21st Century Disease Names Daze
21st Century Disease Names Daze
If you watch TV, you are constantly bombarded by ads for drugs that claim to treat a variety of ailments, most of which you have probably never heard of before. Where the hell do they come up with these ailments and diseases, and who the hell is sitting in a dark room somewhere figuring out what to call them?
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Let’s start with Pneumococcal Pneumonia. Regular pneumonia wasn’t good enough? Pretty sure everyone knows what pneumonia is but now we have this new strain, or so the name seems to suggest. Maybe they should take a less clinical approach. Just call it pneumonia plus or super duper pneumonia. Pneumococcal pneumonia sounds like some sort male only disease, when there private parts have trouble breathing, like your tidy whities are a tad to tighty.
Than there’s Fibromyalgia. When I first heard that one, I thought it was a dietary supplement, something to soften your movements…as it were. As it turns out, fibromyalgia is some sort of musculoskeletal ailment where you are all fatigued, tired, moody or as my lady friends would call it…menopause (you can add that one to the reasons why I’m going to hell).
Than there’s psoriatic arthritis – 2 for the price of one. Psoriasis and arthritis at the same time, so your body looks like crap on the outside and feels like crap on the inside…holy crap!
Now what do all 3 of these ailment have in common? Drugs, drugs made by big pharma companies. Drugs to help you deal with these new fangled disease. Drugs that cost a shit load of money to develop. So how do the big pharma companies recoup their development costs? They come up with a scary name for some previously unknown ailment, than they come up with a really nice name for their very fancy drug like Lyrica. Lyrica – it sounds like a song, like lullaby you listen to before you go to sleep. How could Lyrica be bad for you when it sounds so nice?
I’ll tell you how. Most of these nice sounding drugs come with some nightmarish side effects. Did you ever read or listen to the disclaimer for these products on their TV ads? Those TV commercials are 2 minutes long because the disclaimer takes 90 seconds or so to read. It goes something like this: “Remember to consult you physician before taking our really nice sounding drug because it might cause some seriously bad shit!”
OK, I’m paraphrasing a bit but if you listen closely you’ll hear something about ulcers, rashes and hives, unusual bleeding, blurry or double vision, fever, chills, sore throat, dizziness….and those are the ones you can live with. You’ve also got heart attacks, strokes, and my personal fav – suicidal tendencies. Really? Your drug can cause suicidal tendencies? Well I’m pretty sure you have some nice sounding drug to treat that as well.
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