Did you know that the discovery of Pfizer’s erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra was an accident? While testing a drug that expanded blood cells in the chest to relieve chest pain back in 1991, some patients reported getting erections as a side effect — enough of them that clinical researcher Ian Osterloh decided that this intriguing result merited more study, despite opposition from Pfizer’s staunchly conservative upper management, legislators, the medical establishment, and even the Catholic Church.
As David Kushner reports at Esquire, after getting approval from the FDA, the team wooed urologists to get the little blue pill into the hands of men the world over, making Pfizer a potent profit along the way.
In fact, it’s a miracle that it ever came to be at all. In addition to the people within Pfizer who were in an uproar over the “dick pill,” four major groups began rallying against…
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