Andrew Fischer’s
Random Thoughts
Art: David Anderson / www.dandersonillustration.com
Name game
D
oes anyone else wonder how pharmaceutical companies come up with the names for their new products? One of the latest I’ve noticed is Ozempic from Novo Nordisk, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The generic name for this drug is semaglutide. So how did Novo Nordisk get from semaglutide to Ozempic? I’m glad you asked. Well, in the good old days a medication’s brand name had at least some connection to its real name. For example: Bufferin/buffered aspirin, Aspercreme/aspirin, Coca Cola/coca leaves. Okay, these are just patent medicines, but you get the idea. In any case, Ozempic strikes me as one of the more serious offenders because it has a theme song with vocals to go along with its silly name. In 1974 the song Magic was released by a
group named Pilot. Instead of “Oh, oh, oh, it’s magic”, we hear “Oh, oh, oh, Ozempic”. It’s hard to imagine the ad agency’s pitch to Novo Nordisk’s executives. Perhaps one of them countered with “Hey, hey, my, my – Ozempic will never die”, à la Neil Young. Or maybe “Hey, hey, we’re not Monkees – Ozempic’s not monkeyin’ around”. I assume a drug’s name just needs to be catchy these days, so TV viewers will remember it and call their doctors the next day craving some Vyepti, Pizensy or Tepezza. Some other recent interestingly-named pills include Evenity (portmanteau of event/eternity?), Sunosi (generic name solriamfetol – sun/sol, get it?), Zulresso (zulu/ espresso?), and Egaten (“ ‘E gotten sick ’cause ’e ate too much”). Aklief (trifarotene) at least says what it provides – acne relief – so kudos to everyone involved. Many more of these can be found at www.fda. gov, and a web search will ap-
prise you that others have similar feelings about these weird drug names. You can also find several amusing medication name generators out there.
Life & times
S
peaking of advertising, I’ve always been highly impervious to it. Television, radio, print ads – almost all of them fall on deaf ears (and eyes, so to speak), unless I happen to be in the market for a specific product. If I’m thinking about new tires, then I’ll notice every advertisement for them. If I’m not, I won’t see or hear a single one. Sure, I may “sense” such things, but my brain automatically filters them into its bottomless “to be deleted” pit…. With that background in mind, when I was a mere lad of 16 (apologies to Sam Cooke) I became a member of a target audience for my mom’s
ColdType | June 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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