The little blue pill that changed the world

IT IS a frustrating fact of scientific endeavour that some discoveries only emerge after long years of research while others just pop up out of the blue.

So it was with Viagra. Fifteen years ago this week, the-then unnamed drug was failing miserably in clinical trials as a cure for angina when something in the list of side-effects reported by guinea-pig patients caught its manufacturer’s eye.

The drug wasn’t doing much for the heart condition it was meant to help but it was doing something that suggested it could have a very positive effect on another heartbreaker of an affliction — impotence.