Viagra Conclusion
The Viagra phenomenon, at its most basic level of analysis, has changed our understanding of sex in North America, and increasingly around the world as well. Normal sex now means sex on demand, sex for everyone, and sex for life (Loe, 2004). Although treatment of erectile dysfunction with Viagra has been shown to significantly improve quality of life parameters related to sexual dysfunction and mental health (Salonia et al., 2003), one argument among many others, is that the emergence of Viagra has only intensified our otherwise sexualized society in which sexual health and pleasure are endlessly promoted and appear to be the keys to life itself (Loe, 2004). Beyond these shifts in definitions however, the phenomenon has also impacted our broader ideas about health, aging, and masculinity. In 1993, the NIH Consensus Development Panel on Impotence reported that “appallingly little is known about the prevalence of erectile dysfunction in the United States and how this prevalence varies according to individual characteristics (age, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and concomitant diseases and condition)”. Due to the plethora of interest and research on ED and ED-related matters that has occurred within the past ten years, most of which is largely due to the development of Viagra, the universe of knowledge regarding erectile dysfunction is increasing. As a result, researchers, and ultimately patients, have benefited from these events to some degree. At a deeper level of analysis, the case of Viagra exposes how the construction and dissemination of ‘facts’ can be undertaken by corporations, how diagnostic expansion can work in partnership with market expansion, and how medicalization can become synonymous with increased profits. This study, although focused specifically on Viagra, poses new, crucial questions about the intersection of science, treatment and capital.
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