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Originally Posted by graygo98 there are a few pharmaceutical companies on the net, usually based in Mexico and India where the copyright laws are intended to give local companies an advantage, that do knock-offs of Viagra and Cialis...You got to realize, though, that you are not getting the protection of the FDA or your country's equivalent. But, these are often significant pharmaceutical companies in their own companies. It is just not that hard for them to copy a basic chemical compound. IMHO you are a hell of a lot better off there than using some herbal concoction made in somebodiy's basement that could kill you. |
Your comments intrigued me, and because there is an element of safety involved, I forwarded this thread to a good friend who is a PhD Professor of Chemistry at a local University, and whose specialty is research into the efficacy of various drugs and compounds. (Google her name and you'll get 60 hits relating to her work in this field alone) In other words, this chick really knows her stuff.
The following is what she had to say on the subject of foreign knock-offs of American drugs...
"OK. Disclosure statement: You should know that I have been a paid consultant to a couple of pharmaceutical companies and offered expert opinion for a couple of patent litlgations so in some minds, that makes my
opinion a little suspect.
Probably more than you wanted to know but there are a variety of issues that could compromise the quality of pharmaceuticals obtained outside normal channels besides substitutions or not having it at all.
Most of the material in any dosage form (e.g., pill, capsule, syrup, etc.) is not drug. In the Physicians' Desk Reference, for each dosage form, there is a list of all the things present. There are usually a whole range of materials, referred to as excipients, which are included for all kinds of reasons. For instance, for a tablet dosage form, there is usually a "glidant" which helps all the various powders pass thru the big industrial mixers/machines used to make the tablets. There are also ingredients which enable the mixed powders to be compressed into a pellet and maintain that shape. Then, there are disintegrants, which help the pill fall apart when it hits a specific part of the GI tract (e.g., mouth, esophagus, etc). Issues involving quality here that may be compromised in the imported drugs include the quality of the excipients. Maybe the specific lot was approved for goats but not humans. This is tracked in much the same way you described flight audits.
Quality of the excipients is one issue but another is that the dosage form may not deliver the drug exactly the same way if alternative excipients are used. For instance, if the original dosage form is designed to deliver the drug slowly but the alternative excipient causes the drug to be "dumped" or
delivered all at once, one could get into problems.
Another potential issue is content uniformity. If the mixing is not quite right, you could have some pills in a batch that have double the amount of drug that they are supposed to have whereas others from the same batch may only have half as much. I make dynamite pancakes but every once in a while, the baking soda doesn't get distributed like it should if I am not paying
attention and the pancake eater gets a nasty surprise. Legit manufacturers
have to take 20 random samples of the final dosage form from each batch and measure the amount of drug in each dose. For name brand drugs in tablet form, each tested sample tablet has to be within 5% of what the label says (e.g., 10 mg) or the batch is rejected. Again, this is something that would show up in an audit.
There is a notorious case in which a drug manufacturer had invested a lot of
money into a promising new drug, was in the last stages of animal trials,
getting ready to take it to humans and in the last set of animal experiments, several animals died. Turned out that the drug itself formed a couple of different kinds of crystals which had very different rates of biological uptake. All of the earlier studies had been done with one crystal form of the drug which worked fine but the new crystal structure that spontaneously formed became biologically available much quicker, resulting in an overdose situation.
In our department, there was a guy working on selenium supplements. The
quality was all over the map and in many of the samples, the selenium was
present in a chemical form that couldn't even be absorbed and used by
humans.
Like I said, probably way more than you wanted to know but I find this whole
area fascinating."
So there you have it. You take foreign drugs at your own risk. If they work and you don't die, you've saved a couple bucks. As for "using Viagra for purely recreational purposes," I can't think of a better reason TO use it. I've done so, although I would recommend starting at 25 mg until you have some idea of how it affects you, and how long you and your wife want your erection to last. I agree with the earlier post that poor diet, lack of exercise, and depressed mood are absolute, positive dick-wreckers. Start your recovery
there, then move on to pharmaceutical intervention if necessary. It's really your only hope, as I don't think you'll find a reputable marriage counselor who will advise you on how to maintain an erection during an FMF encounter.
"Recreational Viagra - Why is it illegal to drug your date to have sex she really doesn't really want to have, but legal to drug your dick to have sex it really doesn't want to have?"