Talk:Lists of drugs

message: crab4u XL
*Two trade names that are nearly identical (eg Adalat PA and Adalat XL) need not have seperate entries unless there is a particular reason for doing so.
*Names will be listed alphabetically and broken into an appropriate number of pages (with 200-500??? items per page)
: I personally would rather like to have a template for differentiating between brand and generic name, this will be more robust and will allow also more flexibility, e.g. color coding or adding a small icon, etc. JKW 23:47, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Name of drug

message: *acetaminophen (USAN). Redirects to paracetamol.
*Calpol (Parke-Davis) [UK]. Redirects to paracetamol.
*Panadol (SmithKline Beecham). Redirects to paracetamol.
*paracetamol (INN, BAN).
*Tylenol (McNeil). Redirects to paracetamol.
(The above info might not be accurate, I just whipped it up as an example.)
----
*I have entered the whole list of drugs currently used in U.S. from the recommended source.--rich_richie 03:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Example entries

message: It's currently not clear how editors are to decide what substances belong on this list. 
*There is little scientific basis for calling one substance a drug and another not a drug. A "drug", is a substance which is regulated or controlled by the government and the allopathic medical guilds, typically to the exclusion of legal use by the public and other guilds (herbalist, naturopathic, etc.).
*In the USA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), legislated (as I understand it) that the laboratory isolated extracts of natural plant or animal substances are food supplements, and not drugs, unless they are specifically regulated otherwise. Complex herbal and glandular substances are also not drugs, except when they are specifically regulated or controlled.
*Natural plants called drugs are inconsistently regulated in the USA, where natural cannabis is a drug but natural tobacco is specifically declared not a drug. 
*This list currently has both "cannabis", the whole natural plant, and "cannabinol (INN)", a synthesized chemical of natural cannabis metabolism. The latter seems intuitively close enough fit this list consisting mostly of patent synthetic laboratory-made chemicals, but the former seems anti-intuitive by the same taxonomy.
*A plant may formerly have been called a drug in a medicinal sense, because allopathic medical doctors historically used it in some form, usually as a crude extract (makeable in a kitchen) or partially refined extract (makeable in a laboratory). These natural and unpatentable plant extracts are listed in King's American Dispensatory, 1898 (index of plants). Though medical science improved the extraction, formulation, and treatment with these extracts, most of them were herbal medicines previously. They became herbals again after allopathy returned to its roots of using the synthesized chemical medicines pioneered by Paracelsus. 
*If this drug list is to be considered a regulated-controlled substance list, nearly every country has a somewhat differing list of what is considered a regulated-controlled drug. 
Suggestions:
:*Add the definition of a drug as a regulated or controlled substance to the top of the list. I haven't done external dictionary research on this, but I notice that Wikipedia drug redirects to Medication which is not very accurate.
:* Rename the article to List of drugs in the Canada, UK, and USA. The reasoning being that these are three major English-speaking countries, and that it would be relatively easy to manage and identify which list items were drugs in what country, using the internet country codes. 
:* Rename the article to List of drugs in selected countries. This would allow for the addition of a drug's status for each country as it became known. For countries and drugs which are exceptional it would be easier to list "Not a listed drug in ...". 
Milo 20:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Drug definitions

message: Not sure about the use of Redirects to ... It will become inaccurate or redundant if a page is moved, and updating in the list could lag a long way behind the move. Laurel Bush 10:52, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A valid point. The issues I was addressing when I came up with "redirects to" (a label I wasn't  entirely happy with) were a) It would be good to have the Methylin link on the list of drugs actually point to Methylin and not be piped to Methylphenidate so that wikiusers can see that the redirect exists (and if it's ever changed from a redirect then the users will be taken to the right page). b) It it would be good to have a note on the list that drug A is the same as drug B, this would allow the pages to provide information instead of having users follow the link to find out what Methylin is. And finally c) would provide a place to store the info that drug A is the same as drug B even if we don't have pages on either. So perhaps instead of "Redirects to..." we could have "See:" or "Also known as:". But I can't be bothered to go through all the pages to change things now. Matt 19:34, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

text: How about making a script program request at the Village Pump? I'm not sure of the difficulty that may be in the details, but superficially, it doesn't sound too difficult. I suggest stating in the request, that you might want to do this more than once as the list evolves. Milo 07:19, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirects 

message: Wondering were the two letter country codes come from. (Thinking there should be a note about that on the article's front page.) Laurel Bush 12:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Country codes 

message: I am thinking it would be a good idea to have all other talk pages redirecting to this one. A lot to do though. Laurel Bush 17:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. Done. Another tast that could be done is renaming some of the pages... Initially when the list was created, the pages were continuous, (e.g. it went from aa-ag, ah-am, an-as, and as-az). An editor who did some major changes to these pages (intending to be helpful, I'm sure), changed the page names restricting them to actuall content (eg, if we had no drugs starting with ah then the pages would go from aa-ag, ai-am, etc...). The problem with this, is when someone want's to add a drug who's name doesn't fit into this scheme, it's not clear where to put things. Also, as drugs are added, then the pages have to be renamed. So to get to the point, if the pages could be renamed so that they're continuous again. that would be great. Then the templates have to be updated (and see below), etc....Matt 01:35, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Talk pages 

message: I have just listed cannabis linking to Cannabis, not Cannabis (drug), because, eg, the UK's Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 treats the plant itself as a drug. Laurel Bush 11:12, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cannabis 

message: I noticed some problems around {list of drugs s}. but iirc the person who made these templates made them into multilevel templates and so they're hard to edit. Maybe it would be good to go through them all and just subst them so they're easier to edit in the future. (subst them down to one level, I meant, not into the articles). Matt 01:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some templates need to be fixed 

message: Sulla: wondering whether the capital initial is approriate, and assuming the (plant) disambiguation copies usage of the protolink in some other context, some other article. Laurel Bush 11:39, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sulla 

message: I was told the FDA was discontinuing Bellergal.  A search of their site, and a general web search showed no results substantiating this claim, but I saw that you list it as discontinued.  Can you clarify how you found out, or perhaps direct me to the documentation?
Thanks
Johanna216.175.70.96 01:57, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bellergal S 

message: Should (or does) the list contain drugs that never reached approval for use as a therapeutic, but which were tested in man in a clinical trial? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope