biologic

[Arnold Zwicky]

On Aug 9, 2012, at 10:27 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> Has anyone brought up "biologic drugs/medicine" here earlier? I don't
> recall it coming up. I keep noticing the "biologic medicine" commercials
> on TV for the past three months or so, but there appears to be very
> little in terms of lexicographic tracks... The only one I found is in
> Wiktionary:
>
> An extremely complex drug, vaccine or antitoxin that is made from a
> living organism, or from products of a living organism.


-- in this example, with the adjective "biologic" 'a substance of biological origin used as a drug, vaccine, pesticide, etc.'. in "biologic drug/medicine" nouned (directly or  by truncation) as the noun "biologic", very common in the plural, "biologics".  the adj. and n. are in OED3 (Nov. 2010) as alternatives to "biological" in these uses, but ony the n. has its own subentry in the medical sense -- but the medical adj. has one cite:

2004   _N.Y. Times_ (National ed.) 17 Oct. i. 26/2   Contamination of blood products by the AIDS virus and other incidents led to criticism of the agency's inspections of so-called biologic products.

similarly, "allergenic", as in this passage from the FDA:

Allergenics

The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) regulates allergenic products. There are currently two types of allergenic products licensed for use: allergen patch tests and allergenic extracts.

... Allergenic extracts are used for the diagnosis and treatment of allergic diseases

  http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Allergenics/default.htm

.....

but this sense of the adj. isn't in the OED, nor is the n.

arnold

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