From The Washington Post: Little Pill, Big Ado
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 23, 1998; Page B04
This column comes with a Parents Advisory Warning. The subject is:
Viagra, the newly approved impotence pill from Pfizer. The drug has the
Web aswirl. On the Internet you can read the official info about the drug,
which is taken orally about an hour before sex and has worked on some
70 percent of those tested. You can also find jokes, a Food and Drug
Administration fact sheet, testimonials from users -- and liars -- and even a
clinic that claims it will prescribe Viagra after a phone consultation.
The starting point is the Pfizer site. From the home page you can click on a
story about erectile dysfunction and read the deadly-dull fine print about
Viagra. If you look closely, you'll discover that one of the drug's mild side
effects is the inability to distinguish between the colors green and blue.
As one 49-year-old friend put it, "I don't really care about the difference
between green and blue."
Such quips are showing up all over the Net. In David Letterman's Top Ten
List Archives, for instance, you'll find a roster of the side effects of the new
impotence drug. The number one side effect, says Letterman, is,
"pregnancy."
The FDA site sports a bunch of pages about the new miracle drug. The Q
& A sheet answers some consumer questions. For example, How does
Viagra work? and What does it cost? It does not answer others that folks
are asking, such as: Is it true that women also benefit from taking Viagra?
and Will college kids now have to compete with platinum-haired,
platinum-carded old guys?
If you're looking for war stories and discussions of the drug's efficacy, try
Deja News. Remember that people who post messages on the Internet are
not always who, or what, they appear to be. But the give and take here, in
the newsgroups -- such as alt.support.impotence -- is stimulating.
And if you're searching for the drug itself, clinics such as the Virginia
Urology Clinic in Richmond post schedules of seminars. The Vascular
Center for Men in Milwaukee takes the process one step farther. The
center advertises phone consultations for $50 and re-fill consultations for
$25. Earlier this week, the phone there was busy busy busy.
Pfizer is concerned about the blossoming of sites such as the Milwaukee
one. "We're against it for a couple of reasons," says Pfizer spokesman
Andrew McCormick. He explains that it's a bad way to practice medicine
and that doctors should examine patients to learn if there are physiological
reasons for impotence, such as diabetes or a heart condition. Also, patients
taking nitroglycerin or other nitrates and Viagra at the same time can
experience a severe reduction in blood pressure, McCormick says.
Another Pfizer concern is copycat medicines. McCormick says that the
company has requested a restraining order against an herbal alternative
marketed in Georgia and Pfizer is monitoring another herbal product called
Viagro that is sold through an Internet site.
Eileen Tsuchiya of the Virginia Urology Center believes that older patients
will probably keep going to their doctors. "Younger patients may be more
willing to take the risk with their health on the Internet," she says. "And
more embarrassed to seek medical help."
Linton Weeks can be reached at weeksl@washpost.com
GETTING THERE: Pfizer at pfizer.com; Letterman's Top Ten
List Archives at
199.173.162.11;
FDA at fda.gov; Deja
News at dejanews.com; Virginia Urology Clinic at
uro.com and Viagro at
multiworld.com
c Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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