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

[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.