Viagra Drug

Pfizer Inc. said Wednesday that it was considering an over-the-counter form of its Viagra anti-impotence drug as it faces tough competition from Eli Lilly & Co.'s longer-acting Cialis treatment. "As with many of our products, Pfizer has routinely evaluated a number of options [for Viagra], including different formulations, new indications, over-the-counter, etc., and continues to do so," Pfizer said.

Viagra and other erectile-dysfunction drugs are about to bear new warnings that users might experience sudden hearing loss. It's not clear that the drugs truly trigger hearing loss, but the Food and Drug Administration decided Thursday to add a warning about the possible risk after counting 29 reports of the problem since 1996 among users of this family of medicines. The impotence drugs Viagra, Cialis and Levitra will bear the warnings.

Impotence drugs such as Viagra and Cialis can increase the risk of eye damage in men who have a history of heart disease or high blood pressure, researchers reported Tuesday in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. In a small study, scientists at the University of Alabama in Birmingham found that men who had suffered a heart attack were 10 times more likely to have a form of optic nerve damage called nonarteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy if they had been taking anti-impotence pills.

Client confidentiality prevents Andrew Schirmer from revealing specifics, but it's easy to believe his claim that his job has been especially challenging lately. Schirmer is trying to devise a new ad campaign for Viagra, Pfizer Inc.'s erectile dysfunction drug, after racy spots for impotency pills helped fuel the public's ire over drug commercials.

Pfizer Inc. is defending itself in court against Viagra users who claim the drug caused them to lose their vision. At least 17 cases allege that Pfizer failed to properly warn users that Viagra may cause vision loss, said U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who will hear the cases in St. Paul, Minn. The first case will probably be heard in about a year, said Magnuson, who met with attorneys involved in the lawsuits.

Scientists have found a performance-enhancing drug that could be exploited by endurance athletes at high altitudes and soldiers in the mountains of Afghanistan: Viagra.

A Los Angeles-based AIDS advocacy group is calling for the manufacturer of Viagra to halt a marketing campaign that the group says promotes the drug's recreational use, increasing the risk of acquiring HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases. The AIDS Healthcare Foundation will run advertisements in publications in New York, San Francisco and South Florida, with the first in Southern California to run today in the L.A. Weekly.

Pfizer Inc. won a trademark case blocking drug makers in China from copying its Viagra erectile dysfunction pills' blue diamond shape. A Beijing court ordered the three companies to pay a $38,000 fine to Pfizer, stop producing the blue, diamond-shaped pills -- which didn't contain the active ingredient in Viagra -- and print an apology in a Chinese legal newspaper, Pfizer said.

Three doctors were charged Thursday with giving large amounts of Viagra and other anti-impotence drugs to mob members in return for construction and auto repair work done by Mafia-controlled businesses. Arlen Fleisher, Stephen Klass and George Shapiro, all doctors in Westchester County, a suburban area north of New York, were accused of trading prescription drugs and drug samples with members and associates of the Gambino crime family.

Scores of convicted rapists and other high-risk sex offenders in New York have been getting Viagra paid by Medicaid for the last five years, the state's comptroller said in Albany. Audits by Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi's office showed that between January 2000 and March 2005, 198 sex offenders received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after their convictions. Hevesi asked Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S.