Mix-ups are not common, but they do happen in the $103-billion-a-year prescription business. One major reason is that there are so many drugs that look or sound alike. Studies have shown that one to three percent of prescriptions dispensed have some kind of error. About 15,000 mistakes by pharmacists happened in 1998, according to estimates by Tony Grasha, a psychology professor at the University of Cincinnati who studied mistakes by pharmacists. About 2.8 billion prescriptions were filled in that year.

If a person gets the wrong drug, it can be deadly. That is why the United States Pharmacopeia (USP), which sets standards for drugs, is running a voluntary hot line for health workers to report mix-ups. The

One way patients can help decrease the possibility of a mix-up ever occurring is to ask their doctor to spell the name of the drug, explain what it's for, describe what it looks like, and write down what the dosage should be. Then ask your pharmacist to make sure that everything matches what the doctor prescribed. This procedure is very important because not only does it make sure that the patient gets the right medication, but it also prepares the patient so he knows the dosage and when to take it.

When a name for a new drug is proposed, the FDA checks its database for existing drugs with similar names. In the future, the FDA hopes to introduce computer software that can screen the names of 10,000 brand-name drugs and 7,700 generics that are already on the market. In this way, the FDA hopes to prevent confusion in the future.

Consumer Reports did a test to determine how frequently pharmacists gave wrong information. They went undercover to twenty-five pharmacies to test how knowledgeable pharmacists actually were. The "patients" were prescribed Coumadin and then picked up an over-the-counter herbal remedy. The problem was that both of them thinned blood. If it over thinned the blood, the person could have a stroke. Then the undercover person went up to the counter and asked to speak to the pharmacist. He asked the pharmacist if it was okay to take both of these medications together, and sixteen out of twenty-five pharmacists said it was fine to take them together. One pharmacist even went to a computer to research it and still came back with the wrong answer.

Just to prove that there are many drugs that have similar-sounding names, the Food and Drug Administration had the drug company Searle change the proposed name of a new arthritis drug from Celebra to Celebrex. Celebra was too close to Celexa, an antidepressant, but another problem came up. Celebrex can be mistaken for Cerebyx, a drug for epilepsy. This proves that even if a drug name is changed, there are so many drugs that it still might be confused with another drug.

Other ways to prevent mix-ups are that doctors, who have a reputation for poor penmanship, could print prescriptions in block letters. They can also list the patient's illness on the pr

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