Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Medicine Brand Names

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

This week, Justin walks Sydnee through the complexities of pharmaceutical naming. Join them as they review the history of the functional regulatory procedures, as well as the way branding and marketing has resulted in increasingly-wild names like "Prozac" and "Skyrizi." Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/ Asian Pacific Environmental Network: https://apen4ej.org/our-work/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsawbones

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Sawbones.

This is Merrill Tour of Misguided Medicine. I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy. And I'm Sid, and I wanted to talk to you, Sid, about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, branding. Yes, this is true. You know, I love to talk about brands. Normally, that's just like fast food, fast casual type brands. But I do enjoy branding in the medical world.

We've talked in the past about things like NyQuil. That's a brand we've discussed. What else? Tylenol maybe? I think I did a Tylenol. I've done some other like brand centric episodes. I think we've gone through a lot of those. And you ask me questions a lot when we talk about different medications. Like not just on the show in real life. How in the world did they come up with that name? Like where did that come from? And that's a really good question. And it turns out, Sidney, it is a question with a lot of answers. because even though you don't have to be a sort of scientist to deduce what some of these names mean, sometimes it helps. Yeah.

Some are more science-based. Some have nothing to do with science whatsoever. Well, I think that's the interesting part of it, right? Because you're asking me a question that I only have part of the expertise to answer because I am not a marketing executive. I'm not a branding expert. I don't necessarily know what sounds. will have the best connotation for human brains to decide, hmm, I need that product. So way back when this all got started, before we had a system for this sort of thing,

we had the big problem was that you had a lot of different groups that wanted to name, decide what the things were called, right? So the first sort of loose agreement was the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. that's first in 1820. That's a group of physicians that they got together and they're like, there's a lot of, because the medicines were mainly based off of their chemical composition, right? So there was some inconsistencies there and they needed a standard that everybody could kind of agree on, right?

So in 1820, the physicians created the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and that was official formularies, quality standards, things like that, and also drug names. The pharmacists, though, in 1880, created the National Formulary and that covered the preparations that the other book

left out and both of these were recognized in 1906. Now 1906, that era you should know that's usually

when we're tied to the beginning of the FDA a lot of our Right, a lot of the regulatory stuff. Now did the those two books

did they overlap? Did they conflict? Yes. Okay. And they overlapped, they conflicted, and they were both recognized as law.

Can I ask? Can I ask? I have, so one was a bunch of doctors, you said. 1906, excuse me. 1920, the U.S. Pharmacopia was. 1820. 1820 was physicians. Okay.

1888 was the national formulary. The one with the physicians. Did they just name all the medicines after themselves? Because that's our favorite thing to do, doctors, is try to make something or find something and then name it after ourselves. At this point, we are just talking about generic, right? Yeah, but no, still, I would, you know, I mean, if I had been there. Oh, you're trying to do jokes.

Is this what it's like to be trying to get through a lot of really important information? Is this what it's like for you? That must be so hard, because I have so much incredible information and you're goofing around about it. Is that what's happening right now? I just, I just meant that if I had been there, aspirin would be. not be aspirin, it would be Sydney. It would be Cyndspin. No, it would just be Sydney?

Yeah. Like, give me two Sydney? That's not a good... Okay, so the... If you're having chest pain, take four baby Sidney's... What you're saying, though, the reason this is an important distinction is because that kind of silliness is absolutely allowed later. But right now, we're like, we're trying to create some sort of standard.

And what's wild is, as of 1906, when the FDA is like, both of these are good, this is the only country that does that. This is the only country where we have two books that are both recognized as the official one. So this is not great. And so is it like the formulas contradict in the two of them? Like in one, you know, I mean, I don't know what medications we're talking about at the time, but like penicillin is made like this, but in the other one, penicillin can be like this. The contradictions were not, the issue. It was more just that there were two separate bodies that were maintaining two separate records for our standards, right? It was not under a single umbrella. There were two different formularies, and that's not the right word, but two different bodies that were creating these

names, and there was no reason for them to be separate except for the fact that the initial pharmacopoeia wasn't comprehensive. So the national formulary filled in the gaps, but we have these two things. There also wasn't penicillin yet. That was a bad example. There was definitely not penicillin. I will. That makes sense. Yes. And so then the AMA ran its own drug operation, a council on pharmacy and chemistry. And that was in 1905 the year before the FDA recognized those other two as legitimate.

Then the council on pharmacy and chemistry, though, was more about weeding out like fake. and quack remedies, right? So this body is, so now we see there's like a third distinction, and the AMA is like, okay, you can call them what you want, but these other things aren't drugs. So let's be careful about this. So this is the, like, so now we have three conflicting. This body, the, that the AMA called it, the Council on Pharmistry and Chemistry, this eventually evolves into what is called the U.S.A. in. the United States adopted names council. There it is.

Okay. This is, this evolves into the United States adopted names council. And that is the body from the AMA that eventually is, becomes sort of like the, the overarching standard. This comes about in 1961. It is a joint operation between the AMA and the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. And the pharmacist association does join up in, 1964 and it becomes the USAN at that point. And then the FDA gets on board with the USAN, okay, by 1967. I should also mention, by the way, just to complicate things more, in 1950, the WHO also

tried to try to start its own naming convention. Okay. So there's a lot vying for competition, right? That also has to be why there are different names. And this isn't, you would expect that people who speak different languages would have different names for things. Right. But there are different names for substances even among, like, the English-speaking world. I always think paracetamol and acetaminopin is a good example, where that's the same thing. But here we call it acetaminophen. And in the UK, they call it paracetamol.

Luckily, everybody started to, like, get on board with the USAN. Everyone was like, okay, this is, this is, this makes sense. So this is the system now. The FDA added liaison in 67. And by 84, the FDA lost its own list, dropped its own list, and USAN was the official name. So people started to like fall in behind it. It's a private body. It's not a government agency.

It's a private group. But a drug cannot be sold in the U.S. without a U.S.A.N. That's the, our name for it. And then the AMA has to approve. And then the, so the company, the USAN, and the WHO's program, which is the international standard, they all have to be like agree on one single global generic name before it's final, right, before it can go out to sale. Now, some of the, now you would probably be a lot smarter about this stuff than me. So I would ask for some of your help with this section.

Okay. But this is like an example of what some of these stems mean and how some of these names are built. So you would probably be able to speak to this better than I could. Well, just for some things that are probably familiar to you immediately. Okay. There's an example here of proton pump inhibitors, PPIs. Those are medicines for heartburn or acid reflux. A lot of these are over the counter now.

You can also get them prescription. and they often, if you look at the generic, they often end with presol. So, omeprosol, isomeprosol, pantoprasol. There's a lot of examples. You probably know them as like nexium, prilosec, previsid. Those are all presol. So if I see presol at the end of something, I assume it's probably a PPI. Another common one would be beta blockers.

Metoprolol, these are medications that can be used for high blood pressure, or for specific heart conditions, they end with all, O-L-O-L-L. And if I see a-L, O-L, or Pran-L, then I think of a blogger. And there are a lot of comment.

Now, not all medications have that common end to tell you that they're all in the same family or whatever, but like generally speaking, if I were, and I mean, it's not so, I've been practicing a long time, but early in my career, as I was first learning all these drugs as a medical student,

and early in my residence, I could use that as a quick hand to say, oh, okay, this must be in this family of drugs. So, yeah, and that was really interesting to me. I did not know that. But then when I started thinking about, like, oh, you do hear some of the same sounds. But those sounds are specific and they're talk about the function. Yeah. And if I see, if it is, I will say that that skill is still helpful when new drugs come out.

Because sometimes a new drug is introduced first in commercials, almost. Like, that's where, and I don't, I mean, we don't, I don't see those commercials. So somebody will ask me about, like a patient will ask me about a new drug even before I maybe have heard of it through the usual, like, doctor channels. And I can look it up. And if I see that generic, sometimes the generic name will immediately tell me like, oh, it's in this class. Oh, okay. I get, I at least know what class of drugs this is in. And then I can help you figure out what this is. they a company uh it takes a while to get one of these names um you apply when the trials start and then it's kind of a back and forth because it has to make though there's a lot of different uh qualifiers in addition to the chemical compound it's got to make sure that it's not too close to anything else so there is an ongoing uh thing uh it can take months to a few years uh sometimes they will to differentiate a medicine that is or compound that's very similar or something else or identical or something else I guess they'll add like a meaningless suffix to the end of it just to say that it's

different but like you know like d LLE just tack it on to the end to say it's the same a different that would be very inconvenient to have to explain to a patient what do those letters mean nothing Sydney I'm going to ask you a question what is a monoclonal antibody. Monoclonal antibody is we have synthesized an antibody that attaches to a specific thing. For whatever reason, we need to, like little heat-seeking missiles, we're going to put this antibody that we have made into your body to go out and find something specific and attached to it and then remove it from your body.

Okay. The WHO in 1991 added a new suffix Mab. Yes. For monoclonal antibodies. Right. And there's actually a syllable in front of it marks where the antibody comes from. O is mouse. Z is chimeric or chimeric.

Chimeric. Zoo humanized, you human. That is, so they appended those. But in 2017, they actually dropped that. And by 2021, they retired Mab altogether for new antibodies because it got too crowded. There were already 879 names that ended with Mab. So they had to split it up into Tug, B, Tug, Bart, Migg, and Mint.

I don't know why that's funny to me. But the fact that Mab got two fools, they had to have Tug, Bart, Migg, and Mint. I got to be honest, I don't think I knew there were that many Mabbs. I mean, I am familiar with that, both the nomenclature and what we use those for and such. But I'm not, I had no idea there were that many. Yeah. It is not something that I commonly, especially in my practice, as a family doctor and doing street medicine, I am not prescribing monoclonal antibodies.

It's typically. It is illustrative, though, I think, of these names are not just like, I think we think of names. It's like different in medicine. It really is like, I don't think, I can't think of a really good analog because the names are communicating something at the same time as they're identifying something. You know what I mean? Yes. We're communicating while we're identifying. And it is like the names are only useful for as long as they communicate well.

the moment that language changes and they become nonspecific or less useful, you know, the whole thing has to shift. So it's really, it walks the line between, I think, science and, like, communication. Well, it recognizes that science evolves. I think that it's a way of understanding, even as you make the first monoclonal antibody, you are recognizing that there will be many more to come. That only makes sense that we will use this technology to do more. So you're leaving space for the future of that, of that specific kind of science.

Does that make sense? We know that doctors in the future are going to need to know a lot more of this. So we'll use a common, even with the first one, we've already created the root thing because we know we're going to need it. Now, Sydney, this is, all of this has been technical, scientific, medical terminology for things. Yes. None of this is branding. No. And that's what you want to talk about.

After this, let's talk about Skyrizi. Okay, but not yet. What? I'm going to make you come to the billing department. I said after this. What do you think the titular this is? I don't know. See, you got to be careful.

You try it again, take it clean. It's really tough doing my job, and I'm so glad you're really appreciated that. You ready? Here it goes. And segue. And this is the billing department. What? I don't know what you want to me to say.

It was not clear. You said after this, but we had not set up the, this. Let's go to the billing department. Let's get. The medicines. The medicines that ask you make macab for the mouth. A brand is a trademark. A brand is owned by a company, right? They don't have to agree with the WHO. It is owned by the company. Now, it probably won't surprise you to learn that the companies in question go to other companies and say, what do we call these pills? Brand Institute, interbrand health,

in touch all these like these cool operators uh years before it goes to launch they're like tell me tell me about this drug let us get our hands on it let us smell it smelling it is probably not part of it uh these agencies will come up with hundreds thousands of names just like see what's see what clicks um there's a lot of trademark conflicts as you can imagine that rule out like because if it's too close to something else uh that that rules out a lot um they also have to check check, like, when you're making up a brand for these pills, you're almost certainly not going to use a base word. You're going for a vibe, a sound, right? Right.

So one of the big things they have to do is get other speakers in major markets to, like, go through to say, like, does this sound weird? Does this sound like you're cursing? Yes, that makes sense. accidentally sound like. If it's not in English, what is, yeah. Is Kiss my butt not going to do well in America? Sure. Yeah.

Sounds like Kiss my butt. I got it. That's not a real pill. I actually just came up with that. No problem. But maybe it will be now. The brand institute calls this the disaster check. And they say that drug names get more linguistic scrutiny than almost any other kind of brand, which makes sense to me.

We probably do have to be really careful about these. Yeah. Well, you're going to put them in your human body. in hopes of achieving some sort of wellness. So, now we do, this is an expensive process. I think hundreds of thousands up to one to $1 to $3 million to name these. And because it's not standard. I'm sorry, this part of it always, really?

Hey, honey. Really? That money is not abstract, honey. It's going to brand professionals that work day in, day out to make great brands for us. We shouldn't market drugs, period, so. Well, okay, but, like, what I'm saying is our brand professionals look to us for support. This has got to just be something that happens in the countries where we market drugs, though, right? Because, like.

No, because you have to have a brand name for the drugs because you're selling them, like, they still have the brand names. So, like, Allegra. But they don't do ads for them. But they're still on shelves. Oh, you're talking about OTC over the countermen. Aligra is Telfast in the UK and Australia. Gotcha. And some of them have different, like, Brilinta is Brilic across a lot of Europe.

Okay. And Brilic. Irwerely. Now, okay, this is what I really like. What does the name mean, though? Like, what do these names mean? They can't mean anything. This is, legally speaking, they can't.

mean anything, right? But they can reference. So this is what it is. They can't claim one, but they can claim something adjacent, right? Viagra. What's Viagra? Like Vigar. And? Niagara. It's supposed to make you think of Niagara? Power and vitality. Some also note the Sanskrit. I have never thought of Niagara. Niagara, which is Tiger, although Pfizer has never confirmed it.

I have never thought of Niagara when I think of Viagra. I think of like, I think of virility, vigor, vitality. But I never think of. Viagra. Niagara. It's vigour in Niagara. That's here. That's.

Lyrica? What's lyricia for? What do we use lyric? I'm not going to ask you the meaning, but like what's lyric for? It's neuropathic pain typically. Okay. It's music. It's ease.

Lyrica. You're feeling better, right? You can move now. You can dance. Paxil. What's Paxil do? Paxil do. Paxil do.

for depression or anxiety. Pax is Latin for Peace. Zoloft. Also, depression or anxiety. Loft, lift. Zoloft. Loft.

Celebrax. For arthritic joint pain. And wouldn't that make you want to celebrate? Of course. Xanax. For anxiety. Sounds like anxiety. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean. Halcyon. That's a sleep medicare. Alcyon. I mean, that's just a sound alike. Or lunesta. That was the first one I thought of. That's another sleep medicine. Some of them are more aimed at the people who prescribe drugs rather than the people who use them, like Lipitor, which is a combination of...

Lipid's. And inhibitor. Oh. So you know Lipidor is lipid and inhibitor. Lipidore. There. It's what it is for you. Prozac is... Another antidepressant or anxiety. Now Prozac is an interesting example because it is a what they call a blank canvas. So that is the, if you want to use these three types of names, you would call them, let's see, what are these terminologies here? Okay.

So you would, these would roughly be three different buckets, right? Bucket one would be evocative. That's like Viagra. Mechanism adjacent, like kind of. And then there's like kind of a blank canvas. Prozac is like it is intentionally not is like intentionally, how would you say like a unrelated. No meaning attached to it.

Yeah. Like almost like a meditation. Like it's like there's no feeling or emotions. You're not literally pro someone named Zach. That yes, right. Like a lot of say by the bell fans, you are not necessarily prozac. Can I ask a question about Lipitor? As long as you aren't expecting me to know the answer to it, absolutely.

I want to know about Lipitor is in a family of drugs with the ending statin. Okay. Okay. They all end with statin. And in medicine, we talk about statins that family have gotten tons of – there's a lot of conversation about statins because there were guidelines that came out that kind of suggested maybe. you know, a billion or more people worldwide, maybe more should be on statins. And there was a lot of, should everybody be on a statin? And anyway, there's a lot of debate about statins. So we talk about them as statins. Has that invaded common parlance? Do you, when I say statin, do you immediately

know what I mean? Is that or? I love, I'm, I am not a good person to ask about this because I do this podcast and it married to you. So I hear a lot of talk about statins. So I, I just wonder. My sample's eyes is off. Has the generic invaded the public? You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Because, like, I know everybody knows Lipitor, but... The term statins, you mean?

Yeah, like... I mean, I don't expect people know Rousseovastatin and Pravastatin. And, you know, I don't think you necessarily know the whole word, but statin as a, you know. Yeah. The, the, I'm not sure. I hear you say statin enough that I think I use it. We talk about statins a lot in medicine. And in our house.

well just kind of day to day. So there's a lot of prescriptions every year. And the big, I would say the number one thing that all of these names, like if there's an overall thing that you don't want, is it just can't be confusing. Because there have been fatalities in the past that have been linked to medicines getting mixed up. And I'm not just talking about the one that young George Bailey prevented. and it's a wonderful life. There's others throughout the... Well, that was pretty clear.

He put poison in some empty capsules instead of medicine in the capsules. That's a wild. Can I say that's a wild mix-em-up? That is a wild mix-em-up, I've got to say. But he had a rough time, Mr. Gowardin. Omeprizal was launched as Losec, and it kept getting confused with Lasix, the diuretic, they looked alike in cursive, and were both sold at 20 milligrams, and this led to at least one fatality.

Oh my gosh. They renamed the U.S. version Prilasek and kept the rest of the world Losec. That's scary. Here's one that was called beforehand. Celebrex was initially going to be called Celebra. And then a pharmacy professor actually told the FDA like, hey, that's going to get confused with Selexa. Yeah. And that's not going to, that's not going to, they agreed and they changed it actually to Celebrax.

It was still confused with Calexa and Cerex, which is an anti-seizure drug. Yeah. And so they ran an education campaign for doctors and pharmacists. A lot of the issue was, hilariously or not, Dr. Handwriting is bad enough that it was too close because people don't, it didn't take time to, you know, because Dr. handwriting is so bad. Well, I mean, that's true. I will say that outside of just how bad, and it is true, the stereotype is true, how bad our handwriting is, I live through the switch from written orders, handwritten orders, to inputting orders in the computer. That's what your t-shirt says that you're wearing right now. And we grouse about it a lot. And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

And I still will grouse about the transition from handwritten notes to computer-generated notes because there's so much trash in those notes now. they're usually useless. But putting orders in a standardized fashion, like in a computer, is much safer than handwritten orders. I saw throughout my career, not that I personally did necessarily, but I was aware of many errors that happened due to not just handwriting, but like the decimal point was faint and you didn't see it, you know? You weren't sure what does that say?

say milligrams, is that, what is, I saw that happen in the hospital through the years. I know those things occurred. And so that definitely is a big problem. I can see that being a huge problem. The, when the FDA is, the FDA still has to approve these brand names, right? They can refuse them because they're misleading because they're, okay, you're implying. This is doing something that is not. they can, I'm assuming also this is like referring to a functioning FDA that is like reputable and worth listening to.

Right. Which, of which there are many individuals working within the FDA who are still hardworking, reputable, science-based. For sure. Even if, even if our agencies as a whole are not led by the most reputable people. Now, once they have verified that, we're not, you know, you're not misleading people. There is a software called POCA, P-O-C-A that is run by the FDA. And what's cool is, or it's probably not cool unless you're me, but you can actually do this search on your own. You can search the phonetic and orthographic computer analysis program that the

FDA runs and you can try your own drug names to see if it's too close to another drug. So you remember earlier you were saying that you wanted to call your drug Sydney, right? So here's a threshold here and you can search. You put in Sydney. Yeah. And we search and we see that. We're checking to see. Okay.

It's not bad. The closest is slint. What is slend? I don't know. It doesn't list more what they are. Here's the drug source. But if you wanted to call it for like... I have never heard of any of those drugs that are listed there. Where are these... What's Zidone? I don't know.

Cydak? Kimby? Hey, listen, you got to try to take it up with the FDA lady. I don't know. I don't know what these drugs are. You know, too. What's tough is that... It may not just be drugs. It could be anything that fendentically could be confusing. Slend is an estrogen-free, progestin-only birth control pill that can... Tains droat. These are real. I mean, they're real. Look, that's a real one. Wow. Well, you know what, though, I will say from the inside in the medical field. Once a medicine has been around long enough that it's generic, I often won't know. Like, we won't necessarily. I wasn't even taught some of the brand names. There are medicines that I've only ever known. Like, we talked about Metoprolol. I am certain Metoprolol had a brand name. I've only ever known. I've only ever known. known it as metoporilal. I don't, because by the time I started practicing medicine, it had been

generic for so long. We wouldn't have known that, right? Right. So there are a lot of old brand names that I am not familiar with. And then there's also, if you get into like the world of birth control, my concern are the components and doses within the birth control. I am less concerned with what the name of it is. So I am looking to make sure you get the right components, the right doses, and your insurance is going to cover it. I don't really care what the brand is. So I don't know. There are some medicines like that that I'm so focused on the components and the science

of it that the brand names allude me. And there's so many, too. I don't think it was judging you, sweetheart. Well, it's just interesting that I wouldn't know the name of a birth control pill when I definitely prescribed birth control. Yeah, you haven't refused to prescribe birth control for months. I mean, it used to be a big problem for you. I know that you used to be like, no way.

You also have to understand. It depends on where you practice. I have practiced my entire career in West Virginia, and the majority of my patients have Medicaid or when I was doing more family medicine, Medicare. I am looking for medicines that are covered by that insurance. I'm usually using low-cost generic medications. No, but I think it really makes a difference. I have so much more episode. There are probably people who practice in more affluent eras who know all of these new name brand drugs because their patients can afford them and are asking for them.

So please don't judge, Sydney. all you fancy doctors. My little country mouse doctor only helps those without homes and shows she doesn't know the names of all your fancy drugs. Can I finish my episode? Yes, you can please finish your episode. Thank you. No one was judging you.

Sorry. We all think you're smart. Trust me, I promise. Now, Sydney, the other thing this group has to do is they are, beyond just checking to see if it's like a conflict. They also write it down with bad handwriting and see how it looks just to see if it's going to be confusing to people.

It also can't have any generic, like any of those chemical stems that we talked about earlier, you can't have any of those sounds in a place where it would be confusing, right? So just because it, like, you've probably internalized throughout the years, people probably internalize certain sounds that they associate with those things, but you have, like, you willingly have to take those out because you can't have any sort of like confusion as to what is the actual function of the thing. Now, I think you've probably noticed, I want to talk about Sky Rizzy because it's ridiculous and I think that you're

seeing so why? I think because a lot of the names are look pretty stupid I think and that is not in your head. There was a 22 study on this and it said that letters that are rare in

English use of those in drugs are climbing over time. According to one analysis I saw X turn X, the letter X turns up 16 to 30 times as often as in normal English and Z is like 13 to 18 times more common in medical names. That's not your imagination. There's a lot of X's in Z's in these guys. That is not. That is not in your head. A part of it is distinctive. It's hard to find a new one. You can change the spelling of something. If you add like Q at the end, you know, to mix it up that way.

There is also a lot of... Okay, so I'm going to read this part specifically, so I'm going to confuse myself. Research on sound symbolism finds that particular sounds carry built-in associations. A 2020 study of drug brand names found that voiced consonants, the ones that are made with vocal cords like B, D, G, V, and Z, but-d-g-v-z make medicine feel more potent and faster acting and raised expectations of how well and how long it would work. Z is a voice consonant, so its heavy use isn't only about looking distinctive.

It sounds strong. And that is how a brand name is formed. It is just how it makes you feel, what you associate with it, what you think. And as long as it's not confusing, it's fine. Do you think, though, that's a double-edged sword because if you take a pill, and the sound makes you think it's going like it sets the bar high for it and then you don't immediately feel way better. Yeah, I mean, but that's, I mean, that's brand. I mean, if we start getting angry about brands not delivering on what they promise, then,

geez, where does that end? You know? Yeah. Our brands are looking out for us on and they're doing their best. They can't always deliver. Can I say that I do think it's interesting how some stick around and some fade. I like I prescribe a lot of antibiotics in my practice because of what I do do doxycycline is a generic name and that's all we call it by. It's all I know that there are some brand names for it.

I've never called it by brand names. But Backdrum, which is another. Sorry fancy docs. Sid only knows it by the generica. Well, no, I'm just saying it is doxy for short, doxycycline and it is, I don't know. And I say it to patients and they know exactly what it is. When I prescribe backdrum, which is another common antibiotic, which has been around a long time and is generic,

and it's a sulfomythoxys alt trimethympthrim is the generic. I never say, I'd like to prescribe you some sulfomothoxys all trimetoprim. I say, I'm going to prescribe you backdrum, and I will always say backram, and my patients know what backrum is. It's weird how some of the brand names really, they just got it right.

Was that all the flex about how long of a name you knew? Sidney, no. Nobody's judging you. Please, you have to stop with the defensiveness. I'm not. Sydney knows many long medical names. She just didn't know about slim. Okay?

Big City docks? Get off of nuts. I get frustrated with birth control pill naming conventions, like the brand names, because I feel like they're always trying to come up with some like cool new, like, hey ladies, you want a new cool birth control. And it's like, no, they just want something that works and won't make them feel bad. And that we can all afford and is widely accessible. And that's why she didn't know the name.

It was a protest. There's a lot of brand names out there, Sid. There's a lot of brand names. And I hope they never stopped. That's my hope. I hope we always, there's all. The brands keep on flowing. Can we at least agree, though, it should not be marketed directly to prescription medications

should not be marketed directly to patients because how in the world can you make the decision whether or not you should go to your doctor and ask for a new, I mean, and they do this, a new cancer medication that is being advertised directly to consumers. I don't. Okay. How could you make that? Hold on, hold on. This is audio only.

Can you tell them? You took the mask off. Okay. Justin has removed the mask. I don't think we should be marketing drugs to people. Okay. I put it back on. That's it.

I just said that. I agree. Because all that money that goes into the marketing, maybe instead. It's healthy and positive. I put the mask back on. The mass is back on. And it's going to our brand, professionals who deserve our support and love when they need us the most.

Thank you so much for listening to Sawbones. It is a medical podcast. I mean, still, even if I'm hosting it, it's still a medical podcast. I'm taking back the reins next week. I think I've done an admirable job. I appreciate. You're clearly feeling threatened by my intellectual prowess. You did a great job.

And I'm appreciative to you for doing research because, You did that since we were in the last week of Matilda, and I was very exhausted and overworked and stressed. And you did that for me. So thank you. Hey, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song, Medicines, as the intro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. Oh, and thanks to Matthew Taylor for our new album art.

Yes, thank you. I should have said that many weeks ago, but, you know, I didn't. So here I am. There's new album art. I think it's cool. Okay. It's going to do it for us. Until next time, my name is Justin McRoy.

I'm Sidney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Maximum Fun. A Worker Owned Network of Artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.