Another story - from the Sacramento Bee. Nick, have you have enough of Viagra tales? The more the merrier, I'll say. When more people learned about Viagra, the next time they want to invest in a pharmaceutical co. they'll think of PFE.
Men react passionately to new impotency drug
By Andy Furillo
Bee Staff Writer
(Published April 23, 1998)
It's not like everything had shut down. But the Sacramento man said
he needed to put some zip back into his sex life, so he talked to his
urologist.
The timing couldn't have been better.
Just about the time the 60-year-old legal professional made his
appointment, something called Viagra was coming onto the market. He
got a prescription. The results?
"More starting power," said the man, who asked to remain anonymous.
In less than two weeks, Viagra has turned the mostly circumspect
world of male impotence into the proving ground for the latest medical
miracle.
By the tens of thousands, men both young and old who thought penile
erections were ancient history have rediscovered the wonders of sexual
pleasure.
At $10 a pill, the answer for them has been Viagra.
"Everybody had been waiting for the magic tablet," said Sacramento
urologist Paul Gottlieb. "It looks like we may have it."
Gottlieb, chairman of urology at Mercy San Juan Hospital, has
prescribed Viagra to 50 patients in the drug's less-than-a-fortnight
market history.
So far, Viagra is batting a thousand with Gottlieb. "Phenomenal," he
said. "It is an-unheard-of thing."
The pill represents perhaps the greatest advance in the recent history of
treating male impotence.
Before Viagra, men were limited to sometimes bulky, sometimes
ineffective contraptions and medications to deal with their sexual
dysfunction -- injectable drugs, suction devices, penile implants.
The wonder sex drug came about pretty much by blunder.
Some European cardiologists were testing new possibilities in heart
medication when they stumbled on a drug called sildenafil.
It turned out that sildenafil didn't do much for the heart. But it sure had
an interesting side effect.
"Nobody wanted to give the drug back because they were getting
erections," Gottlieb said. "It suddenly clicked on -- 'My God, this is
what we're looking for.' "
What sildenafil does is throw a roadblock on an enzyme that breaks
down the production of nitric oxide, the chemical released during
sexual stimulation that allows blood to swell into the penis.
No enzyme, more nitric oxide. More nitric oxide, better sex.
Or so the European researchers noted when they switched their tests
from one organ to another.
"Nobody dropped out of the clinical trial," Gottlieb said. "That is
absolutely unheard of."
Gottlieb said that across the country, Viagra -- the trade name for
sildenafil that is being marketed by Pfizer Inc. -- is selling in the
neighborhood of 30,000 prescriptions a day.
Viagra is gaining on Prozac as Americans' most popular prescribed
drug. Prozac is going at 50,000 prescriptions a day. Gottlieb predicted
Viagra will pass Prozac sometime "extremely" soon, based on patient
response.
"They're ecstatic," he said. "It's making a huge difference in their lives."
The Mercy San Juan pharmacy is filling three to four prescriptions a
day. "It's been flying off the shelves ever since it came on the market,"
said pharmacist Karen Bishop.
"It's like any other medication that comes on the market with a hype,"
said Isac Sam, the pharmacist at the Safeway on Alhambra Boulevard
near midtown. "A lot of people want to go for it."
Patients pop a tab of Viagra an hour before intercourse. The beauty of
the drug, Gottlieb said, is that they have to be otherwise sexually
stimulated for the drug to take effect.
"For a single man, if he thinks he's going to have intercourse and takes
a tablet, but things don't work out, there's no problem," Gottlieb said.
There are some potential side effects to worry about -- headaches,
flushing, indigestion, dizziness, problems distinguishing between blue
and green and the like.
"But that's just been in a very small number of cases," Gottlieb said.
"Nobody has been giving the drug back."
Viagra is believed to be effective for up to 70 percent of impotent men,
whose numbers are believed to be in the millions.
It is off-limits to men already taking nitrate medications, such as
nitroglycerine, because of its interference with that nitrate-snuffing
enzyme.
Some Viagra fakes have already hit the market, a development that
Gottlieb termed "very scary" due to the lack of controls on drugs that
are claimed to contain the same erection-inducing properties of
real-deal sildenafil.
The interest generated by the sex drug figures to have an impact in
reducing the prevalence of male impotence, leading to alternative
treatments for those who can't benefit from Viagra.
"As new treatments came out, we saw large numbers of men seeking
them," Gottlieb said. ". . . This is going to bring in tens of millions for
treatment. It's happening now."
For most of them, it's working wonders. Just ask the 60-year-old
Sacramento man who said the only side effect he's experienced has
been a smile on his face.
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