FPUO (For Personal Use Only)
(Mass prescriptions on the brigade-level expressly controlled)
This article reports on a >> "Viagra-led election'' for Australia.<< Are they talking about an election, or an erection? With thinking like this, no wonder our stock markets are so screwed up.
Personal disclaimer: unfortunately, I no longer hold a position in PFE.
theage.com.au
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Friday 28 August 1998
Viagra rushed on to Australian shelves
By CLAIRE MILLER
Viagra - the wonder drug of flagging male desires - could be on
Australian pharmacy shelves as early as mid-September.
In an announcement that took even the United States
manufacturer, Pfizer, by surprise, the federal Health Minister, Dr
Michael Wooldridge, said yesterday the impotence drug had
been approved for sale by prescription in Australia.
The approval, accelerated by the Australian Drug Evaluation
Committee to avoid a black market developing, is subject to
Pfizer including a health warning that the use of Viagra by men
with cardiac disease has been associated with sudden death.
In the US, where more than 3.6million scripts have been
dispensed since March, health authorities have received 123
reports of people dying after taking the drug, 69 of which have
been verified.
Many of the deaths are believed to have followed heart troubles
triggered by exertion or an adverse reactions with nitrate drugs,
which are mostly used for angina.
Pfizer is yet to set a local price for the blue, diamond-shaped pills
which sell for about $A12 each in the US, but a spokesman for
Dr Wooldridge said he believed the cost would be ''competitive''
and the drug could be available within two to three weeks.
In a brief statement, Pfizer said it was surprised by the
announcement as the approval process for Viagra was still in
progress with the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr David
Brand, welcomed the quick approval, saying the AMA had
expressed concerns a couple of months ago about the potential
for deaths if men used Viagra without medical supervision.
He warned that Viagra was not a recreational drug but predicted
that Viagra would outsell even penicillin. About 40per cent of
Australian men over the age of 40 suffer ''erectile dysfunction''.
That figure rises to about 60per cent of men over the age of 70.
New drugs usually take between 12 and 18 months to win
approval for use in Australia, but Dr Wooldridge said Viagra was
brought forward because of concerns about an emerging black
market and sales over the Internet.
The minister's spokesman said he thought Australian women
would also welcome the decision. Viagra is undergoing trials for
its effect on women's sex drive, but he said in the meantime,
Viagra was not just a drug for men.
''One of the things we are learning more about with an ageing
population is that sex is still an important part of people's
relationships well into older groups,'' he said.
The Federal Opposition's health spokesman, Mr Michael Lee,
accused Dr Wooldridge of making a failed attempt to cynically
manipulate Australia's drug approval process and said Labor
would investigate the matter when Parliament resumed.
One senior specialist, who did not want to be named, said the
minister was playing politics both to pressure the company into
accepting the warnings and to maximise his own publicity.
Speaking from an international impotence conference in
Amsterdam, Perth specialist Dr Bronwyn Stuckey, said
colleagues had predicted such an announcement would be made
as part of an election stunt.
The president of the Australasian Society for Impotence
Medicine, Associate Professor Doug Lording, added: ''I
understand we're into election mode and we're going to have a
Viagra-led election.''
Published by The Age Online Pty Ltd ACN 069 962 885
c1998 David Syme & Co Ltd
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