we just can't get a brake from the newswires " So he tried Vivus's Muse, a little tablet that a man must
insert into the end of the penis. "Not only doesn't it work
well but it hurts. I mean, it really hurts," he said.
", pfizer is winning hands down without the benifit of advertising as expected. the numbers are staggering but as many have stated before muse will make a comeback probably in 3 and 4 qtrs. i betting on it.
gw
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON, May 1 (Reuters) - Ask any receptionist at a
urologist's office -- men are excited about Viagra.
"The phone doesn't stop ringing," sighed one.
The new drug by Pfizer, the first pill men can take for
impotence, is already selling in record numbers. Analysts
estimate 36,000 prescriptions were written in the first week it
was on the market and 113,000 the second.
"Almost everyone who has a sexual problem and reads the
newspaper is interested in asking for this drug," said Milton
Lakin, a internist who specializes in sexual dysfunction at the
Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
The reason for the enthusiasm is clear to Barry Fribush, a
57-year-old consultant who says he became impotent after a
colon cancer operation. The drug works.
"I love it," he said in a telephone interview. "These are
erections like I had when I was 20 years old. It makes a
terrific towel rack, or maybe a toilet paper dispenser."
Experts in the field are equally delighted. Dr. James
Barada, a urologist in Albany, New York, who helped draw up
erectile dysfunction guidelines for the American Urological
Association, said he fought for years to get the medical
establishment to treat impotence as a real disease.
Now Viagra has done it for him. "It's turned into a real
water-cooler conversation and I think in one fell swoop it has
completely erased the stigma," Barada said by telephone.
For men like Fribush, who talk freely about their problems
and their use of the drug, the need to spread the word about
the drug outweighs any sense of embarrassment.
'DRUG REQUIRES A SENSE OF HUMOR'
"This drug requires a sense of humor," he admits. But after
appearing on television, he said, he was bombarded with calls
from men. "I get calls in the middle of the night from people
saying 'Hey, guy, where can I get that pill?"
An estimated 20 to 30 million American men suffer from
impotence, a figure that has not been lost on pharmaceutical
companies, which have dozens of remedies on the market. But
there is something about a pill that just appeals.
Fribush had tried "everything," he said. "I had colon
cancer surgery eight years ago. As a result of the surgery I
was left impotent. Having been a very sexually active person
before that surgery I was unwilling to give that up."
Fribush complained to his surgeon. "He said, 'I just saved
your life and you're worried about whether you had an erection
or not?'" Fribush said. "I tried supplements, testosterone,
which did lots for my libido but nothing for my physical
reaction," he said.
So he tried Pharmacia and Upjohn's Caverject, which must be
injected into the base of the penis. "Caverject works, but
Caverject is painful," he said. He hated injecting himself and
his wife refused. "Judy said to me, 'I'm not doing this. I'm
not injecting you there!'"
So he tried Vivus's Muse, a little tablet that a man must
insert into the end of the penis. "Not only doesn't it work
well but it hurts. I mean, it really hurts," he said.
'ONE BALL TO GO UP, ANOTHER TO GO DOWN'
Fribush had a friend who had a mechanical implant. "He was
very pleased to show me his mechanical implant. I decided I
didn't want that -- you press one ball to go up, press another
ball to go down, and it involves hospitalization."
So Fribush, who lives in Maryland, was happy to join in
clinical trials of Viagra. Known generically as sildenafil, it
was originally tested as a heart drug, but Pfizer clinicians
noticed a distinct side-effect in their young male volunteers:
they were having strong erections soon after taking the pills.
"It kind of made sense," Pfizer spokeswoman Mariann Caprino
said. "We were looking at drugs that expanded blood vessels.
and that's exactly how you get an erection."
Pfizer expected a big impotence market, but doctors,
analysts and company officials were all taken by surprise at
the rush of enthusiasm for the drug. One good side-effect, they
all agree, is that it will get men into doctors' offices.
"It's brought a huge number of patients that normally would
not have sought help, brought them out of the closet," said Dr.
Myron Murdoch, national medical director of the Columbia,
Maryland-based nonprofit Impotence Institute of America.
"In general men don't seek help from a doctor until they are
ready to die or have some serious symptoms that affect their
life," he said. "A woman comes into the office, she sits down,
you say 'What can I do for you?' and she tells you. Men -- it's
like extracting teeth."
Impotence hits men in an especially sensitive area. "They
know they have the problem but they are afraid to go to the
doctor -- they are afraid they will have to stick a needle into
the penis," Murdoch said.
So if men have to go to the doctor to ask for Viagra, that
can only be a good thing. "It gets them into the office and
then what we are going to do is find all these other
conditions."
IMPOTENCE A SYMPTOM, NOT A DISEASE
Urologists -- experts in male sexual organs -- agree that
impotence is a symptom, not a disease in its own right.
Impotence is associated with heart disease, high blood
pressure, diabetes and prostate trouble.
"The penile erectile function is a barometer of a lot of
other illnesses," Murdoch said.
Viagra itself has so far seemed to be very safe, with
side-effects ranging from a headache to a flushed face to,
oddly, an inability to distinguish between blue and green.
But Fribush is worried that the drug will be over-used,
prescribed to men who do not really need it. Then even more
side-effects might show up.
"I am waiting for the other shoe to drop where the FDA
(Food and Drug Administration) takes a look and says 'Whoa,'"
he said. "I'd hate to see anything happen to it."
Barada agrees. "Now suddenly with Viagra everyone who has a
prescription pad becomes an expert in erectile dysfunction. We
are probably writing a lot of prescriptions for people who
don't need it."
Already healthy men are asking for it. "We are seeing men
who are trying it recreationally. But this is not a drug that
fixes relationships," Barada said. "When a guy comes in, he
says, 'I have impotence, doc. When I was 20 I used to be able
to to it twice a night and I had a towel hanger.' That guy does
not have erectile dysfunction," he said.
"And dammit if these guys aren't trying three or four
(pills), so if one works OK and two work a little bit better,
three have got to be better yet." The result -- severe
headaches and perhaps other side-effects, Barada said.
Murdoch agrees this is happening but sees no reason why
healthy men -- and women -- should not try Viagra. "I am
planning on taking a few bottles home and trying it myself. My
hunch is it's going to work. There's no reason, biochemically,
why it shouldn't enhance normal sexual function," he said.
Barada said men must realize that Viagra is not going to
change their lives. "You don't get a sports car and a trophy
blonde. It's just a little blue pill. Let's put it in
perspective here."
But Fribush said Viagra had unseen effects on relationships
between men and women. Women married to impotent men often
feared they were no longer sexy to their husbands, he said.
"In my case, nothing could be further from the truth.
Because if the problem is psychological, the pill isn't going
to do a thing for you. It actually is going to change the
dynamic between the sexes. I think this is the most important
drug since the birth control (pill), frankly. It was important
to show that this was a physiological problem and not a
psychological problem."
((NYSE:PFE) (NYSE:PNU) (SWED:PHU) (NASDAQ:VVUS))
|
