From ED drugs to blood thinners, a clear trend has emerged in the global pharmaceutical industry: the rise of the three-syllable brand-name prescription. Turn on your TV and you’re bombarded with advertising for Viagra, Ambien, Uloric, Lipitor, Celebrex, Nexium and a thousand other BUH-buh-buh (or buh-BUH-buh in the case of Uloric) drugs designed to fix whatever ails you.
Clearly, a three-syllable name indicates cutting-edge, can’t miss medicine. You know your doctor is giving you the very best when he prescribes BUH-buh-buh. It tells you that the doctor thinks, 1) you can survive this medical ordeal and, 2) your insurance will cover it.
A two syllable prescription, on the other hand, means that your doctor is basically writing you off as a lost cause and is pretty much trying to just keep you comfortable and out of his hair while he doles out BUH-buh-buh to his patients with a fighting chance. On the bright side, BUH-buh usually only costs $4 at Wal-Mart.
Recently, my eldest daughter was diagnosed with pneumonia. We were pretty worried until her doctor prescribed not one but two BUH-buh-buhs, Pulmicort and Zithromax.
“Look — they have three syllables! You’re gonna live, honey! You’re gonna live!”
Good thing, too. Because if that scrip had said Trimox and Flovent, things would have gotten ugly in the doctor’s office.
“Listen you son of a bitch, that’s my daughter in there. Now you write her a three-syllable prescription right now! YOU HEAR ME!!!”
The three-syllable prescription phenomenon is actually a godsend to the general public. Since most of us have no idea how a toaster works much less a complex chemical compound like a basal-thingy something inhibitor, it clearly lets us know which of competing pharmaceuticals we should demand.
Blood thinners? Coumadin: good. Plavix: bad.
Cholesterol meds? Lipitor: good. Zocor: bad.
Antidepressants? Celexa: good. Prozac: bad.
Of course, the ads for these meds generally feature 90 minutes of disclaimer, ranging from loss of appetite to sudden detonation, but you can pretty much ignore those. Every clinical trial involves a handful of weaklings who have adverse reactions that must be reported. But let’s be honest. Those people would never be prescribed BUH-buh-buh in the real world. The doctor would take one look at them and hand them a free sample cask of BUH-buh.
Of course, every once in a while you’ll see an ad for a four-syllable prescription. Ignore those. A four-syllable prescription is likely a placebo. Either that or it’s so highly experimental, they can’t figure out how to keep it from killing half the monkeys in the lab. Never, ever take a four-syllable drug.
Always demand three.
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