Drug discovery can be a rough field that gives you a hard shafting. There’s a lot of pressure to perform, bang out some deep results, pound the fuck out of some data, and this article is about Viagra.
Today’s Moment of Science… A brief history of boner medicine.
Every so often penises don’t quite work with the vigor they held in our younger, dumber days when we didn’t appreciate that shit like we should have. And by ‘every so often,’ I mean erectile dysfunction (ED) affects about thirty million men in the US alone. The main factor that correlates with ED is getting older, because nothing good happens to your body after 27 courtesy of existing. There are other risk factors including smoking, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, testosterone deficiency, and in case you forgot, COVID is associated with floppy cock syndrome. Cases can be psychological because it’s perfectly human to have your brain go to war with its main competition for precious life-giving oxygen. And in a depressing twist of fate, some antidepressants can also fuck with your fucking.
Rather than leaving the elusive trouser snake to have a quiet hibernation on its own terms, there are options to try charming it back to life.
Magnets, how the fuck do they work? Not as penis medicine, but through history that hasn’t stopped people from trying. Magnet underwear can still be found today with promises to get those man parts back in the game or whatever. Sure, your magnet knee brace is making things feel better because blood has iron and iron is magnetic and magnets are drawing the blood to your injury or…. something? If you think it’s really working though, put your money where your dysfunction is, get some magnetized underwear. Then report back. Please.
Penis pumps, technically called “vacuum erection devices” (VEDs), first sprang up into existence in the 1800s. There are some medically approved VEDs that actually work to pull blood into the unenthusiastic phallus without overdoing it. The selection available for purchase at an adult toystore? One of those can accidentally dole out an overly-enthusiastic mechanical blowjob that can leave some super nope bruises. For the love of schlong, stick to clinically approved cockvacs.
When we had electricity and little understanding of it, we started applying it to our more interesting parts and called it medicine. At the time it was probably a bit more painful because they hadn’t worked out a TENS unit yet. Now? Several studies have shown that electrical stimulation, as part of a therapy program including pelvic floor exercises, can produce drastic improvement for many ED patients. But please, leave this to the professionals, and don’t get too curious with a light socket and your dangling bits.
In the 1920s, John Brinkley convinced men that sewing some goat testicles in there would do the trick. This pissed off a bunch of now-impotent goats and was likely the cause of about a dozen fatalities, but hey, those dead guys had some fucking balls.
Penile implants showed up in the 1970s. They were inflatable. I have so many questions, and also no questions. Absofuckinglutely none.
So, this (nearly) failed heart medication.
A research group at a Pfizer facility in Kent, England in the early 1990s was looking into a group of molecules that had potential for treating angina. Sildenafil was one of these medications. But it was a disappointment when it went through trials for angina and high blood pressure in 1993.
The drug had been a low priority investigation anyway, and it was starting to seem like a waste of time and money. Sildenafil was close to being shelved.
One of the co-inventors, Dr. David Brown, was interviewing a group of Welsh miners who participated in an early study. He knew he needed something, anything, or this molecule he’d helped bake into existence was just one more in a long line of failed drugs. He asked the group if there was anything he hadn’t covered that they’d like to report.
One brave miner spoke up to let the class know about his newfound raging hard-ons. This was followed by an ejaculation of confessions from the group about their boning superpowers.
While his coworkers’ reactions fell somewhere between skeptical and “meh,” Brown went into his boss’s office the very next day and demanded money for an impotence study on the drug. There may have been a vague threat of not leaving the office until the money for a study was guaranteed.
Look, I’m not saying any one individual Roger, Johnson, or Willy is worth making a threat, but a light hint at one for all the erections in the world might have been worth it.
In 1998, Sildenafil came to market under the brand name Viagra. Now one of several in a class of phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitors available for treating erectile dysfunction, you only have to electrify your nads for a boner if you’re super fucking into that now.
This has been your Moment of Science, alarmed at the statistics on how many men don’t get their ED evaluated. It can be a sign of other medical hijinks, so please mind your more festive parts at your next doctor’s appointment.
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I’m reminded of a medication being tested for hypertension, which was rather meh for blood pressure control, but had an odd observed effect in that it grew hair on everyone’s palms.
OK, not their palms, but notably, where hair loss had occurred and a bit more. The drug now known of as minoxidil.
And the converse has occurred, odd effects on workers being studied and drugs coming out of those observations. Such as during WWII, ordinance plant workers feeling lousy over the weekend, felt great at work, took small amounts of explosives to carry around on the weekend, as they felt better. Those that didn’t tended to have angina attacks on the weekends only. A bit of study and viola, nitroglycerin pills became a very real thing.
Don’t get me started on the discovery of saccharin, the discovery that way occurring today would have OSHA shutter the discovering lab… Because, smoking while working with chemicals is ever such a wonderfully grand idea.