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Biotech / Medical : PFE (Pfizer) How high will it go? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Lamb who wrote (2826)	5/23/1998 7:33:00 PM
From: Lazlo Pierce	Respond to of 9523

From the San Diego Union-Tribune Fri. ************************************ INSIDE MEXICO Viagra a sensation even before it's for sale By S. Lynne Walker May 22, 1998 People call it the Pill of Happiness. The Blue Hope. The Masculinity Pill. In this land of machismo, Viagra is an overnight sensation. And it hasn't even hit the market yet. "There is not a day that passes that people do not ask me about Viagra," said Sergio N£¤ez, manager of Farmacia Gems, a crowded corner pharmacy at the southern edge of Mexico City. "There are men who want to buy a pill for every day of the week," he said. "They want to try it out." Men are clamoring for the little blue pill, which won't be released for sale in Mexico until next month. "My patients are telling me, 'Get me the pill or I will find another doctor,'ÿ" said a Mexico City urologist who treats men for impotence. "The propaganda about this product has been so massive that it has awakened people's curiosity." Since Viagra's approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on March 27, the anti-impotence drug has been the subject of incessant media coverage in Mexico, where an estimated 4.5 million men suffer from sexual dysfunction. Nightly newscasts devote entire segments of their one-hour broadcasts to stories about Viagra. Radio programs take calls from listeners wondering about the new medication. And newspapers devote full pages -- complete with graphics -- to the healing powers of the drug. "Goodbye to impotence?" a headline in one newspaper read. So great is the demand for potent sex that Viagra has sparked a brisk black-market business, Mexico City doctors said. "We have the medication," said a Mexico City urologist who declined to be named. "I have a bottle of 30 tablets right here." He's selling each pill for about $50 -- five times the price in pharmacies north of the border. But he expects to run out soon. The doctor said he plans to buy a fresh supply in the United States. "I am going to San Diego to get the medication next week." In San Diego, he said, doctor friends will help him get all the Viagra he needs. The government says anyone caught smuggling the medication into Mexico for sale on the black market will be prosecuted. Pharmacies caught selling the Pfizer Inc. drug without a prescription could be fined up to $30,000 and be shut down. But everyone, it seems, has Viagra to sell. Even in Tepito, Mexico City's infamous labyrinth black market, vendors are hawking a drug that they claim is Viagra, along with porn videos and sex toys. Problem is, a local television crew secretly filmed a vendor selling pink tablets, not Viagra's trademark blue. The Ministry of Health is up in arms about Viagra. "We do not think it is effective," said Victor Acuna, deputy director of information at the Health Ministry. "The only thing going on here is that Pfizer is hyping its product." Still, Acuna said the Health Ministry will permit the sale of Viagra beginning in June, but only in cases of diagnosed impotency and with a physician's prescription. The price will be about $10.50 a tablet, he said. The Health Ministry and many Mexican doctors worry that men who don't suffer from impotency will take Viagra, putting their sexual health at risk. "There is a great expectation among people about Viagra," said one Mexico City doctor. "Even those who do not need the product are going to buy it. There are probably children, no more than 15 years old, who will purchase this drug. And there are men who will think, 'Imagine, if I am like this normally, with the medication I will be a Superman.'ÿ" But some Mexican men who have already tried Viagra aren't particularly impressed with the results. "My patients are telling me, 'Doctor, this is not the panacea that we were expecting,'ÿ" said a Mexico City urologist. "They are not really satisfied," he said. S. LYNNE WALKER is Mexico City bureau chief for Copley News Service.