|
Viagra - Article
Viagra was
launched in mid April 1998 in the US, and was an instant hit. Within 14 days
doctors were writing more than 110,000 Viagra scripts a week. In 14 weeks 2
million Viagra scripts had been written in the US alone and Viagra had
become established as a new recreational drug in club culture world-wide,
though non-medical supplies were rare in many countries with smuggled
tablets fetching over $100 each.
As a result of
all this, Pfizer's shares soared from $45 to $115, but will they soon crash?
Wild claims are being made that Viagra has the power not only to cure
impotence but also to give healthy, non-impotent older men the sexual
performance of a twenty year old. Viagra has created an overnight stampede
to millions of physicians by a generation of perfectly normal and healthy
men, looking for the greatest Viagra enhanced sex they've had in years. Sex
up to six times a night has been reported after normal men take Viagra.
Women are also taking Viagra.
Viagra started
off as a rather disappointing treatment for angina but doctors began to
notice that patients were very reluctant to stop taking it, even after
surgery had dealt with any angina problems. One by one the Viagra users
confessed that a wonderful thing had happened after Viagra: their sex life
had dramatically improved. Many of these Viagra patients had medical reasons
why they may have had problems, ranging from the impotence ( erectile
dysfunction) caused by blood pressure drugs, heart problems and general to
health. Doctors are trained to report all unexpected side effects, and the
reports on Viagra kept pouring in.
But was Viagra
safe to use? Doctors reported that 70% were helped by Viagra to a better sex
life, while 16% got headaches, 10% severely, others had other symptoms such
as indigestion or a blue tinge to their sight.
These diamond
shaped Viagra pills cost around $12 for a single tablet. The effect soon
wears off so the demand can only be guessed at. If just 2 million men decide
to use Viagra regularly (twice a week) then the US demand alone will be
around 200 million tablets a year or up to $2 billion in market value. But
that's just the US.
British
clinics are not allowed yet to prescribe Viagra except on a "named patient"
basis, which is a very restrictive license. That means the doctor must have
an overwhelming reason to give Viagra and that the patient agrees the
treatment is experimental. British private clinics are charging around
double the US price per Viagra tablet (£16) but are reluctant to do so
without a full diagnostic screen costing around £300-400.
So what of the
future? Expect the Viagra stampede to spread to other nations, with a brisk
black market developing in days or weeks, accelerated by the Internet which
allows more than 70 million male web surfers to get in touch with other men
who have got hold of tablets for their own use, that they are willing to
sell at grossly inflated prices. Expect there to be supply problems as
Pfizer struggles to keep pace with a global demand for Viagra.
Then expect
the problems. This Viagra will undoubtedly be shown to have some other
undesirable side effects, and there will be growing concern around the world
about the "responsibility" of a drug company in promoting a drug which will
be so widely abused by the healthy. Expect Viagra (and a new generation of
other drugs with similar action) to become widely used and abused by the
wealthy of every nation, with refusal of governments and insurance companies
to pay for Viagra without strong medical evidence of sexual dysfunction.
This will cause embarrassing problems for them. How do you assess
dysfunction except during the act itself? Other tests give partial results.
A generation of men will find, for once in their lives, that they are being
encouraged to boast about how poor their sexual performance is, to try and
convince doctors to part with another Viagra script.
Viagra is set
therefore to join the growing family of other drugs like steroids as a
performance enhancing drug for the healthy, and possession without medical
authority is likely to be banned in due course by some governments who will
see Viagra as a drug associated with abuse
|
