Prevention regimen · Naming review
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Private review · Five reviewers

Is this name right for the brief?

A regimen that may delay Parkinson’s disease needs a name. It reaches patients only if a physician is willing to prescribe it, and the name is part of whether that happens. Get it wrong and a good idea stalls in front of the people who would have carried it.

So this is a review, not a vote on taste. Five people read 84 candidates and answer the same question about each one. You work alone: your ratings stay in this browser and are never shown to the other reviewers, and the group conversation happens once all five reviews are in. Expect 50 to 70 minutes. Two or three sittings is fine, and your work saves as you go.

Who is reviewing?

Read the Brief and the Protocol first, then scan the field and rate family by family. Do not discuss candidates with the other reviewers until everyone has submitted.
The brief

The regimen is one existing prescription medicine taken with two antioxidant supplements, started years before any symptoms appear, to slow the process behind Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. The combination is patent pending. We are naming the regimen, not the institute behind it.

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The regimen comes from decades of research by a physician scientist who spent his career at the National Institutes of Health studying the nervous system’s chemical messengers. His insight is that a toxin forms as the body breaks down dopamine, and that oxidation of that toxin damages the very nerve cells Parkinson’s destroys. The regimen interrupts both steps. What is being named is that combination and the protocol around it. The institute already has a name and is out of scope here.

What makes this hard.

Both the physician and the patient have to accept this name, and what each of them needs from it pulls in the opposite direction. Most of the names you are about to read satisfy one and quietly fail the other. One name is the default. A clinical name for physicians with a separate program name for patients is the thing that would have to earn its place. Noticing which of the two a name serves is most of the work of rating it, and it is what the group needs from you.

The physician’s problem

Defensibility, not recall.

Consider what a neurologist is being asked to do. Prescribe a drug off label, for a disease the patient does not have yet, on the strength of a mechanism whose confirming study has been designed but not run. That is professional exposure, taken voluntarily, for no revenue.

The risk is not that he forgets the name. It is that he will not sign his name next to it. So the name has to give him cover: it should read as a bounded, documented protocol he is following, with an author and a rationale, rather than a product he is promoting. A protocol has a citation. A brand has a marketing department.

A name that sounds like something sold moves the risk onto the physician personally. That is a reason to mark it not right, on the merits.

The patient’s problem

Adherence without feedback.

The patient has no symptoms. Often it is the worried adult child of someone already diagnosed. They will take three things daily, for years, and nothing will happen. No symptom relief, no number that moves, no proof. Preventive regimens fail here more than anywhere else.

So the name has to offer an identity rather than a promise. “I am on ___” should sound like a stance a person took early and deliberately. It should not sound like hope for an outcome.

Prevention and delay are the only claims the evidence supports, and even those are not proven yet. Names that promise years, mornings, or protection sell the thing that makes a patient quit in month eight, and they say more than anyone can honestly say.

Which problem comes first

The physician’s, and it is not close.

One component is prescription only. There is no patient without a physician, and patient enthusiasm cannot route around that. So when a name forces a choice, the physician wins. Weigh the clinical read first, then check the consumer read.

One name may not be able to do both jobs. If you find yourself wanting one name for the physician and a different one for the patient, that is worth saying in a rationale box.

The two reads, said out loud

Say both of these aloud for every name. Clinical: “I would like to start you on ___.” Consumer: “I am on ___.”

The clinical read has to survive a referral letter without sounding like a product pitch. The consumer read has to survive a person telling their sister, and eventually a label. A name that clears both is rare and worth flagging. Each rating card records both reads for you.

Two more things

Ownability is harder here than usual

Two of the three components are things anyone can buy. Only the combination and its use are patent pending, so purely descriptive names may not be ownable.

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The prescription component is long off patent and available as a generic. One supplement is a commodity. The plant extract is widely sold. This is why the field includes invented names and protocol style constructions alongside descriptive ones. You are not being asked to judge legal ownability, only to notice when a name is so generic that it could describe anyone’s product.

Nothing you rate here is a decision

Your independent ratings are combined into a consensus shortlist. Shortlisted names then get tested for usability, meaning, domain and trademark viability, and growth runway.

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The consensus sort produces a shortlist, the shortlist gets tested, and the final choice belongs to the regimen’s inventor. One note on fairness: a phrase that has been used as the title of the project’s own briefing documents is in the field as an ordinary candidate with no head start, and it was written by one of the people involved in this review. It stands or falls on the same terms as everything else.
The protocol

How this review works.

Reviewers work alone, then a consensus sort. The rules below protect the quality of the result.

Rule 1

Review alone

Do not discuss candidates with the other reviewers until everyone has submitted. Independent reads come first; the group conversation comes after.

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Group discussion before independent review lets the most confident voice in the room set everyone’s anchor. The whole value of multiple reviewers is multiple uncorrelated reads. Your ratings stay on your own device until you export and send them; nobody sees your entries through this site. The candidates are also presented to you in an order nobody else shares, so that fatigue does not fall on the same names in every review.

Rule 2

The question is fit, not affection

For every name, the question is: is this name right for the brief? It is never: do I like it?

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You will like names that are wrong for this regimen and feel lukewarm about names that are right for it. Rate against the brief page: the prescribing physician first, the unsettled register, the claims boundary. If you find yourself writing “I just like it” or “I just don’t,” go back to the brief and find the actual reason.

Rule 3 · Load-bearing

Say every name out loud, twice

Clinical read: “I would like to start you on ___.” Consumer read: “I am on ___.” Both reads matter, and a name that clears both is worth flagging.

This is the one mechanical step in the review and it takes five seconds per name. Names that look fine on a screen fail out loud, and names that look plain read with real authority in a physician’s mouth. When a name clears one read and fails the other, note which one in your rationale. That pattern across the whole field is one of the most useful things this review can produce.

Each rating card records both reads for you: mark each one works or fails as you say it.

Rule 4

The verdicts

Each name gets one of three verdicts: Right for the brief. Could be right. Not right for the brief.

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“Right for the brief” should be rare; spend it on names you would defend in the consensus conversation. “Could be right” is a real verdict, not a dodge: use it when a name has a strength worth discussing and a weakness worth testing. “Not right” needs a reason, even a short one. With a field this size, be stingy with the top verdict. A short list of strong advances is far more useful than a long one.

Rule 5

Rationale is required for names you advance

Any name you mark “Right for the brief” or “Could be right” needs at least one sentence of rationale tied to the brief.

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The consensus sort works on overlapping rationale, not just overlapping votes. “A neurologist could say this without wincing” is useful. “Love it” is not. For “Not right” verdicts a reason is welcome but a short tag is enough: overclaims, too clinical, too soft, unpronounceable, generic, confusing.

Rule 6

Watch for overclaiming

Prevention and delay are the only claims the evidence supports, and even those are not yet proven. A name that promises cure or protection is wrong for the brief, however good it sounds.

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This is a real screening criterion, not a legal footnote. The regimen aims to slow or prevent a disease process in people without symptoms, and the study confirming its biological effect has not been run yet. If a candidate reads to you as a guarantee, mark it not right and say so. Better to catch it here than after adoption.

Rule 7

Do not screen domains or trademarks yourself

Rate the name, not its availability. Domain and trademark screening happens after the shortlist, with proper tools and proper counsel.

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If you happen to know of a conflict, note it in the rationale box and keep rating on the merits. A name killed early on a rumor of unavailability is the most common way good names die. The same applies to social handles.

Rule 8

When you finish

Use the export button to copy your completed review, then send it to Daniel. Your entries are saved on your own device as you go, so you can review in more than one sitting.

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The export is a plain text block: your name, the date, your verdict and rationale per candidate. Once all reviews are in, the consensus sort is prepared and the group conversation is scheduled. Expect roughly 50 to 70 minutes to review the full field with care; two or three sittings is fine.
The field

The field: 84 candidates.

Families are strategies, not rankings. Rate every name; the strongest fields usually surprise their makers.

Scan the whole field before you rate anything. The one-line strategy under each family is all the framing there is; the rest is your read against the brief. Click a family to start there, or begin at the top.

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Not a rating card

Two variants of candidate 84

“The Pre-Purposing Regimen” and “Pre-Purposed One” are variants of the same idea as candidate 84 and share its permission question. If your verdict on 84 would differ for either variant, say so in its rationale box. They are not separate cards.

Not a rating card

One name, or two?

This regimen might carry a single name, or two: a formal clinical name used by physicians and in the literature, and a separate program name used with patients. We looked hard at the best known example of the two name approach in another disease area, and it is a cautionary case rather than a model. The two names there did not keep their claims separate; the prevention offering borrowed the treatment offering’s stronger promises, and both sat inside one commercial system. So we are treating one name as the default and two as the thing that has to earn its place. You are not being asked to decide this. But if while rating you find yourself wanting one name for the doctor and a different one for the patient, please say so in that name’s rationale box. That pattern across the field is real evidence and we would rather hear it from you than assume it.
The question for every name is: is this name right for the brief? It is never: do I like it?

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The shortlist pass

The names you advanced.

Re-read each rationale. Keep it only if it would survive the consensus conversation; demote anything that would not. With a field this size, be stingy with the top verdict. The order below is the candidate file order, not a preference.

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The two reads
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Tie it to

Nothing here yet. Names you mark “Right for the brief” or “Could be right” appear on this page for a second look.
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Export

Send your review to Daniel.

Copy the text block below and send it however you normally reach Daniel. Do not discuss candidates with the other reviewers until everyone has submitted.

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Off the spine, the evidence

For the day someone asks how do you know?

None of the naming guidance rests on our say-so. Eight cases below: what was tried, what was documented, what carries over to a prevention regimen sold through physicians. Every card shows its evidence grade, because a file that grades its own sources is one you can circulate without apologizing for it. Flag the ones that map to your situation; if we talk again, your flags are the agenda. The full research file, sources and all, is at the bottom of this page.

Not required reading, and not part of the review. Nothing here counts toward your progress.

The eight cases Case, grade, what transfers
01
Primary The Alzheimer’s prevention protocol that became a platform the Bredesen Protocol, ReCODE and PreCODE Two names did not produce two claims environments. Guidance leans here
02
Primary A cardiac lifestyle program that Medicare agreed to pay for the Ornish program A name becomes evidence-bearing only when the program is fixed enough to define.
03
Primary The same reimbursement outcome, with one name instead of three the Pritikin Program The simpler naming architecture reached the same destination.
04
Mixed A lab-personalized, prescription-inclusive protocol under a single eponym the Shoemaker Protocol A neutral eponym did not rescue contested evidence, and did not add a promise to it.
05
Mixed A high-dose protocol that spread internationally on a bare eponym the Coimbra Protocol Physicians moved a protocol across borders with nothing but a name.
06
Primary A founder-named cancer regimen tested head to head, and beaten the Gonzalez regimen A name preserves recognition. It cannot preserve legitimacy.
07
Mixed An autoimmune diet protocol built on a recovery narrative the Wahls Protocol An eponym plus a founder story mobilizes patients, and risks being read as proof.
08
Primary Clinical shorthand and commercial brand, side by side HIV, oncology, and WHO tuberculosis naming Descriptive shorthand lets skeptics cite you without adopting your vocabulary. Guidance leans here
Case 1 · The closest precedent · Primary

The Alzheimer’s prevention protocol that became a platform

The case: the Bredesen Protocol, with ReCODE and PreCODE, under Apollo Health

Setting

Neurodegenerative disease, 2014 to present. A physician scientist with a research career at a major federal institute built a personalized multi-component protocol combining prescription elements, supplements, diet, and lab-guided personalization.

The move

The naming accumulated rather than being designed. Research papers used a technical acronym. A founder-eponym protocol name appeared in commercial dissemination around the same time as a trade book. A company then acquired the business and launched two coined program names: one for people with symptoms, carrying an explicit promise of reversal, and one for people without symptoms, positioned as prevention. Around those sit further registered names for reports, software, practitioner training, clinics, supplements, and a diet framework.

Documented outcome

The two programs are genuinely distinct products. The symptomatic program runs about 75 dollars a month with a 112-biomarker baseline panel and expects a prescribing clinician. The prevention program runs about 40 dollars a month with a narrower panel and no required clinician. So audience segmentation worked. But the claims boundary did not hold: the prevention page describes itself as modeled on the treatment program, calls the approach proven, and points asymptomatic readers toward material about reversing decline. Separately, the founder eponym is not an organically adopted clinical term at all. It is a registered trademark, granted on the Supplemental Register in 2020 after an earlier application was abandoned.

What transfers

This is the case that most resembles the position you are in, and it is a caution rather than a template. Two names did not produce two claims environments. If a prevention offering and a treatment offering share an evidence narrative, they will share the strongest claim in that narrative regardless of what each is called. It also shows that a founder eponym does not stay in the clinical register by itself; here it became commercial IP within a few years.

Evidence grade

Primary. Company materials, federal trademark records with serial and registration numbers, peer-reviewed commentary, and investigative reporting. The strongest-sourced case in the file.

Case 2 · The reimbursement proof · Primary

A cardiac lifestyle program that Medicare agreed to pay for

The case: the Dr. Dean Ornish Program for Reversing Heart Disease

Setting

Cardiovascular disease. A named multi-component program combining nutrition, exercise, stress management, and group support, delivered through certified sites.

The move

Built the program as a fixed, replicable specification rather than a flexible philosophy, then took the accumulated peer-reviewed evidence for that exact program to the federal payer.

Documented outcome

Approved in 2010 as intensive cardiac rehabilitation, meaning the named program itself became a reimbursable service. The payer recorded reservations about enrollment difficulty, expense, and the absence of significant differences on some hard outcomes, and approved it anyway because the statutory criteria were met. Critically, the payer refused to let merely similar programs rely on that evidence.

What transfers

This is the strongest affirmative case for naming a multi-component protocol, and its condition is demanding. A name becomes an evidence-bearing object only when the composition, delivery, eligibility, training, outcomes, and quality controls are stable enough to define the exact program. A regimen that varies practitioner by practitioner cannot make this move, however good the name is.

Evidence grade

Primary. Federal coverage determination documents.

Case 3 · The simpler architecture · Primary

The same reimbursement outcome, with one name instead of three

The case: the Pritikin Program

Setting

Cardiovascular disease. A comprehensive physician-office program combining a defined diet, exercise, and counseling, with an optional residential component.

The move

Used a single founder-linked program name. No separate promise-bearing patient brand, no coined program name sitting beside a clinical umbrella.

Documented outcome

Reached the same federal reimbursement approval in the same year as case 2. Worth noting separately: one of its historical trademark registrations was cancelled in 2016, and the program remained approved and commercially recognizable regardless.

What transfers

Two useful things. First, the simpler naming architecture reached the same destination, which argues that additional named layers are optional rather than necessary. Second, legitimacy attached to the program and its evidence rather than to the trademark. A cancelled registration did not undo an approved program. That is worth remembering when trademark availability starts driving naming decisions.

Evidence grade

Primary. Federal coverage determination documents plus trademark records.

Case 4 · The operational twin · Mixed

A lab-personalized, prescription-inclusive protocol under a single eponym

The case: the Shoemaker Protocol for CIRS

Setting

A contested chronic inflammatory condition. Diagnosis rests on exposure history, symptoms, laboratory abnormalities, and treatment response; the protocol then sequences environmental remediation, prescription agents, supplements, and monitoring.

The move

One clinical eponym for everything. Central certification, a practitioner directory, and tiered training sit around that single name, with no separate patient-facing brand.

Documented outcome

The naming stayed simple and the science stayed contested. A major academic medical center states the underlying condition is not an established diagnosis, while supportive literature and trained practitioners treat it as a defined illness.

What transfers

This is the closest structural match to what you are building: personalized by lab work, sequential, includes prescriptions, delivered through a certified network, outside pharmaceutical distribution. The lesson is honest in both directions. A single neutral eponym did not rescue contested evidence. But it also did not add an explicit efficacy promise to the controversy, which left less surface to attack.

Evidence grade

Mixed. Academic medical center position statements and practitioner literature, some of it authored from within the community that advocates the protocol.

Case 5 · Diffusion without a brand · Mixed

A high-dose protocol that spread internationally on a bare eponym

The case: the Coimbra Protocol

Setting

Autoimmune disease. Physician-supervised ultra-high-dose vitamin D treatment.

The move

No consumer brand, no central company, no certification platform. Just a clinical eponym, transmitted physician to physician, with independent clinics operating under their own identities and an informal international referral network.

Documented outcome

Substantial international diffusion. Also weak governance: no central control over dosing fidelity, practitioner competence, claims made in the field, adverse-event reporting, or version management. The acknowledged safety concerns include hypercalcemia and renal impairment where monitoring is inadequate.

What transfers

A direct counterexample to the assumption that a patient-facing brand is required for adoption. Word of mouth among physicians moved this across borders with nothing but a name. The trade-off is the thing to weigh: what you gain in credibility by not looking like a marketed product, you lose in control over how the protocol is administered and described.

Evidence grade

Mixed. Published clinical reports and safety literature; no centralized documentation exists by design.

Case 6 · The failure · Primary

A founder-named cancer regimen tested head to head, and beaten

The case: the Gonzalez regimen

Setting

Pancreatic cancer. A personalized regimen involving metabolic typing, multiple diets, pancreatic enzymes, extensive supplementation reportedly reaching around 150 pills a day, and detoxification procedures.

The move

A pure founder eponym, delivered through centralized private practice rather than a certification network.

Documented outcome

A comparative study against conventional chemotherapy did not simply fail to show superiority. Secondary summaries report worse survival and worse quality of life in the regimen group. The regimen was never approved as a cancer treatment.

What transfers

The disconfirming case, and the reason it belongs in this file. The eponym kept the regimen culturally coherent and recognizable long after the decisive evidence went against it. A name can preserve recognition. It cannot preserve legitimacy, and it can end up permanently binding a founder’s name to a negative result.

Evidence grade

Primary. National Cancer Institute summary and the comparative trial literature.

Case 7 · The founder story · Mixed

An autoimmune diet protocol built on a recovery narrative

The case: the Wahls Protocol

Setting

Multiple sclerosis. A physician who developed the protocol after her own diagnosis, then built a diet and lifestyle system, trade books, practitioner education, and a research program around it.

The move

Founder eponym across the whole system, with the personal recovery story as the primary acquisition engine.

Documented outcome

A funded trial compared the protocol’s elimination diet against another established diet and reported improvements in fatigue and quality of life. The approach remains adjunctive rather than an accepted substitute for disease-modifying therapy.

What transfers

An eponym plus a compelling founder narrative is genuinely powerful for mobilizing patients and making a complex behavior-change system memorable. The risk is that the story gets read as proof. Note also what the trial actually measured: patient-reported outcomes, not disease modification. If your evidence is target engagement rather than clinical outcome, the name should not imply otherwise.

Evidence grade

Mixed. Peer-reviewed trial results plus commercial and popular materials.

Case 8 · How medicine already does it · Primary

Clinical shorthand and commercial brand, side by side

The case: HIV, oncology, and World Health Organization tuberculosis regimen naming

Setting

Oncology, HIV, and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Multi-agent regimens are routine in all three.

The move

Two names with two entirely different jobs, and no conflict between them. In HIV, guidelines refer to a regimen by its components while the same fixed-dose combination is sold under a brand name. Oncology names combinations by their component initials, with numbered variants distinguishing clinically meaningful dosing differences. Tuberculosis guidelines do the same, with the regimen definition, eligibility, duration, and monitoring specified by the World Health Organization.

Documented outcome

These shorthands are not assigned by any central naming authority. They emerge through trial protocols, investigators, and repeated clinical use, and are then normalized by guideline bodies. They are weak trademark candidates precisely because they describe their components.

What transfers

This may be the more useful model than any branded protocol in this file. A descriptive clinical shorthand lets skeptical investigators cite, replicate, and criticize your regimen without adopting your commercial vocabulary, which is exactly what an evidence-first strategy needs. One caution: a component initialism works only while the components stay stable. If practitioners routinely add or substitute, the shorthand becomes misleading.

Evidence grade

Primary. Guideline bodies and government treatment references.

The full file

The full research file behind these cases is here: the naming architecture in detail, trademark records with serial numbers, the regulatory claims analysis, criticism separated by type, and a graded source list. It runs to about sixty pages. It is yours to circulate, with or without our name on it.

The print version opens the file and goes straight to your print dialog, where you can save it as a PDF.

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