While sildenafil citrate — the active ingredient in Viagra — is available in a number of other countries, it is not yet legal to sell generic Viagra in the United States. Pfizer, the company that brought us the first of the new wave of impotence drugs in 1998, holds onto its American patent for Viagra until April 2020.
However, under an agreement that Pfizer made with Israeli-based Teva Pharmaceuticals in December 2013, the latter could begin to market a generic formulation of Viagra in the United States at the end of 2017. In April 2015, Pfizer reached a similar agreement with Mylan N.V. that would allow that generic drug manufacturer to begin marketing its sildenafil citrate at about the same time as Teva. Because Pfizer’s patent is still enforceable in this country, both companies would be required to pay Pfizer for the rights to produce generic versions of the drug until that patent expires.
No Generic Viagra Till Late 2017
So it will be more than a year before generic Viagra is available for sale legally in the United States. However, in the meantime anyone who Googles “generic Viagra” online will come up with literally scores of pages of results from online vendors that purport to sell generic Viagra. And no doubt many of them do sell authentic generic formulations of sildenafil citrate that produce the same results you’d expect from a Viagra pill of the same strength manufactured by Pfizer.
The problem with buying Viagra — or any potent prescription drug — from unknown vendors located God knows where is that you can never be certain that you’re getting what you ordered. And all too often, what comes to you in the mail may look very much like Pfizer’s little blue pill but in fact contain dangerous fillers with no medicinal value at all. In other cases, Viagra-like pills ordered online have been found to contain sildenafil citrate but at levels that were so low as to be ineffective or so high as to be dangerous. In other words, you have no guarantee at all that the ingredients listed on the drug’s packaging materials are those that actually found their way into the tablet you’re about to pop.
Quite apart from the obvious dangers of taking a pill containing unknown substances, so-called generic Viagra sold online could complicate the lives of men who are actually struggling with erection problems and desperately searching for help. For a recent article in The New York Times, health writer Catherine Saint Louis interviewed urologist Darius Paduch, M.D., director of sexual health and medicine at Weill-Cornell Medicine and New York-Presbyterian, about the problems this can cause.
If an impotent man takes what he believes to be Viagra and fails to get the desired results, says Dr. Paduch, “the guy gets depressed because he thinks nothing is going to work. So he may stop having sex or never see a doctor.”
If the online “Viagra” actually contains less of the active ingredient than claimed and thus produces unsatisfactory results for the man who’s ordered it, Dr. Paduch says that can create confusion for any legitimate doctor the patient may consult about the matter. Taking the man at his word that he has tried a 100-milligram dose of sildenafil citrate and still been unable to get and keep an erection, a doctor might very well be tempted to escalate treatment to something more drastic like penile injection therapy. In a man who’s only suffering from a mild case of erectile dysfunction, such escalated treatment could be dangerous, says Dr. Paduch.
Generic Viagra Available Elsewhere
As previously noted, generic Viagra won’t come on to the U.S. market until the very end of 2017, according to the terms of Pfizer’s agreements with Teva and Mylan. However, legally manufactured generic Viagra is available in a number of other countries where Pfizer’s patent on the drug has expired.
In November 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada voided Pfizer’s patent for Viagra in the wake of litigation over alleged irregularities in the drug company’s patent application. It was alleged that the drugmaker’s patent application for Viagra had listed a number of different chemical compounds without ever specifying which one was the active ingredient for its impotence drug. The high court ruled Pfizer’s Viagra patent void on the grounds that it “does not meet the disclosure requirements” set out in Canada’s Patent Act.
Although appeals followed, this decision in Canada effectively opened the door to generic competition. One of the plaintiffs in the patent case against Pfizer was Teva Canada, the local subsidiary of the Israeli drugmaker that specializes in the production of generic drugs. On the heels of the high court’s decision, Teva Canada launched Novo-Sildenafil, its generic formulation of Viagra.
In the United Kingdom and most other member countries of the European Union, generic Viagra has been legal since the expiration of Pfizer’s Viagra patents in 2013. Other countries where generic Viagra is legally available include Australia, China, Japan, and South Korea. While traveling in these countries, U.S. citizens can purchase generic Viagra in licensed pharmacies with reasonable expectations that they’re getting the real thing. However, ordering prescription drugs online is another matter altogether.
One of the primary markets for counterfeit prescription drugs is the Internet. And the counterfeiters are pretty clever in replicating the look and packaging of brand-name drugs, including all of the popular erectile dysfunction drugs. And because there is no requirement that generic drugs look like the original brand-name drug, it’s even easier to create and market a so-called generic version of a drug. Unless you’re buying from an online vendor that you know to be reliable, you risk paying good money for drugs that may be totally ineffective, little more than sugar pills. Getting taken is no fun, but even more threatening is the possibility that the generic drugs you buy online may contain toxic materials that can seriously endanger your health.
Perils of Counterfeit Drugs
An article posted at Forbes.com reports that the vast majority of Viagra sold online is counterfeit and potentially dangerous. Although vast quantities of counterfeit Viagra have been seized by customs and drug enforcement agencies here and abroad, it is likely that many such counterfeit drugs actually make their way to unsuspecting consumers in this country. Upon analysis of counterfeit Viagra that’s been seized, authorities have discovered a wide array of potentially dangerous substances. Such substances include blue printer ink, amphetamine or methamphetamine, drywall and plaster, and the antibiotic metronidazole.
If you’d prefer to buy genuine Viagra or another brand-name ED drug from a reliable online supplier based in the United States, pay a visit to eDrugstore.md and check out its ED medication guide.
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