Bamboozled by Nonsensical Prescription Drug Names? Me too!
A brief guide to the actual meaning of heretofore-meaningless, often misleading sequences of syllabic gobbledygook
Remember the good ol’ days? You were feelin’ kinda puny. So naturally, you went to your friendly family physician. And, at exam’s end, he (or in rare instances, she) would shuffle over to a 3”x4” pad of paper to scribble some indecipherable hieroglyphics …
“Take this for a few days and you’ll be right as rain,” the trusted, white-smocked, rosy cheeked physician would say, handing you the scrip.
Just having that little piece of paper in hand made you feel like you were on the mend. You didn’t ask questions. The doc provided little or no explanation. He (or she) knew best. We trusted that.
Oh, how things have changed!
Forty years ago, it became legal in the U.S. to advertise prescription drugs on television. At the time, hyping prescribed meds directly to the public seemed a ludicrous proposition.
Why, I couldn’t help but wonder, would any solvent pharmaceutical company squander funds on such foolishness? After all, only physicians can write prescriptions. And while doctors presumably watch TV too, as professionals, they shouldn’t depend on commercials to inform them which medication to…
