May 27, 2005
-
Media Hype?
Something like 43 men, out of 23,000,000 who have taken drugs for erectile dysfunction, have developed blindness. I've heard, seen, and read about 15 stories about this today, and it seems to me, a layman in medicine, to have the same kind of effect as the proverbial fart in a wind storm. I mean, that's .000018% of the men who have used the drugs. I don't even know how to say that percentage, and, yes, when I did the division problem I remembered to move the decimal point to get the percentage.
But it's news, isn't it? It's a story, and shouldn't it be blown out of proportion, scaring millions of men for no good reason? You won't find a stauncher supporter of freedom of the press than I, but this is just too blatantly aimed at selling copy to be ignored.
My theory is the guys who went blind misread the directions and somehow applied the drugs to the wrong balls.
ED
Comments (4)
Can they even make a solid connection to the drug use? There are other factors that can cause blindness...a poke in the eye with a sharp stick comes to mind. As well as the genetic fracas that is currently threatening my former piano teacher's vision. She undergoes surgery on June 13 that will either destroy her eye or save it. It's pretty much a coin toss. Without the surgery, she definitely loses the eye. We're praying the eye lasts till the surgery.
Point of Information: The percentage is "eighteen millionths."
I guess by the time the media train moves on to another topic to blow out of proportion, Viagra will be the most common cause of blindness.
Actually, from what I have heard/read (which, admittedly, is not all that much), it appears that the Viagra is not believed to actually cause blindness by itself. Rather, there is some extremely rare condition involving something similar to a stroke in the back of the eyeball, and it is believed that in men who are already predisposed to this rare condition, the Viagra simply "pushes them over the edge" so to speak, perhaps because of its effects on blood flow. As I understand it, this does not mean that men who are not otherwise at risk for vision problems are suddenly just going to wake up one day and realize that Viagra has caused them to go blind, but that there may be certain pre-existing conditions that can be aggravated or "triggered" by Viagra. I agree, though, that much of the mainstream media has blown the findings way out of proportion. In fact, the only sensible coverage of it I've heard so far was on NPR this afternoon, when they actually interviewed one of the doctors who participated in the study to clarify what it did and didn't mean. What a novel concept. Oh well, like I said, that is just my understanding of what the study really said. I'm not 100% sure my interpretation is exactly correct, but I'm pretty sure that's the basic idea. Just my two cents...
ChrisHack, I heard the same story on NPR. Of course, the possible link between erectile dysfunction drugs and blindness reminds me of the old wives' tale linking masturbation to blindness. Pardon the pun, but does that nonsense ever pop up anymore?