UK scientists squabble over who created Viagra
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON, July 16 (Reuters) - British scientists on Thursday squabbled over who invented Viagra, the blockbuster impotence drug that has improved the sex lives of tens of thousands of people.
U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc <PFE.N>, which stands to make billions from the wonder drug, claims it was a team effort and that "literally hundreds of people" at the company were involved in its development.
But that has not stopped British scientists at the U.S. company's research centre in the sleepy hamlet of Sandwich in southern England from laying claim to the title of Viagra man.
Six biologists, chemists, biochemists and chemical engineers are named on three patents held in Britain's Patent Office covering the six-year development of the drug. They are now quibbling over who really created it since newspapers trumpeted the magic blue pill as a British invention.
"There were three patents put forward for Viagra. Basically me and my team discovered how useful the drug might be," Dr Nicholas Terrett told The Daily Mail newspaper.
Terrett, who is listed on the first two patents, said Albert Wood and Peter Dunn, who are named on the third, did not invent the pill that has become the world's fastest selling drug.
"They created a way of mass producing it only," Terrett quipped.
Wood confirmed that he was involved in Viagra but distanced himself from any controversy.
"I can't say anything, you'll have to talk to the press office," he told journalists.
Apart from the prestige of being the inventor of Viagra, the only financial gain any of the scientists could hope to gain from the drug that has boosted Pfizer Inc's second quarter profits to $628 million is a bonus at the end of the year.
"Life might seem cruel but they are paid to work for the company and the company owns their inventions," a Pfizer spokesman told The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
"Literally hundreds of people at Pfizer have been involved in developing the drug. You can't really point to two individuals and say they spawned Viagra."
The wonder drug, launched in the United States in April, has already earned $411 million in the second quarter of 1998 for the New York-based drug company, and is expected to make $1 billion in its first year. The drug is due to be approved for use in Britain and other European countries later in the year.
The original patent was filed in 1991 for Sildenafil, a drug designed to help patients with heart conditions. But when scientists realised it could improve the performance of men suffering from impotence by increasing the blood flow to the penis, they filed another patent.
The third and final patent for the drug now named Viagra lists only Wood and Dunn and is dated June 1997.
The phenomenal reception of the drug in the United States and concern about demand and the costs have sparked fears in Britain that the drug could bankrupt the country's government- funded National Health Service (NHS).
A British urologist estimated that the cost of supplying the drug on prescription to NHS patients would be 125 million pounds ($204.8 million) a year.
--------------------
TAL News Server History:
ADD TAKE : 98/07/16 07:15
|
