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.

Viagra, much to the not unpleasant surprise of guinea-pig patients and doctors alike, was causing erections among trial participants.

Six years and much fine-tuning later, Viagra was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the United States — and a pharmaceutical phenomenon was born.

No sooner was it on the shelves than it had consigned impotence to medical history — well, linguist-ically anyway.

Manufacturer Pfizer started calling the condition erectile dysfunction, or even better, ED, and the rest of the world followed suit.

Clever marketing had taken a hugely sensitive, almost entirely hidden subject only described in the most depressing terms and made the language around it user-friendly. More importantly, it was guy-friendly.

It made asking for that treatment easier, and carried the promise of no more awkward silences in the bedroom and no more charades in the doctor’s surgery.

Promoted by celebrities such as Pelé, Viagra entered common parlance in a way only Prozac had managed in modern times.

Viagra jokes abounded and the Pfizer riser’s sales curve skyscrapered. You had to go back to the contraceptive pill, penicillin or even aspirin to find a drug that so powerfully captured the public imagination.

Naturally, it wasn’t all plain sailing. The drug was only out a few months when regulators ordered a warning to be carried on the label highlighting the additional risks to users with heart conditions.

A warning followed to pilots not to fly within six hours of taking the drug as it occasionally created a blue haze around vision, potentially leaving them unable to distinguish between blue and green on the cockpit dials.

In Argentina, a man suffered a 24-hour erection after popping three of the pills together. The only bed he saw after the escapade was the tubular steel one in the operating theatre of his local hospital.

But nobody had actually turned blue, served jail time or crashed a plane, so all things considered, Pfizer was on to a winner.

Late-1990s Ireland was unrecognisable from a decade earlier. The country that didn’t know about sex before Gay Byrne was now bold, brash and uninhibited; financially fecund, culturally confident and socially rampant. Ireland was sexy.

Pfizer’s choice of Ringaskiddy in Co Cork as its production plant was inspired. Ireland couldn’t have chosen a better symbol of the country’s rebirth.

So long associated with struggle and depression, Ireland was exporting pleasure to the world.

That may be overstating the fact just a tad, but there is no doubt it was possible to knock a bit of craic out of Ringaskiddy’s newfound title as international capital of love with a humour not normally associated with factory production lines.

Since Viagra’s inception, Pfizer has had other reasons to smile. Its drug is showing potential uses for treating everything from jet lag, multiple sclerosis and pain control to, ironically given its earlier failures, heart conditions and stroke.

Of course, what goes up must come down and in the past few years Pfizer’s seemingly unstoppable pleasure cruise has hit stiff currents.

Oversupply of the drug, successful challenges to its various patents, and the appearance of rival manufacturers have threatened to shake Viagra’s dominance.

But there’s always something new to be discovered. Consumers have long been promised a ‘female Viagra’, and the first pharma-giant to produce it will be a hit.

It will no doubt be pink and make women see through a rose-tinted haze.

Sound too good to be true? Well, for the more practical-minded, the male version apparently helps keep fruit fresher longer, so maybe the Fiagra will do something for souring milk and bread mould.

The facts: behind an international wonder drug

* Erectile dysfunction is believed to affect at least one in 20 healthy men, with a higher concentration among those who have circulation or prostate problems.

* Contrary to popular lore, Viagra wasn’t named after the gushing wonder that is Niagra Falls. Pfizer says only that it wanted a name that suggested vigour and strength.

* The active ingredient in Viagra is sildenafil citrate which works by increasing blood flow to the penis.

* The blue diamond shape of the Viagra tablet is a registered trademark of Pfizer.

* At its high point, Viagra was selling at the rate of nine pills every second and sales were worth €1 billion to Pfizer in its first year of production alone.

* Rival products like Cialis and Levitra have since been developed with an ingredient that works on the same basis as sildenafil citrate. More rivals are expected when Pfizer’s patents run out in 2011.

* Pfizer employs 2,300 people in Ireland, 1,600 in Cork, of which about 600 work in the Viagra plant in Ringaskiddy.