What is Acetaminophen ?

A reader asked me about this series of information segments in my previous post about Panadol. I thought there must be some brand behind it although it's unbranded. The information is said to be provided by The society of Hospital Pharmacists of Hong Kong Drug Education Resources Centre, while answering some concerns about pain killers. Every single one of them is homing on an active ingredient called Acetaminophen. What is Acetaminophen anyway ? According to Wikipedia, Acetaminophen has a more common name - Paracetamol, 撲熱息痛 in Chinese. Sounds familiar ? It's the same drug that your doctor gives you when you have fever. And it's the same active ingredient of Panadol, a branded Paracetamol. Now you can tell who's behind this. The series seems to try to build some "professional myth". It would be interesting to see what Panadol will do next. I'm not playing 踢爆 here but it could be an example of how a brand makes use of different vehicles of communications. So let's see.