[badamp]

The short answer is it can be both (ie safe, beneficial and effectively a patent grab). It is also unlikely that an enantiopure chemical is less safe then it’s racemic counterpart and not unlikely that it is beneficial (this is not without precedent... this is also chemistry 101 and I don’t feel this is the forum for it)...

The doubt is not so much the safety but is the benefit of the enantiopure version worth the cost.

[tempguy9999]

Per my comment above, thalidomide is a clear exception. This stands even if the chirality changes within the body.

[rocqua]

That was an example on the other direction. A pure chirality was safe, but a racemic mixture was dangerous. Here we know the racemic mixture is safe, which strongly suggests that either chirality in isolation is also safe.

[Nasrudith]

And to make in the previous worse it would apparently "autobalance" and flip to chirality which meant that even if they 100% isolated it at great expense is why we never saw "rebranded Thalimoide but isolated to be all morning sickness drug no birth defects". I don't know enough details to tell how long it took and if it could even be used safely under ludicrously impractical assumptions like "if you it freshly isolated in bulk and take it within five seconds it would be safe but expire in an hour".

[tempguy9999]

I think it flipped when in the body, so however long the shelf life was, it still wouldn't matter.

Incidentally, and AIUI, the body has a tagging system for unwanted proteins. Once tagged, the proteins are removed. Thalidomide tagged the proteins the were specific to embryonic limb formation, and the body duly cleared them, leading to the infamous result. Again AIUI.