From AOL Market Day
14:25 ET ******
PFIZER INC. (PFE) 95 1/2 +1 1/8. Shares of pharmaceutical concern have received a boost from today's announcement that the FDA had approved its Viagra oral drug for male erectile dysfunction. While the approval had been well anticipated by the marketplace, news of the government okay has provided the stock with that much more reason to be cheerful about as the market for this drug could easily top the $1 billion mark in about five years of being launch. In the true sense of medical discovery, this drug was found by mistake as Pfizer sought to find a drug for alleviating angina, and instead found men in the study reporting better erections than in the past. Viagra does have some side effects, including headaches, flushing, indigestion and altered color perception and the FDA recommends that it should only be taken once per day. However, the fact that it does not involve an injection like the current Vivus (VVUS 10 15/16 +3/4) drug MUSE, the new Pfizer drug makes it more desirable from the start. According to Pfizer, Viagra should be available with a prescription by mid-April at a wholesale price of $7 a tablet, although the drug has yet received approval for marketing anywhere else in the world. Nonetheless, Wall Street is betting that this new drug could catapult Pfizer to the world lead in drug prescriptions, surpassing Merck & Co. sometime in the near term, a view that it shared by the company's CEO William Steere. If so, there is still plenty of room for this issue to appreciate, given the potential for Viagra as it is estimated that 30 million US males are affected by impotency. |
