Getting It Up

A good friend of mine just published a new book about Viagra. Wanna know why you're always getting so much viagra spam? The short story is because men are insecure and the pharmaceutical industry is working hard to keep them that way by making them think they need drugs to be “normal” men. The long story is The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America. Here's a great interview w/the author. Of course I think everyone should buy this book, not just because Meika is a friend, but also because what's happened w/Viagra affects us all. Those effects go beyond “sexual dysfunction” to how the profit-motive encourages big pharma to focus its research and resources on lifestyle drugs, which means less research and fewer resources for cancer drugs or AIDS drugs or low-cost treatments for diseases and viruses that continue to kill hundreds and thousands of people every year around the world. You think there's nothing wrong w/for-profit health care? Read this book; you might just think again. I'm pretty sure a condemnation of for-profit health care is not the book's real point (I haven't read it yet), but it's a logical extension of the book's explanation of the lengths to which drug-makers are willing to go just to make a buck.

Posted October 3, 2004 03:52 PM | ai books