Dec 02, 2013
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More Fictional Drugs Banned By The FDA

Scott Alexander presents a satirical list of fictional drugs banned by the FDA, each with an absurd reason for its prohibition. Longer summary
This post is a humorous fictional list of drugs banned by the FDA. Each drug is presented with a profile describing its intended use, followed by an absurd or ironic reason for its ban. The drugs cover a range of conditions from weight loss to erectile dysfunction, with each ban highlighting unexpected consequences or bizarre side effects. The post uses scientific terminology and real medical concepts to create a sense of plausibility, before subverting expectations with the ridiculous reasons for the bans. Shorter summary

See the original: List Of Fictional Drugs Banned By The FDA

ADIPOBARIN
PROFILE: Popular weight loss drug proven to work in clinical studies. Patients lose 10 – 20% of their body weight in two months with no side effects.
BANNED BECAUSE: Patients do not lose any mass. The drug seems to operate by decreasing the effect of gravity through unknown means. As such, it does not decrease the risk of heart attack or diabetes. Also, in overdose it can cause patients to be picked up and tossed about by strong winds. It achieved minor popularity as an illicit recreational drug under the street name “Float”.

EPHDENALOL
PROFILE: Cures delusional parasitosis, an unpleasant condition in which patients hallucinate the feeling of ants crawling all over their skin.
BANNED BECAUSE: The drug is excreted in the sweat; a metabolite of the drug, 2,3-hydroxyephdenalol, is a potent pheromone that inevitably leads to ants crawling all over the patient’s skin.

OCUMOLONE
PROFILE: Touted as a treatment for blindness, this is a concentrated retinal growth factor that encourages the production of new rod and cone cells.
BANNED BECAUSE: For unknown reasons, most new photoreceptors form on the side of the retina facing the inside of the head. Patients reported that in the pitch darkness, these cells somehow adapted to view tiny bursts of electroluminescence produced by the brain. This caused a closed feedback loop in which neurons firing in the visual cortex produced visual sensations produced neurons firing in the visual cortex and so on, and led to seizures. No cases of blindness were ever cured.

BULOXETINE
PROFILE: Anxiolytic medication which, when taken three times a day with meals, adequately suppresses bulimic urges to purge.
BANNED BECAUSE: Side effect is intractable vomiting.

LEVONORGESTREL-THIOTIMOLINE (SOLD AS “PLAN X”)
PROFILE: Attaches the time-bending powers of thiotimoline to the classical “morning-after pill” to create a drug popularly called “the month-after pill”. Taken up to a month after conception, the thiotimoline allows the levonorgestrel to have reverse-temporal effect and “prevent” embryo implantation after it happens.
BANNED BECAUSE: In sufficiently slow thiotimoline metabolizers, the drug can prevent conception of children who were already born. In one well-publicized case from Miami, a woman concerned about a one-night stand took “Plan X” three weeks later, and her 4 year old son vanished and was never seen again.

NUTENAFIL
PROFILE: Next-generation version of Viagra, this erectile-dysfunction pill treats erectile dysfunction more effectively with fewer side effects.
BANNED BECAUSE: The tendency for the use of the pill to be associated with an erection classically-conditioned a nutenafil-pill fetish into many users. Entire cottage industries sprang up of sex shops selling nutenafil-pill costumes for partners to dress up in, or nutenafil-pill shaped sex toys. Eventually the FDA just got grossed out.

AQUIPERIDONE
PROFILE: When given as an intramuscular injection by trained nurses, decreases patient’s level of belief in hallucinations.
BANNED BECAUSE: When given as an intramuscular injection by hallucinatory nurses, decreases patient’s level of belief in reality.

(When certain groups lobbied against the ban on the grounds that psychotic hallucinations of medical personnel would not follow FDA decisions anyway, it was determined that the Psychotic Hallucinatory World and our own world share a common FDA, which actually explains a lot.)

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