Pharma Marketing Mensa Invitational

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are some of this year's winners:

• Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

• Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.


• Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.


• Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.


• Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

You can see all the winners at the George W. Bush "Officious Forum."

I thought it would be fun to try and come up with with some pharma related terms. The best I could come with was:

• Adhorence: the deep hatred of advertising (compare to adherence).

I then asked members of the Pharma Marketing Online Discussion Forum to come up with some more. Here's what they submitted so far:

DTP: Direct to Plaintiff -- the art and science of creating plaintiffs with puffery enticing them to try dangerous drugs they would be better off without.(Submitted by Terry Nugent). James Gardner submitted DTC : Direct-to-Courthouse, which doesn't follow the rules, but what the heck!

Relationslip Marketing: Establishing an initial connection with a consumer and then never doing anything meaningful with it. (Submitted by David Reim). Compare to Relationship Marketing.

Derail Aid: A tool to confuse physicians. (Submitted by David Reim). Compare to Detail Aid.

Charmaceutical: An SSRI taken by someone who thinks they have a genuine diagnosis, but in reality are simply unpleasant. (Submitted by Paul McNiven).

Byotech: A small, specialty pharmaceutical company whose stock rises paradoxically whenever they announce failed clinical trials. (Submitted by Paul McNiven).

Contrasindication: A DTC ad deliberately designed to generate controversy, so as to get aired on cable news 10 times for every paid slot. (Submitted by Paul McNiven). How about this variant: Controindication? Compare to contraindication.

Salety Study: Which proves that the drug is worth selling, whether safe or not. (Submitted by Sanjay Virmani).

Generich Companies: Which make plenty of $ with somebody else's innovations. (Submitted by Sanjay Virmani).

Phate III: Which concludes that the drug can be sold, the fate of a certain % of the target population being left to a higher power. (Submitted by Sanjay Virmani).

Pharmasuitickle: An overall pleasant tingling a personal trial attorney gets when contacted by a former Vioxx patient. (Submitted by Jim Weidert). I think Jim stretched the rules a bit there. How about this variant: Pharmasuitical?

Complieance: what patients tell their doctors about whether they are taking their pills. (Submitted by Matthew Holt).

CEA: A term used to describe a ranking officer whose public utterances remind one of a pejorative or disdainful reference to a bodily part normally used to express intense disagreement with another's expressed opinion. (Submitted by Harry Sweeney).

Antibositics: Therapies undertaken to antagonise bosses' criticism. (Submitted by Kamran Shamsi).

Adverstising - The fine art of promoting adverse reactions through the use of realistic images of afflicted patients to target audiences consisting of physicians and consumers in a repulsive, yet memorable fashion. (Submitted by Mario Nacinovich).

That's all for now. Feel free to add your own as a comment to this post.