I have written other commentaries about my alarm concerning the number of new pharmaceutical drugs flooding the market and their prevalence on television as commercials every few minutes. The FDA approves a staggering number of new medications almost daily as we Americans are lulled dreamily into accepting a blur of new names which no one can possibly remember. We are so accustomed to hearing about new ones in a quiet parade of silly names that we hardly blink an eye during the hundreds of new commercials that quietly slip into our collective subconscious mind.
There is usually some kind of harmless, lilting music in the background humming happily along as the characters, often elderly folks in euphoric family locale with their grandchildren, demonstrating an almost impossible ideal of the perfect life, filled with laughter, and bucolic scenes as those folks smile through the list of terrifying side-effects that accompany most or all of these drugs, side-effects that are often much worse than the original ailment itself.
I’ve compiled a list of the names of the new drugs that I find most amusing in terms of the effort it must have taken to create those names. I picture late night meetings by physicians, ad men and women, legal teams, and empty gin bottles littering the office floor at two in the morning, when everyone really wants just to go home as a chorus of “Yeah, that sounds good” resounds as a name is finally accepted. Here is a brief list of ones with the ailments they are supposed to alleviate and that, for one reason or another, made me smile in imagining the awful struggle to keep up with finding labels for the deluge of new pharmaceuticals overwhelming us Americans.
Abilify……….antipsychotic
Brilinta………blood thinner
Eliquis……….blood thinner
Dulera………..depression, pain, asthma
Epidno……….acne
Farriga……….diabetes
Jublia…………toenail fungus
Latuda………..antipsychotic This is my favorite and brings a vision of a little girl with a saucy attitude : 
Lovaza………..constipation
Myrbetrig……overactive bladder
Raptiva……….psoriasis
Spiriva………..bronchospasm (bronchial issue or something in a corral?)
Vaniqua………hair removal
Zostavax……..Shingles preventative
Imagine trying to keep up with creating a fresh supply of names. No wonder the names are getting sillier and sillier as they submerge our ability even to process the number of them as they appear with astonishing frequency (almost every seven minutes), especially on evening television programs. Even more disturbing is the almost cavalier way in which a disembodied voice near the end of each commercial lists the grisly side-effects, read with calm in a vision of flowers, laughing grandkids, and warm, fuzzy music. Either we are becoming joyfully numbed to the scary innuendo of such messages, or there is a gigantic amount of money being made in foisting off all these panaceas upon the American public. Now which of those two explanations do you, the reader, think is the more likely and more accurate? John Bolinger
