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Even supporters of the pill worry about hyped expectations. "People always want a quick fix," complains Dr. Domeena Renshaw, a psychiatrist who directs the Loyola Sex Therapy Clinic outside Chicago. "They think Viagra is magic, just like they thought the G spot worked like a garage-door opener." In the wake of fen/phen and Redux, the diet-drug treatments that were pulled from the market last year after it was learned that they could damage heart valves, caution would be advisable with Viagra. But so far the side effects seem comparatively slight and manageable: chiefly headache, flushed skin, upset stomach and curious vision distortions involving the color blue. Pfizer, leaving nothing to chance, has even requested and received the Vatican's unofficial blessing for Viagra. All in all, a happy ending for American men, their partners and especially Pfizer stockholders, who have seen the value of their shares jump nearly 60% this year alone.
Yet there's something unnerving about Viagra too, not so much on the face of it (the drug's merits appear to be manifold; doctors think it might even improve the sexual response of postmenopausal women) but in the broader philosophical implications. Is sexuality, like the state of happiness or male-pattern baldness, just one more hitherto mysterious and profound area of human-beingness that can be pharmaceutically manipulated, like any other fathomable construct of enzymes and receptors? Another looming question: Since Viagra is taken--at prices ranging from $8 to $12 a pop--not on a day-in, day-out basis but only when one actually wants to have sex, will HMOs and other insurers soon be telling us how much sex is reimbursable? Sufficient? Normal? Necessary?
And what about the impact on the freighted social interactions we euphemistically refer to as dating? "I bet that within a year, you'll see women's-magazine articles saying, 'How to Tell If It's You or Viagra,'" says James R. Petersen, who has written the Playboy Advisor column for the past 22 years. He adds, "I think Viagra is going to be as monumental as the birth-control pill." No less an authority than Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse magazine, believes the drug will "free the American male libido" from the emasculating doings of feminists. And not only that. According to Guccione, "the ability to have sex by older men will make them healthier and live longer. It will fool the biological clock when men are still active in the later years. It is a very significant effect of the drug that many haven't contemplated." There isn't any actual scientific evidence to back up Guccione's claims, but he does do a nice job of illuminating two important subtexts of Viagra's appeal: the chimeras of undiminishable power and perpetual youth.
Of course, the overt appeal is pretty compelling too.