The Lemon Fool

AZN is Vaxzevria - I just read this as Vaxevria. Or is it Vaxveria ?
Pfizer is Comirnaty - erm , Cominarty, Crominarty, Comunitatry....
Neither are particularly memorable or easy to pronounce - to put it mildly. Why so awful? Are they just running out of names ?!

Flu
Easy

AleisterCrowley wrote:Neither are particularly memorable or easy to pronounce - to put it mildly. Why so awful? Are they just running out of names ?!

There's a bit more to it than that - the first is that they have to be obviously distinct from any existing drug to avoid confusion on prescriptions. Imagine if you had a really toxic cancer drug with lots of side-effects, called "Asperin", it would be a disaster.

Also different classes of drugs have naming conventions, so for instance all monoclonal antibodies end in -mab. It looks like they're going down the road of all RNA therapeutics have to include "rna" in their name somewhere.

And also - for something like this, the name really doesn't matter. You're not going to turn down a Covid vaccine because of the name. So they'll save the "good" names for something more discretionary that will be advertised direct to consumers, like a Viagra competitor etc.

I've wondered for years why pharmaceutical drugs in general seem to have been given their names on the planet Zog. Idarucizumab, Ustekinumab, Adalimumab, Ixabepilone, Umeclidinium and the rest of them seem positively calculated to catch the poor old pharmacist out. How long before Mrs Arkwright's lumbago is accidentally treated with the stuff they use for worming a camel?

I used to assume that the obscure names of drugs included clues for medical insiders as to the particular family of medicines that they belonged to. But these days I find it somehow more likely that they're just the names of the researchers' wives spelt backwards, combined with the left-over letters from a losing hand at Scrabble.

BJ

It looks like they're going down the road of all RNA therapeutics have to include "rna" in their name somewhere.
Well, that's no good is it Either do it properly or don't bother in my opinion
Zerfexornabbulon follows that rule. It hardly jumps out at one...

...
Just checking the leaflet for the (Sanofi Pasteur) 'flu jab I had yesterday
In the UK it's Quadrivalent Influenza Vaccine (split virion, inactivated)
It's actually called Vaxigrip Tetra in other EEA countries

AleisterCrowley wrote:Zerfexornabbulon follows that rule. It hardly jumps out at one...

Ferfexakestikitinimqwik. Isibrevingorgonagen. Trithisifowndinnabocs. Ceeuatadamorg.

BJ

The spikevax I had struck me as having a rather catchy and descriptive name.

Interestingly all three names mentioned in this thread were created by the same branding company but to very different briefs from their customers, this article talks a bit about how Pfizer in particular came up with their name but also a bit more generally :

https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/ ... l-name-and

bungeejumper wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:Zerfexornabbulon follows that rule. It hardly jumps out at one...

Ferfexakestikitinimqwik. Isibrevingorgonagen. Trithisifowndinnabocs. Ceeuatadamorg.

BJ

Surely these are all villages in Wales?

Watis

I still think they're awful...

Watis wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:Zerfexornabbulon follows that rule. It hardly jumps out at one...

Ferfexakestikitinimqwik. Isibrevingorgonagen. Trithisifowndinnabocs. Ceeuatadamorg.

BJ

Surely these are all villages in Wales?

Watis

Corstorphine sounds like a drug, but is actually a suburb of Edinburgh

AleisterCrowley wrote:Corstorphine sounds like a drug, but is actually a suburb of Edinburgh

We lived there for a couple of years, and in the evening you could hear the lions roaring up on Corstorphine hill (in Edinburgh Zoo)

scotia wrote:

AleisterCrowley wrote:Corstorphine sounds like a drug, but is actually a suburb of Edinburgh

We lived there for a couple of years, and in the evening you could hear the lions roaring up on Corstorphine hill (in Edinburgh Zoo)

On the right bit of the hill you can hear a strangely diverse set of noises (but yeah the lions are something special)
- what makes it fun is there's not really anything to indicate what's on the otherside of the old stone wall

- sd

Of course there is a solution. Just have one drug for everything:

Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlmEc8r ... JohnMcGann

Amateur Transplants is the duo singing. Adam "This is going to hurt" Kay is one half if anyone is interested.

I'm passing all of this post on to my grand daughter in law who is a pharmaceutical chemist involved in the development of weird and wonderful drugs. I must admit I just run everything past her and if she says it OK then I happily swallow it. Mind you I find a good glug of sloe gin cures most problems.
Hic - goodnight.

R6

AleisterCrowley wrote:

Watis wrote:

bungeejumper wrote:Ferfexakestikitinimqwik. Isibrevingorgonagen. Trithisifowndinnabocs. Ceeuatadamorg.

BJ

Surely these are all villages in Wales?

Watis

Corstorphine sounds like a drug, but is actually a suburb of Edinburgh

I always thought that Nately Scures sounded like a rather nasty communicable disease.
Near Basingstoke.

nasty communicable disease....Basingstoke

Yep.

AleisterCrowley wrote:nasty communicable disease....Basingstoke

Yep.

So who is married to Mad Margaret, then?

some word that teems with hidden meaning