Japanese Health Officials Investigate Magazine's Access To Viagra
June 30, 1998 10:45 AM
TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- A Japanese weekly magazine
is being investigated for offering to take orders from
readers for the impotency drug Viagra, which hasn't yet
received marketing approval in Japan, a government
official said Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, the magazine,
Shukan Gendai, is suspected of breaking Japanese
pharmaceutical laws. Viagra, sold by Pfizer Inc. (PFE),
hasn't yet been approved by the Health and Welfare
Ministry and sales in Japan are banned. "If there's been
any violation, we will take appropriate measures,"
Ministry official Toru Yamamoto said.
The investigation comes as the ministry is moving to
speed up the approval of the drug by using U.S.
scientific data rather than relying on tests in Japan,
officials said Tuesday.
Shukan Gendai's July 11 edition includes postcard-sized
order forms that readers can fill out and send to the
publisher, Kodansha Ltd. The magazine offers to
forward the orders to a company that could get 10 pills
for $190. An article in the same issue details the
booming black market for the drug in Japan, where a
single Viagra pill reportedly can sell for 50,000 yen
($352.95).
The magazine also describes the various ways Japanese
can buy the drug via mail-order companies, the Internet
or special Viagra shopping trips to the U.S. arranged by
a Japanese travel agency. "We're happy to help our
readers obtain Viagra at the proper price, and find a
solution to a problem they've had for a long time," the
magazine said in the article.
Viagra, which came on the U.S. market in April, is
supposed to be prescribed by urologists and family
physicians to treat impotent men, but the hot-selling sex
pill is turning up on the street, on the Internet and in
discos, where it is gobbled up by healthy men. But Pfizer
has said that the impotency drug won't turn healthy men
into "super-studs."
There have been 30 reports of men dying after taking
Viagra, although most of them were elderly, with other
health problems. Pfizer said Viagra users shouldn't
combine the drug with nitrates, commonly taken by heart
patients, because nitrates and Viagra dilate blood
vessels by acting on the same chemical mechanism,
causing serious cardiovascular side effects.
Copyright (c) 1998 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
|
