Viagra: From Laboratory Mystery To Social Phenomenon

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NARRATOR: It started life as UK92480, one of millions of compounds in the stores at the drug company Pfizer. They were looking for a new drug for angina, something that would relax blood vessels around the heart. After screening hundreds of thousands of compounds, they ended up with UK92480.

But its trials in humans were a letdown. It was about to be consigned back to the stores when the trial volunteers started coming back and reporting an unusual side effect, lots of erections.

CHRIS WAYMAN: At the drug, the relaxations get larger, but it traces upside down.

NARRATOR: By making a crude mock-up of the human sexual apparatus, senior scientist Chris Wayman found an ingenious way to test this anecdotal evidence.

CHRIS WAYMAN: These are actually penile blood vessels that we have in a tissue bath. Think of this as the brain. This is the brain and the spinal cord.

When you're becoming aroused, your brain switches on. We can mimic this by switching on the equivalent of the central nervous system in the brain. It sends electricity down to the tissue bath and across the tissues. And when we pass an electric current across these small pieces of penile tissue, they relax. And ultimately, that's what happens during penile erection.

NARRATOR: Relaxed penile blood vessels mean more blood flow to the penis and so an erection. What Chris did was take penile blood vessels from impotent men, vessels that didn't respond when he flicked the brain switch, and then added UK92480 to the tissue bath.

CHRIS WAYMAN: What was most amazing about this study was that we saw a restoration of erectile response. It's very rare in any tissue preparation to convert dysfunctional to normal function. And so now, we were really onto something that could only be described as special.

NARRATOR: At the time, there was no oral treatment for erectile dysfunction. No one even really knew what caused the problem. But suddenly, Pfizer had a potential treatment on their hands.

CHRIS WAYMAN: When this data was shared with the experts in the field, the urologists, they were astounded. I remember a meeting in America at the Urological Association, where the room was packed when this data was released because no one had seen anything like this before.

NARRATOR: UK92480 was renamed "Viagra." And within weeks of going on sale, tens of thousands of prescriptions were being written every day.

CHRIS WAYMAN: You would never have been able to predict that this was going to have beneficial effects on millions and millions of men throughout the world, a little bit of science having an effect on self-esteem, anxiety, depression levels, and ultimately creating enhanced relationships.

NARRATOR: Viagra is now one of the most prescribed drugs in the world. Six tablets are dispensed somewhere every second.

But some have begun to ask whether so many men need it.

PETRA BOYNTON: When it first came out, it was definitely seen as a medical drug for a chronic condition, a medical condition. But obviously, they suddenly became aware of a huge market capacity. They began to market it to men who occasionally didn't have an erection, as opposed to consistently didn't have an erection.

And the message shifted from being, this is for you if you're ill with another health problem to basically, you can always have great sex. Viagra wasn't the only one to do this. The other sex drugs, like Levitra and Cialis that came on slightly later, all use a similar marketing strategy.

NARRATOR: Pfizer claims more than half of all men over 40 have difficulties getting or maintaining an erection. But this figure is not universally accepted.

PETRA BOYNTON: We estimate it's around 9% of men who have it as a chronic condition. And that's usually linked to older men and men who've got other health problems. In terms of men occasionally having problems with erections, most men would actually probably do that. And that's quite normal.

DAVID HEALY: The implication is that if you're falling short of 100% perfection, that the pill may be able to help. And in essence, this means that you're ill. But of course, being 100% perfect is not normal. This is not the normal state. Being normal means being slightly different from one day to the next.

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