Unless you are a doctor or a pharmacist, the terms methylphenidate and sildenafil probably don't mean much to you. It is a fair bet that fluoxetine, oseltamivir and trastuzumab will also draw a blank. Yet these tongue- twisting generic names are staples of the health pages. You have read dozens of stories about them.

Call them something else, and all becomes clear. Methylphenidate is better known as Ritalin, the common treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Sildenafil is Viagra. Fluoxetine is the antidepressant Prozac, oseltamivir is the flu drug Tamiflu, and trastuzumab is Herceptin, the breast cancer therapy.

These proprietary names are more memorable for a reason: each was developed at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds. The snappy, consonant-heavy epithets that appear on medical labels are elaborate pharmaceutical company marketing, designed to persuade doctors and patients to recall and choose their products over those of their rivals.

This week a group of American doctors argued that the media is too complicit in this commercial strategy. An analysis of US health news reporting led by Michael Hochman, of Harvard Medical School, found that two thirds of articles described drugs mainly by brand name.

British newspapers were not studied, but they are also heavy users of brands. A press database search turns up 1,174 references to Herceptin since 2003, compared with 44 references to its generic name, trastuzumab.

Hochman argues that such reporting plays into the drug companies' hands, to the ultimate detriment of health funders and patients. It creates an impression that the brand is the medicine and that alternatives are inferior. This is a particular problem once drugs go out of patent and generic versions become available for a fraction of the price.

Patients, and even some doctors, still reach for the dearer brand with the catchy name, when the cheap alternative is just as good. Painkillers are the most obvious example: plenty of us buy Nurofen, which is chemically identical to supermarket own-brand ibuprofen, but costs many times more.

Doctors and academics always use generic names where possible, to avoid doing what the drug companies want, and favouring one product over another. The media, Hochman suggests, should really try to follow suit.

It is a worthy argument, but an unrealistic one. Journalists use brand names because they are the currency that the public understands. Stories about overprescription of Ritalin or side effects of Prozac are easily grasped.

Use methylphenidate or fluoxetine in the same reports and readers would get lost.

Generic drug names are a mouthful to say and harder to spell; I'm familiar with them and still mixed up the z and m of trastuzumab in this column's first draft. They switch off readers and writers alike. That, in part, is because they are intended to. They are initially proposed by manufacturers, who often engage consultants to suggest complicated terms that conform to World Health Organisation rules. The aim is to generate an obscure generic name to make the brand more memorable by contrast.

It might help patients a little if the media used more generic names, especially for out-of-patent drugs that are extensively available under different guises. We certainly don't want to mimic the US, where the brand Tylenol is used almost universally for paracetamol.

When journalists write about Herceptin and Prozac, however, they are using ordinary language to present health information in terms their readers are most likely to understand. Critics of free marketing should be wary of shooting the messenger. They should save their fire for the companies that devise overcomplicated generic names, and for the regulators that allow them.

Mark Henderson is science editor of The Times

Leading branded drugs and their generic names

Ibuprofen

Nurofen liquid capsules (Ibruprofen 200mg), £2.89 for 10

Superdrug Ibuprofen liquid capsules 200mg, 99p for 16

Paracetamol

Panadol (500mg), £1.45 for 16 tablets.

Superdrug paracetamol 500mg, 31p for 16 tablets.

Lemsip Max (Paracetamol 1000mg, phenylephrine hydrochloride 12.2mg), £4.12 for 10 sachets.

Boots cold and flu (Paracetamol 1000mg, phenylephrine hydrochloride 12.2mg), £1.59 for 10 sachets.

Imodium

(Loperamide), £2.69 for 8.

Superdrug Loperamide capsules, £1.99 for 8.

Rennie

£1.89 for 24.

Superdrug antacid tablets,

£1.49 for 24 tablets.

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