Talk:Lists of drugs

(From Wikipedia:WikiProject_Drugs/General/List_of_drugs)

I am in the process of creating a list of drugs and their various names. The list will be alphabetical and will use the following format (subject to change if better suggestions are put forward).

All items in the list will follow the general format:

• Name of drug (who calls it that) [country]. Redirects to name of drug.

Name of drug

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)

who calls it that

• For generic names, this is the agency which has designated that name. [eg (INN), (BAN), or (USAN)]
• for brand names, this is the company which produces that brand.
• If there is more than one agency, then use a comma separated list in the brackets [eg (INN, BAN)]

country

• Only mention the country if that trade name is only available in one or two countries.
• Use the two letter country code with a wikilink to the country (eg [CA])
• Use comma separated list for multiple countries (eg [CA, US]
• Use amp codes to put in the square brackets so they don't get confused with the wiki markup. For example (see source of page):

*Prandase (Bayer AG) [Ca]. Redirects to acarbose.

Redirects to

• If the wikilink of that drug name redirects to another drug name (eg trade name to generic) then mention it on the list.
• If a trade name should redirect to a generic name of a drug page that hasn't been created yet, include the redirect mention in the list but don't create a page that redirects to a non-existant page.

Example entries

• 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)

Drugs? Or licensed medicines?

Seems clear to me that the list is of drugs licensed for use as medicines but not of all substances that may be classified as drugs (which does not mean that a drug not listed is therefore illegal or prohibited). I am not clear as to what extent it includes drugs licensed outside but not inside the US. The absence of Sativex suggests that it includes only drugs licensed as medicines in the US. Laurel Bush 16:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC).

One can add or remove the medications as per his wish this my contribution what made to wikipedia. Now it depends on the person what he makes his contribution to wikipedia

--rich_richie 11:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Drug definitions

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)

Redirects

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).

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)

I would prefer Also known as .... But yes, it might take some time and trouble for any one person to get them all changed. Laurel Bush 10:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC).

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)

Country codes

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).

Talk pages

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)

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)

Yes. I had noticed the gaps you refer to. Laurel Bush 10:19, 18 March 2006 (UTC).

Cannabis

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).

• Moved here from Talk:List of drugs: C-Ca by Matt 01:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Some templates need to be fixed

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)

Sulla

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).

Is disambiguated because it is also a personal name. Laurel Bush 12:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC).

Bellergal S

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)

Scope

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)

Proposed merge of Merge by letter with List of drugs

I think it is enough to group the articles by one letter, that is, merge List of drugs: A, List of drugs: A–Ab, List of drugs: Ac, List of drugs: Ad–Ak, List of drugs: Al, List of drugs: Am, List of drugs: An–Ap, List of drugs: Aq–Ar, List of drugs: As–Az into one list, and similarly for all the other letters. The lists aren't big at all, and the current splitting is non-uniform and confusing. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 14:26, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Note: I posted a notification about this discussion onto the talk pages of the affected lists; now on my way to bash Newslinger for not checking for ratelimits in his Notifier.js. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 16:01, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@1234qwer1234qwer4: I took a look at some of the lists and found, for example, that those at "M" are indeed quite large. I'm not sure that the effort of re-doing the lists is worthwhile. Almost nobody uses these lists, according to the Pageview Counts: M had less than one a day. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:04, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

@Michael D. Turnbull A reason for that might be that the lists are so finely divided. Summing up all the page sizes of the sub-lists for the letter M gives 43711 bytes (which will be less after the merge due to the duplicated leads, categories etc.). Not that big in my opinion; many articles are bigger, but this can be split up into two parts if you wish. The inconsistency of the division and especially the big differences in the page sizes of some of the lists still make no sense to me. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 21:43, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

@1234qwer1234qwer4: I've no objection to your proposal, if you can be bothered to implement it. I just wanted to point out that it seemed like a lot of work for little reward. Mike Turnbull (talk) 09:28, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

@Michael D. Turnbull I am ready to implement the proposal if it is accepted. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 20:57, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Since it is over three months since you first posted the suggestion here and more than a month since you did the individual lists, I think you can take it that no-one objects and you can go ahead, 1234qwer1234qwer4. Good luck. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:47, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

I find nothing confusing about the current arrangement, and agree with others that this is so low in priority that I would never find time to do it. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:48, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

The inconsistency of the division and especially the big differences in the page sizes of some of the lists still make no sense to me. ~~~~
User:1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 17:51, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

To avoid big differences in page sizes you cannot split by letters of the alphabet, as some letters (e.g. "S") will always have a lot more entries than others (e.g. "J"). But I don't see this as a problem. Everyone knows that some letters are much more commonly used than others, so they should not be confused or surprised by this arrangement. – wbm1058 (talk) 18:34, 23 October 2021 (UTC)