text: Racemic drugs are not drug combinations in the accepted sense of two or more co-formulated therapeutic agents, but combinations of isomeric substances whose pharmacological activity may reside predominantly in one specific enantiomeric form. In case of stereoselectivity in action only one of the components in the racemic mixture is truly active. The other isomer, the distomer, should be regarded as impurity or isomeric ballast, a term coined by Ariëns, not contributing to the effects aimed at. In contrast to the pharmacokinetic properties of an enantiomeric pair, differences in pharmacodynamic activity tend to be more obvious. There is a wide spectrum of possibilities of distomer actions, many of which are confirmed experimentally.  Selected examples of the distomer actions (viz. equipotent, less active, inactive, antagonistic, chiral inversion) are presented in the table below.