Viagra – it’s not just for Bob anymore. In a few years, Liddy’ll be able to get hers, too.
Giant drug maker Pfizer Inc. said it’s been studying the effects of the anti-impotence drug on 800 women in the United States, where up to 40 percent of women are thought to suffer from some form of sexual dysfunction.
The results, as they have proved for men, have been uplifting.
“The science is still developing at present, but I think we’re looking at least three or four years before it’s officially on the market,” Pfizer’s medical director, Dr. Michael Sweeney, said in an interview on British TV.
More than 7 million prescriptions for Viagra have been written worldwide for men so far, earning the company $788 million last year, Pfizer said.
But if Pfizer is happy about the big sales of its drug to men – and the potential windfall if it’s marketed to women – some doctors are worried about an unintended consequence.
Researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine today that dozens of Internet sites are offering the drug directly to consumers – without a visit to a doctor.
The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center said the online business could be dangerous.
“The ability to buy drugs over the Internet means that important safeguards intrinsic to conventional prescribing and related to the physician-patient relationship are bypassed,” they said.
The researchers found 86 Web sites offering Viagra without a doctor’s visit. Only 42 gave some type of information about the drug, and the same number required consumers to undergo an online medical evaluation – a questionnaire.
The Village Voice, in its current issue, reports the high availability of the drug on the Internet has helped make it a “lifestyle drug.”
“It’s about staying 17 longer,” online supplier Eric Thom told the weekly. “People use it to counteract lack of sleep, stress, alcohol, legal or illegal substances that [prevent them from] becoming erect.”
The weekly also said the drug is being used widely by men in their 20s and 30s looking for an aphrodisiac.
“I can see where anyone planning a big night would take it along,” one 36-year-old Los Angeles escort told the paper.
“For me, it’s like a switch. I’m there in 10 minutes. I don’t need to be specifically stimulated. What man in the world doesn’t want that?”