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Science As Culture, 2005

Abstract

During a series of clinical trials conducted from 1989 to 1994, the experimental compound UK-92480 proved to be a poor treatment for angina. But men participating in the trials reported a curious side effect: their penises became and remained erect when taking UK-92480, also known as sildenafil. When Pfizer began marketing sildenafil as Viagra in 1998, that ‘happy accident’ became the fastest-selling drug in history (p. 8). Viagra is significant because it was the first orally-administered pharmaceutical approved to treat impotence in the United States. Meika Loe’s The Rise of Viagra is significant because it is the first book-length sociological study of Viagra, and because it constitutes the first research not funded by Pfizer to examine individuals’ experiences with the drug. Loe intends for her book to ‘reveal . . . why sex in America will never be the same again’, after Viagra, but she fails to substantiate this ambitious hypothesis (p. 5). She consistently gestures towards outsized conclusions which reach far beyond the scope and character of her sample. Instead of capturing the texture of how individuals use technologies, Loe trivializes men’s erotic desires and implies that technologies of sex and gender are all objectionable. Lost in the shuffle is some promising data about how erectile dysfunction became a biomedical disease, what Viagra means for older women, and the inconclusive quest for a ‘female Viagra’. Medical treatments for flagging erectile capacities are not unique to our time or to our culture. In Europe and America, for most of the twentieth century, psychological factors were regarded as both causes and consequences of impotence. American men’s impotence was often attributed to their wives, three quarters of whom were deemed ‘frigid’ by the American Medical Association in the 1950s (Luciano, 2001 cited in the book under review on pp. 30–31). Loe summarizes, but declines to detail, the ‘many events over Science as Culture Vol. 14, No. 3, 293–296, September 2005

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