman numerals since school.

So, if the script had X written that way, adding a C, would have also required both lines to be extended. Not impossible to forge, but an extra effort nevertheless.

Extending a straight line sounds like the easiest part of the process compared to reproducing a letter so that it matches the handwriting. As an indicator of error this seems to work fine, but to prevent fraud it seems marginal at best.

Getting a prescription for 90 pills instead of 100 would presumably raise suspicion.

Why? If I'm prescribed a course of something for 90 days, I will get 90 pills, even if the packs have 100.

It might differ by location, but here (I'm in the UK), it's not unusual to e.g. get 14 pills of antibiotics if prescribed a two week course even if the package is in units of 10, for example.

Probably depends, my prescriptions seem to be 90 days.

I never claimed it was impossible, just more difficult. Prevention of misreading is more important thar prevention of forgeries, I assume, and any misread og forged number would also have to match existing packaging sizes.

Adding a c is hardly more difficult than adding a 0.

Matching packaging sizes is not necessary - I have had prescriptions that do not match packaging sizes many times - they will cut up sheets or transfer to other containers as needed.

That's not universal. In my country, prescription medicine can only be sold in sealed boxes. Fractioning or tranfering to a different container is expressly forbidwn by law, so doctors always prescribe a number of boxes, not of pills. This makes a little more difficult to forge prescriptions.

If it's prescribed as number of boxes it changes nothing, as it's then just the number of boxes you need to alter instead of number of pills.

This applies to the entire EU/EEA, too.

That must be recent, as it certainly was not the norm in the UK even prior to Brexit. For some medicines, UK pharmacists are required to split packs as needed to give exactly the number of pills prescribed.

I can't find anything to suggest EU rules prevents split packs - I do see there was a tightening of the rules on how to treat packs if dispensing split backs a few years ago, but nothing since. Do you have a source?

EDIT: At least as late as per the False Medicines Directive going into force in 2019, split pack dispensing was explicitly allowed - the FMD set out rules for the controls required to do so. E.g. the original container can not leave the dispensary until its entire content is used, and the pharmacy can't re-sell or supply other pharmacies with it.

[In fact, I just got a prescription filled and received 12 pills in a pack consisting of one full blister pack and a carefully cut out piece with 2 pills; but again in the UK so it could be there are newer EU regulations though I haven't seen any]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com