Swans, sirens, and nightingales

The drug advertisements in the journal your postman just dropped in your mailbox will look just as misleading, naive, or damn wrong in a couple of years (when they do not look so already). These advertisements belong to the other type of song, the sparkling sirens' song sung in honour of drugs or procedures-always full of acclaim and praise. Never mind if the very same drug when used for another purpose is concomitantly singing its swan song. The language used to push costly new drugs seldom opts for understatement. Phrases such as "superior control" and "unique tolerability" are common for substances that will, no doubt, be forgotten in a few years. These meretricious exclamations of the sirens tend to smother the swan's whisper. But why call them songs of sirens? Partly because their treacherous cacophony resembles the enchanting melodies of mythological sirens, but also because their pervasiveness is stentoriously akin to the acoustic power of an alarm siren. Loud slogans blasted into defenceless ears.