Viagra: The Fastest-Selling Drug in History

Viagra, a pill that treats erectile dysfunction (ED), is the fastest-selling drug in America.

The National Institute of Health (NIH) estimates that between 15 and 30 million men in the USA suffer from ED. Other studies show that half of all men over age 40 experience ED once in a while.

Viagra, the magic blue pill, enables erections within 30 minutes for most men, simply by increasing the blood flow to the penis.

Pfizer Corporation scientists in England stumbled onto Viagra by accident.

They were looking for a substance to block phosphodiesterase, which is produced by the body to remove cyclic guanosine monophosphaate, or cGMP.

(Yes, you guessed it: this is the technical part. If you like all these details, here's a website with even more--12 pages of research and diagrams, in fact.)

Anyway, cGMP tells the body's muscles to relax so that more blood can flow through. The Pfizer scientists were trying to find a way to combat angina, a heart condition caused by restricted blood flow. The scientists came up with a substance called UK-92,480, or sildenafil that they thought would do the trick.

In 1991, a team led by Nicholas Terreft began clinical trials of sildenafil. Patients began reporting a marvelous side effect: rock-hard, long-lasting erections. Seems that while sildenafil didn't do much to increase blood flow to the heart--which was the point--it did increase blood flow to the penis, engorging it.

Pfizer recognized a gold mine when they saw it. The focus of the research and trials changed quickly.

Pfizer is a bit secretive about who developed Viagra (legally, Pfizer did) but two scientists, Peter Dunn and Albert Wood, appear on a patent for having invented the nine-step process by which it's synthesized and mass-produced. About.com has a good description of that. As with the first steps and research, the work was done in England.

In 1998, Viagra became the first prescription drug available to treat ED.

As expected, it was a huge commercial success. This article by the New York Times, written just after the pill was approved for sale by the FDA, shows many of the high hopes attached to the drug (not all of them financial).

In 1999, 22.3 of every 1000 American men went to the doctor to report ED--and most of them asked for the little blue pill. Because of the simple way Viagra works (all it does is increase blood flow), factors such as stress, depression, illness, drug use, and prostate surgery don't affect the desired results.

Viagra was marketed on TV, with Senator Bob Dole, a former Presidential candidate, as its spokesman. The drug was a resounding success, and worldwide its sales total well over a billion dollars a year.

A Pfizer-sponsored survey found that 25% of the men asked thought Pfizer was the source of the Viagra-themed spam that is sent out daily, clogging email servers around the world.

Since much of the product sold this way is fake Viagra, Pfizer filed lawsuits in 2004 designed to shut down some of these spammers. At that time, there were an estimated 350,000 websites sending out up to 7 trillion messages. (this information comes from a USA Today article.)

Judging by my emailbox, I don't think they were too successful.