The drug information leaflet

The drug information leaflet arrives folded by machine into a rectangle roughly one sixteenth its printed size, a geometry no human hand, however practiced, refolds it back into once opened. The paper itself is thin enough to see typeface through, printed in a font small enough that a companion magnifying sheet is sometimes included, itself folded, itself never read. Contents run to a fixed and unvarying order: indications, then a list of interactions long enough to include foods and behaviors the reader has never engaged in, then a paragraph of rare side effects presented with the same typographic weight as common ones, which has the effect of making a headache and a documented case of liver failure look equally probable. Studies estimate that most patients unfold the leaflet once, scan for a single phrase, and set it down permanently in a drawer or a bag, where it will surface again only when the bag is cleaned out entirely. Pharmacists rely on a shorter, spoken version delivered at the counter, which suggests the leaflet's true audience may be regulatory rather than human. Its accordion folds, uncreased and flattened by handling, are the clearest evidence in the store that something was meant to be read closely and mostly is not.

Beatrice Womack