Viagra 

Viagra was launched in mid April 1998 in the US, and was an instant hit. Within 14 days doctors were writing more than 110,000 Viagra scripts a week. In 14 weeks 2 million Viagra scripts had been written in the US alone and Viagra had become established as a new recreational drug in club culture world-wide, though non-medical supplies were rare in many countries with smuggled tablets fetching over $100 each. 

As a result of all this, Pfizer's shares soared from $45 to $115, but will they soon crash? Wild claims are being made that Viagra has the power not only to cure impotence but also to give healthy, non-impotent older men the sexual performance of a twenty year old. Viagra has created an overnight stampede to millions of physicians by a generation of perfectly normal and healthy men, looking for the greatest Viagra enhanced sex they've had in years. Sex up to six times a night has been reported after normal men take Viagra.   Women are also taking Viagra.

Viagra started off as a rather disappointing treatment for angina but doctors began to notice that patients were very reluctant to stop taking it, even after surgery had dealt with any angina problems. One by one the Viagra users confessed that a wonderful thing had happened after Viagra: their sex life had dramatically improved. Many of these Viagra patients had medical reasons why they may have had problems, ranging from the impotence ( erectile dysfunction) caused by blood pressure drugs, heart problems and general to health. Doctors are trained to report all unexpected side effects, and the reports on Viagra kept pouring in.

But was Viagra safe to use? Doctors reported that 70% were helped by Viagra to a better sex life, while 16% got headaches, 10% severely, others had other symptoms such as indigestion or a blue tinge to their sight.

These diamond shaped Viagra pills cost around $12 for a single tablet. The effect soon wears off so the demand can only be guessed at. If just 2 million men decide to use Viagra regularly (twice a week) then the US demand alone will be around 200 million tablets a year or up to $2 billion in market value. But that's just the US.

British clinics are not allowed yet to prescribe Viagra except on a "named patient" basis, which is a very restrictive license. That means the doctor must have an overwhelming reason to give Viagra and that the patient agrees the treatment is experimental. British private clinics are charging around double the US price per Viagra tablet (£16) but are reluctant to do so without a full diagnostic screen costing around £300-400.

So what of the future? Expect the Viagra stampede to spread to other nations, with a brisk black market developing in days or weeks, accelerated by the Internet which allows more than 70 million male web surfers to get in touch with other men who have got hold of tablets for their own use, that they are willing to sell at grossly inflated prices. Expect there to be supply problems as Pfizer struggles to keep pace with a global demand for Viagra.

Then expect the problems. This Viagra will undoubtedly be shown to have some other undesirable side effects, and there will be growing concern around the world about the "responsibility" of a drug company in promoting a drug which will be so widely abused by the healthy. Expect Viagra (and a new generation of other drugs with similar action) to become widely used and abused by the wealthy of every nation, with refusal of governments and insurance companies to pay for Viagra without strong medical evidence of sexual dysfunction. This will cause embarrassing problems for them. How do you assess dysfunction except during the act itself? Other tests give partial results. A generation of men will find, for once in their lives, that they are being encouraged to boast about how poor their sexual performance is, to try and convince doctors to part with another Viagra script.

Viagra is set therefore to join the growing family of other drugs like steroids as a performance enhancing drug for the healthy, and possession without medical authority is likely to be banned in due course by some governments who will see Viagra as a drug associated with abuse

Viagra is a registered trademark of Pfizer Corp.