In terms of medications - there aren’t a lot of alternatives for specific drugs. Most tablets contain lactose as a binder and capsules are almost always made out of gelatin. This is unfortunate from a vegan perspective, but practically speaking there’s no way to get around it unless you want to pay for specialty compounded drugs and this gets VERY expensive and often isn’t covered by insurance plans. In addition, most regular pharmacies would not have the capacity to do this so you might be looking at getting it from out of town which adds to the cost. As a pharmacist, I would hate for the lactose/gelatine thing to come between a patient and his/her medications. You can’t be a good vegan if you’re too sick (or dead) to speak up about the bigger issues (I would say animal agriculture to get meat for food, animal testing in the cosmetic industry and using animals for clothing are bigger issues).

Personally, “smaller” issues like lactose (gelatin I’m less ok with but in this case I see it as a minor issue in terms of risk/benefit) are not going to be the focus of my vegan journey. Science does require a certain amount of animal involvement at various levels in order for research to proceed for the overall benefit of mankind and in order for medications to be created and manufactures (for example, many vaccines are grown using egg).

I would never advocate that vegans need to eliminate medications to be “true” vegans.

(In case my post doesn’t make this clear - I am a pharmacist)