Cause of confusion

I read with interest Dr Gillson’s letter in the January 2007 issue (Can Fam Physician 2007;53:29–30) regarding the North American tendency to confuse progesterone and progestogen and found myself in such violent agreement that I needed to inform him that this is not purely a North American phenomenon. The same confusion and fuzzy terminology is widely encountered in Ireland and the United Kingdom. This is surely just one example of the insidious effects of pharmaceutical marketing on our thinking, despite the fact that there is widespread belief that medical professionals are somehow immune to subliminal advertising!

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