The Wonder Drug That Works Wonders

There’s been a bug going around the office lately, and today I started to feel a bit feverish.  China doesn’t really sell western over-the-counter medicine, so running to the pharmacy for some cold pills wasn’t an option.  I asked a coworker if pharmacies here sell aspirin and he replied that they did.  There’s a pharmacy right near the office, so I asked him to write the word “aspirin” in Chinese so I could go and buy some.

I walked in, handed the clerk the piece of paper, and she handed me a small box containing a bottle of pills.  It was 7 ¥, or about 94¢.  The box has dosage instructions in both Chinese and English.  Here’s the writing from the side of the package, exactly as it is printed.  [Items in brackets are my translation.]

The aspirin is a nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drug.  The small doses of aspirin can be used for inhibiting platelet aggregation and thrombus for mantion [formation], there by [thereby] preventing thrombosis in cardiovascular and cerebral vessels.  With large doses, it also has analgesic, antipyretic, and antirhematic effects.

Now, I have a pretty good vocabulary and I understood almost all this, but even I had to look up antipyretic—it means to reduce fever.  Can you imagine the blank, open-mouthed stares on people’s faces if US dosage instructions were written in this type of medical language?

Anyway, guess what the dosage was?  40 mg.  That’s HALF A BABY ASPIRIN.  I’m on daily low-dose aspirin therapy—I went on it at the suggestion of the surgeon who put in my father’s artificial heart—and that’s 80 mg.  To quote one news story:

The typical baby aspirin contains 75 to 81 mg of aspirin, whereas adult aspirin contains more than triple the dosage at 325 mg.

So, two regular aspirin (not even extra strength) is 650 mg.  To equal taking two aspirin I had to take almost 20 of these pills.  The Chinese who work for me just about shit when they saw me pour half the bottle of pills into my hand and swallow it down.  Then, an hour later, when I wasn’t feeling any better, I did it again.  You would have thought I’d swallowed two balloons full of heroin the way they were acting.  Even some of the westerners I work with were freaking out, so I had to explain to them that all I did was take the equivalent of two regular strength aspirin.

People just spaz out over shit for no reason sometimes.

Would they have allowed you bring in a couple Costco sized bottled of Ibuprofin?

Interesting to see that the directions weren’t dumbed down to the 6th grade level.  I’ve written hundreds of work instructions and tech documents in my time, and the rule of thumb is that 8th or 6th grade reading level is the highest you go.

When you work in journalism they instruct you to write at a 5th grade reading level. People will always need stuff dumbed down. I even have to dumb down the emails I write to professors, doctors, etc. I’m hoping their poor grammar and spelling is because they’re just old and computer illiterate and not because they’re short-bus window lickers.

I’ve written hundreds of work instructions and tech documents in my time, and the rule of thumb is that 8th or 6th grade reading level is the highest you go.
Well, that explains that..
I alwasy wondered why various manuals seemed to be written by a 6th grader…

Are Chinese bodies that different from our huge, overweight frames that they can take that small a dosage?

Anyway, I think there was a time when medicine bottles said much the same thing in the U.S. Of course the current standards of our so-called education mean that even if jobs weren’t being outsourced the way they are, you have a heck of a time finding people who are qualfied enough to read instruction manuals, let alone do high-tech work. Is it any wonder all the R&D;work is going overseas? Also, when people complain about them durn Messicans taking ur jobs, I always want to ask them how many educated Americans they know who can write and spell better English than they can.

PS Sorry for that extended rant, I just find it ironic that people who would probably have to be dishwashers or busboys in this country could probably write better English than some lazy native-born buttwipe who sees his job as a way to earn weed money.

Perception is reality man… people just see the number of pills and think that’s a lot.

They’d likely not bat an eye if you had 1 pill that was actually a really high level like 2000+mg or something.