Levitra and the slowing of research

Living in a world which is predominantly capitalist may be good for some things but it's very bad for blue sky research. In the good old days, universities and dedicated amateurs would work tirelessly to explore the unexplored. Why? Because that was their passion. There was no direct financial motive. They simply wanted to know more. As a result, we now have a vast number of different medical procedures and drugs "freely" available to the world. Put another way, even if the developers had patented their research into the use of X-ray technology or penicillin, the patents would have expired long ago and we would all be enjoying the benefits without having to pay any royalties. But modern universities have been commercialized. They are now expected to pay their way by commercializing their research. Everything must now be developed for exploitation. Intellectual property rights are put in place sooner rather than later. All other research is discouraged. And we're the poorer for it. Nowhere is this trend more obvious than in the medical field.

Even though it's clear that bacteria are developing immunity to most of the antibiotics currently available, there's no real research into developing the next lines of defense. The world of sexual medicine is a classic example of what can go wrong when profit takes over. Before the PDE5 inhibitors like Levitra came along, there was a major effort to understand human sexuality and to develop new treatments. The arrival of the little blue pills put a stop to that. As far as the manufacturers were concerned, they had ensured their profitability for the next twenty years and there was no need to develop any more treatments. This means there's little or no research into loss of libido, failure to ejaculate, and poor sperm counts and infertility in both men and women. With men's problems of erectile dysfunction solved, everything else was considered irrelevant to future profits. So if you're a man with erectile dysfunction problems, you can celebrate the arrival of Levitra because you're now cured. Everyone else is on the waiting list.