Why Are There Different Names for the Same Drug?
Question: I went to get my prescription refilled at the drugstore, and when I got home, I saw the bottle had the name of a different medicine. I called the drugstore and it said this was the same medicine with a different name. How are you supposed to know which medicine you're on? How do they come up with these different names?
Answer: For drugs, there are three kinds of names for each one. There's the chemical name, which no one outside the lab would ever use. It describes the structure of the molecule. So water, which is H20, would be called dihydrogen oxide or some such. When we say "water," we're using its generic name.
Then if a company that markets water wants to make you think that its type of water is special, they'll sell it under a brand name. For instance, you can buy Evian bottled water. (To find out whether buying bottled water is foolish or not, you can investigate what Evian means when you spell it backward.)
A drug company that owns the rights to a new drug gets to come up with its generic name. The company wants us to think of the drug as its brand name, since, after a certain number of years, the company will no longer be the only manufacturer allowed to make the drug. Once other companies can make the drug, the original company will lose some of its profits from the drug (and the price for the drug goes down, a lot).
So you've got generic names like methylphenidate, fluoxetine, verapamil and sildenafil. Brand names for the same medicines include Ritalin, Prozac, Calan and Viagra.
When you're used to thinking of your medicine by its brand name and then you see its generic name on a prescription label, it's easy to wonder if there's been a mix-up. Often the pharmacist will put "generic for " on the label. The generic is just as good as the original brand of the drug.
I guess the government gets to approve or disapprove of the names before they go on sale. When one company proposed the name Plan B for its emergency contraceptive pill, it was rejected at first. Didn't sound serious enough, I guess.
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