The trial did indeed have an inherent element of farce, Barry says. “There are so many (true) things we couldn’t include, like this was originally going to take place in a hospital run by nuns, but Dr. Price realized that wasn’t the kind of thing “test that you necessarily wanted nuns to carry out,” he said.
“And Pfizer had sent him some porn, but the VHS quality was terrible, so he had to go to the sex shop in Newport, but he couldn’t bear to go alone, so he took his wife with him… Then you realize everything.” this is happening in working class Swansea and it just makes it all better.
Russell T Davies, who brought us It’s a Sin and Queer as Folk as well as many Doctor Who series, was there to “crack the whip” on the series, giving notes on the script and helping Barry perfect the characters. Both men spent their childhoods surrounded by the kind of working-class men from South Walian who would have participated in the sildenafil study: tough men, taciturn men, men very much of their time. They rarely talked about much, but they certainly didn’t talk about the blood supply to their penises. Not towards their wives, and certainly not towards their friends.
“Looking through Men Up I came to the conclusion that it was a drama about Viagra, sure, but that’s not really the case, it’s a drama about men not being able to speak to men. Men not being able to talk to their partners, that’s what it’s really about,” Barry says. “And we’ve gotten a lot better as a society when it comes to mental health and talking about it. at men’s.” But it didn’t really exist in 1994. It’s a drama about men learning to speak.
What Viagra promised – or at least what many men thought it would surely deliver – was to allow some couples to regain a sense of closeness that impotence had denied them. “Many men weren’t necessarily interested in an erection for the sake of the erection, but rather so they could regain intimacy and connection with their partner,” says Barry. Many of Men Up’s characters are propelled by this desire, even if their partners aren’t quite as desperate.
In the real story, this became evident to Dr. David Brown very early on. Men in some of the early trials were given packets of sildenafil pills, but were only allowed to take seven doses – they then had to return the packets to clinicians.
“Some of them didn’t want to give the tablets back, as you can imagine. We were chasing them, and then I think one Monday morning there was a letter on my desk from one of the patients. It still hurts me to think about it now. He said: “Look, I know it’s wrong and I signed a legal document, but you have to realize this is the first time in 25 years that my wife and I have had a sex life. Do you really expect me to return these pills? » It really made me understand the impact it had.
Legally, Dr. Brown’s team was obligated to collect them, since the drug was not yet ready for sale. “But what we did was promise the people in that initial study that they would be the very first people recruited into the (later, longer-term) study.” And they kept their word: many men were desperate to come back and contribute to more research at home, which was also the case.
Like many inventors who work hard for years on their prototype, Dr. Brown and his colleagues had to accept that commercializing sildenafil was the responsibility of others. This is how Viagra was born. Did Pfizer give it this name because “vi” suggested vitality, energy and vigor, or because the Sanskrit word for tiger is vyāghra, or because it rhymes with Niagara, as in Falls, which evoke endurance and surging strength? Ask three people, get three answers.
But it’s safe to say that it took off. “The drug marketed itself,” says Dr. Brown, “interest almost had to be dampened. Pfizer was concerned that it would be viewed by the FDA as a lifestyle drug, rather than a real medical need, and also that they wouldn’t be able to advertise it without it looking like blue film.
Pfizer was careful not to focus on “sex”, but rather “relationships”, and did not dwell on the mechanics of the product. Famously, U.S. presidential candidate Bob Dole appeared in Viagra ads in 1998. “You know, it’s a little embarrassing to talk about erectile dysfunction,” said Dole, then 75. “But it’s so important to millions of men and their partners. ‘Sales increased and Viagra entered the mainstream.
