To add to the woes of the International Pharmaceutical wing of the Empire, reports are coming out now about blindness as a result of the use of impotence drugs.
The kinds of blindness caused are due to two different cellular mechanisms based on one common molecular mechanism at the level of the drug's receptor.
Despite what the TheoCons tell their kids, it's not related to orgasms at all.
Viagra and related compounds act on an enzyme known as a cyclic GMP phosphodiesterase (cGMP PDE). Viagra acts most effectively on smooth muscle cGMP PDE causing smooth muscle relaxation. The drug was developed to relax smooth muscle, in order to lower blood pressure and aid in congestive heart failure. For these uses, it is quite effective.
This enzyme breaks down a specialized ribonucleotide, cyclic GMP. The drug most effectively acts on the smooth muscle form of the enzyme, but has varying potency on other related cGMP-PDE gene products. In the eye, cyclic GMP acts to keep photoreceptors depolarized. So in some people Viagra causes blue/green color blindness, because it acts on these photoreceptor cells as well.
The other form of blindess, it's been linked to ischemic optic neuropathy in people with the following conditions:
* Diabetes
* Hypertension
* Hyperlipidemia: excess fat or lipids in the blood
* Hypercholesterolemia: elevated cholesterol
These people will already have problems with smooth muscle responses in their blood vessels because of their underlying metabolic disorders. In Ischemic optic neuropathy blood flow is disrupted to the photoreceptor cells, killing them. This is an irreversible condition.
One problem with the recreational prescription of these drugs is that men are using them in far greater doses for longer periods of time than they were ever intended.
As a result, their (ab)use could lead to real problems with the cardiovascular system, as the normal parasympathetic regulation is totally bypassed.
Sure enough, there are also anecdotal reports of platelet dysfunction, heart disease, stroke, and infertility now coming out with these drugs, although it's not possible to point to any concrete clinical data yet.
Possibly because nobody wants to fund these kinds of studies. Yet.
Use of these drugs for impotence, in my humble opinion, constitutes abuse.
I think they are valuble drugs for controlled use in cardio pulmonary hypertension. They should be used only with constant medical supervision for these purposes only. Their prescription for impotence or as a recreational or "lifestyle" drug constitues gross and unethical abuse.
And I don't blame the poor desperate people using the drugs. I blame the MBA-run drug companies looking for a quick profit that have created this problem. Pharmaceutical companies are well on their way to destroying biomedical science in this country. They've already wrecked countless lives. Prescription drugs should not be advertised to the general public.
A human life is more than a bouncing ball with a smiley face.
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2 comments:
true, script ads have only been a bad thing in medicine- but they're here to stay. so the question becomes one of shifting the burdern, unfairly, to the consumer such that consumers understand better the risks associated with rx drug use.
however, i don't think it'll matter in the case of viagra-for-sexual enhancment. warhol is right to comment that (most) men will 'climb a mountain of shit and wade nose deep in a river of snot' if they think action is on the other side. what's a little blindness when you can go all night at the age of 57? too many american men, in the end, equate that ability with the goal of all/most of their life's efforts. i'm pretty sure they could openly advertise a proven death rate of %5 and men would still use the stuff.
Not to worry, because just as sure as god made little green twigs sticking out the top of bitter fruit apples, today's new and improved FDA will figure out a way to turn this new development into an off label boon for folks prescribing corrective medicine to all those poor unfortunate folks with 'unnatural' 20-10 vision.
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