The small town that made the discovery of Viagra possible – 12/19/2023 – Equilíbrio

If it weren’t for an industrial town in south Wales, there might be no Viagra.

Several men from Merthyr Tydfil, including former steelworkers desperate for money during the town’s industrial decline, volunteered as guinea pigs for a medical study.

They just didn’t know that this essay would help change the world.

Only 30 years later did some of them discover that the substance they helped test laid the foundation for the medicine that helped millions of men with erectile dysfunction.

In the early 1990s, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer was testing a compound called Sildenafil UK-92,480 in an effort to treat high blood pressure and angina (chest pain).

The corporation hired a medical research company in Merthyr Tydfil to carry out clinical trials and recruited local young people to test the compound.

Idris Price was one of the men who signed up to test the new drug in 1992.

Guinea pigs

At the time, he was changing jobs after being laid off from a large local steel company.

“When I was low on money, I went to a place called Simbec,” said Idris.

He asked what studies he could do in exchange for money and signed up.

“They didn’t tell us anything about the medicine. Just that the pill was to treat angina and that it could have side effects.”

“Many were nervous about what might happen.”

The volunteers, all young men, were paid to take one tablet of the compound UK-92,480 three times a day for 10 consecutive days.

“In the late 80s and early 90s it was a very difficult time for us and we were trying to get money any way we could,” Idris said in the BBC documentary Keeping It Up.

“The money that the study paid us was very important for my family, since at that time we had nothing.”

“It allowed us to get extra food and instead of having two bags of coal for the fire, we had five. It was actually easy money that made a big difference.”

But when the clinical trial ended, the drug’s unforeseen side effects set off alarm bells at Pfizer.

How was Viagra discovered?

“Volunteers started saying, ‘It’s a little embarrassing, but I noticed I’m having more erections than usual and they’re a lot harder,'” recalls Pete Ellis, the doctor who led the team that discovered and developed Viagra in Pfizer.

Observations made in Merthyr Tydfil led Pfizer to raise funds to launch a study into impotence.

Patients with erectile dysfunction were evaluated at Southmead Hospital in Bristol before another clinical trial was carried out the following year, in 1994, in Swansea.

The clinic at Morriston Hospital in Swansea had the widest spectrum of patients, including men with diabetes and heart disease, for whom erectile dysfunction can be one of the side effects.

“Pfizer asked that they be heterosexual men in a stable relationship”, recalled the person responsible for this second study and endocrinology consultant, David Price.

“They were all normal guys, all married. Ordinary men from Swansea. The test included showing them erotic videos.”

A device was placed on the participants’ penises to monitor the impact of the pill.

The results of the Swansea trial, like the Bristol study, were positive.

Pfizer quickly realized it had a potentially revolutionary medicine on its hands.

In fact, the results were so positive that several men refused to return pills not used in the study.

Pfizer’s marketing team then struggled to figure out how to sell this new pill, while experts pondered whether the public would consider it “extremely good or disastrous.”

The company was concerned about releasing what could be described as a sex drug in a world considered relatively conservative, so it used men’s comments about the trials as an advertising message.

“One idea that came out of the research was how deeply powerlessness affects a person’s sense of self, the other was how much it affects relationships,” said former Pfizer senior marketing manager Jennifer Doebler.

“I was deeply moved by what the men were saying and how much the dysfunction damaged their relationships and how much they cared.”

To reinforce its message that a potential cure for impotence could resolve troubled relationships, Pfizer obtained the Vatican’s religious blessing by saying that Viagra could help the institution of marriage and strengthen family values.

Worldwide success

Viagra hit stores in the US and UK in 1998 as the first approved oral treatment for erectile dysfunction, surrounded by an avalanche of advertising.

It quickly became the best-selling drug in history, with annual sales peaking in 2008 at nearly $2 billion.

But Idris, oblivious to the fact that side effects reported by volunteers years ago helped create Viagra, was unaware of Merthyr’s role in the drug’s development until BBC journalists told him earlier this year.

The story of the origin of Viagra in Wales was made into a film Men Upwhich will air on the BBC in the UK at Christmas.

“I was shocked when I found out,” Idris said. “Viagra is very well known now… I’m glad it’s out of Merthyr Tydfil.”

Viagra co-creator David Brown said that if it weren’t for the men of Wales, Viagra might not exist.

“They made history,” he said.

“They were probably desperate for some extra income, but they made a big difference to a lot of people’s lives and should feel good about that.”

How common is erectile dysfunction?

The UK health service states that impotence or erectile dysfunction is “very common, especially in men over 40”.

Some research estimates it may affect around half of all men aged between 40 and 70, or more than 4 million men in the UK.

In Brazil, it is estimated that around 16 million men have erectile dysfunction, or 50% of men over 40 years old.

Other studies suggest that by 2025, 322 million men worldwide could be affected by erectile dysfunction, more than double the 152 million estimated in 1995.