You are taking the piss!

[davidgillon]

Six random syllables do not a pronounceable name make!

I've been helping my sister with a little research into the cancer treatments being offered to her husband and I've come to the conclusion the pharmaceutical drug creators are taking the piss when creating the names for new drugs (or possibly just pissed). How the hell do you pronounce atezolizumab? How the hell do you pronounce it the same way twice in succession? I can sound out complex words in European languages without much of an issue, but this is just a string of nonsense.

I'm reminded of how Traveller used to have random tables for generating words in Vilani or Vargr or various other alien languages: roll once for number of syllables, then roll a dice once for each of them to decide if you roll on the consonant and vowel tables, or the vowel and consontant. Except that gave more pronounceable results.

Or it's as if someone went through Countdown saying "I'll have a vowel, and a consonant, and a vowel, and a consonant, and a vowel, and a consonant, and a vowel, and a consonant, and a vowel, and a consonant, and a vowel, and a consonant", and then just announced the sequence as their longest word.

Arrrggh!

Comments

[alexseanchai]

I think the point is, if it's an easily pronounceable string of syllables, then something that sounds the same or similar already exists, which complicates the process of claiming intellectual property rights to the name of the thing as well as to its formula and manufacturing process

[redbird]

In addition to what alexseanchai said, the "mab" at the end means it's a monoclonal antibody.

They want a name that isn't already in use, and if it gets to the point of generic names and being dispensed at a pharmacy, they also want a name that doesn't look or sound too much like the name of anything else currently in use, to reduce the risk of giving people the wrong drug.

That seems to produce more words with V, X, and Z in them than in normal English, because those are less likely to be in use for something else.

[davidgillon]

The -mab makes sense, given immunotherapy, but if you don't know the elements that are being compounded together into the name it makes it really difficult to sound it out.

[kaberett]

... I have done sufficient organic chemistry that that reads perfectly reasonably to me, but perhaps that helps contextualise -- the people who think these are reasonable names are by and large the chemists, who are entirely habituated to this nonsense :-p

[davidgillon]

That sounds both valid, and a pain for the non-chemists trying to have a discussion about these drugs. It's noticeable the conversations with my sister have been running 'a or b or the immunotherapy one'.

[vass]

The missing manual.

[davidgillon]

Ah, interesting. Of course it helps to know there's a manual to be missing!