New Drug Names: A Study in Madness
https://www.acsh.org/news/2023/01/30/new...y-madness-16836
By Josh Bloom — January 30, 2023

Have you noticed that the names of new drugs are not merely obnoxious; they are also bizarre? As if drug companies hired consultants with a complete disdain for the English language? Quviviq? Ukoniq? Seriously? The people (mostly women) who broke the Nazi secret code in WWII couldn't handle this. Plus assorted other rants.

Oh-oh-oh It's Magic!

Let's start with a rant.

Although this article is about the ridiculous names of some of the new drugs approved by the FDA in 2022, I simply can't pass on an opportunity to express my hatred of the nightly "Let's Make People Hurl" contest that plagues any of us who are masochistic enough to watch a network national news show.

Yet, I do. But not without having a remote control handy with an oversized mute button locked and loaded. Or a brick. Because you and I both know what is gonna happen when Lester Holt says, "we'll be right back." A barrage of crazymaking drug commercials, each more detestable than the one before (and after) it. The mute button becomes as essential as a canteen of water in the desert.

Rant: Even though I'm hardly the only old crank to bitterly complain about the execrable Ozyempic ad, it would be just plain wrong to spare it my wrath. (If, for some inexplicable reason, you haven't experienced that vile entity and want to give it a whirl, here is a YouTube video that will make you want to swallow a hand grenade.)

And, for your amusement, here is a site where people answer the question, "Which drug commercial do you hate the most?" Some of them are hilarious. Here's my favorite:

"Mr. Natural" chose the ad for RELISTOR®, a drug for opioid-induced constipation:

"You're taking so many opioids that you can't make poo come out, yet you are still walking the earth, apparently able to work construction. The apocalypse is here, man."

"Mr. Natural," a man with a helluva sense of humor

Pure gold.

New Drugs and the Perversion of the Latin Alphabet

Remember 1st-grade spelling rules? "I before E except after C." and "The letter Q is followed by U." The sadists who name new drugs must have skipped that year. Or they have adopted a new nomenclature based on the following:

All new drugs should contain at least one "V," but more is better. "J," "X," and "Z" are also desirable. It would seem as though drug namers are also Scrabble players since these are four of the most valuable tiles.
If you can still pronounce the name, even without a mouthful of salamanders, it's no good.
Not only must "U" no longer follow "Q," but this is absolutely forbidden in most cases.

Take a look at some of these beauties:

1. Quviviq ($515 for 30 pills) is a new sleeping pill sold by J&J. (Shockingly, side effects include sleepiness and fatigue). It gets an A- on "Josh's New Drug Name Compliance Scale" (JNDCS) because it has two Vs and two Qs - a superb ratio of 4:7 (V+Q)/total letters. It does lose a point or two because it violates the "U must not follow Q" rules but gains them by ending with a naked Q using the letters QUV in succession. According to the Official Scrabble Dictionary (2), ZERO words meet this criterion. But the Free Dictionary lists both quvl and aquv, although they are acronyms for "Answering Queries Using Views" and "Quedgeley Urban Village Limited," respectively. WTF? Sorry, these ain't names.-- excerpt, rest at link above --

Mr. Ed and I have discussed this strange phenomenon at length.

some interesting stuff in this referenced article...

This Is Why Prescription Drugs Have Such Weird-Ass Names
And why you can't get the Ozempic jingle out of your head.
By Sandy Hingston· 8/6/2022, 8:43 p.m.

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2022/08/06/weird-pharma-names/

Why You See Such Weird Drug Commercials on TV All the Time
By John Marshall
https://www.thrillist.com/health/nation/...egal-in-america
Published on 3/22/2016 at 12:06 AM


If you consume any kind of media in America, you've probably seen your fair share of pharmaceutical ads. Most follow a familiar pattern: do you feel [insert symptom]? Has [insert ailment] been holding you back? Roll footage of sad people.

Then there's the invitation to "talk to your doctor" about whatever pill will cure you, along with a couple gaily galloping beachside on horseback, a smiling woman gardening, or a man who's relieved that he doesn't need to urinate during his daughter's wedding. Finally, you hear a string of potential side effects, which could be as mild as dry mouth or as serious as sudden death, and are sometimes so lengthy and ridiculous that you aren't sure whether you're watching a real commercial or a Saturday Night Live rerun.

Prescription drug ads are ubiquitous, to such a degree that most Americans likely don't even think it's strange that patients are asked to recommend drugs to their doctors... which kind of should be the other way around, right? Even stranger, the United States is the only country, besides New Zealand, that legally permits "direct-to-consumer" pharmaceutical advertising. With America in the midst of an opioid epidemic fueled in part by prescription painkillers, it's worth asking how we became a nation that can from one side of the mouth declare a war on drugs, and from the other spew ad copy telling people to take drugs.

America has a long history of drug pushing

Before you can wrap your head around drug ads, you have to understand why there's an agency to regulate food and drugs. The Food and Drug Administration was established in the beginning of the 20th century, when all manner of drug-ish concoctions were marketed en masse; this was the era of patent medicines, a time when charlatans hawked cure-all snake oil tonics.

One drug, for example, was marketed as a post-surgical antiseptic, then a floor cleaner, then a cure for gonorrhea, before it finally succeeded as a breath freshener -- today you can still buy Listerine in pretty much any pharmacy when you need to amp up your oral hygiene. Don't you miss the days when your floor cleaner could turn into a mouthwash?

With some exceptions, the average patent medicine was a thinly veiled intoxicant, garnished by herbs with spotty medical benefits. Case in point: Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, which was meant to treat menstrual cramps, and contained a few semi-legit ingredients that mostly amounted to a mild anti-inflammatory and diuretic. The problem was that Lydia's tonic also contained about 25% alcohol, with "problem" being subjective, of course. Other "health tonics" from this time period include Coca-Cola -- which you may know originally contained cocaine, a surefire way to get people hooked.

So if the FDA was supposed to stop this, why doesn't it?

The FDA’s stated goals in 1906 (it wasn't known as the FDA until 1930) were roughly the same as they are now: "[the organization] protects public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of a wide range of products, including prescription drugs."

Despite its lofty ambitions, the FDA was relatively toothless until 1962, when Congress endowed the FDA with some real power to ensure that drug companies didn't make false claims (otherwise known as lies) about their products' effectiveness, and to enforce penalties for any misleading statements or claims. Drug companies were finally held responsible for demonstrating "substantial evidence" for the effectiveness of their products.

Fast-forward to the 1980s: while Ronald Reagan was telling Americans to "Just Say No," the feds cozied up to the pharmaceutical industry, and relaxed their legal restrictions. Direct-to-consumer marketing (DTCM), what you probably know as "drug commercials," was first given the seal of approval in the US in 1985.

Even though pharmaceutical companies were legally allowed to advertise new drugs directly to consumers, the law still required a full list of side effects; this mandate meant DTCM ads were mostly restricted to print, then the only medium that could provide enough space to tell people they might get night sweats and night terrors and night cravings and night terror cravings.

Drug commercials as you know them really only began in 1997, when constraints were further loosened, and new meds began to feature in television commercials. For its part, the FDA notes that no federal law has ever outlawed drug ads, justifying its progressively lax regulation.-- excerpt, rest at link above --