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Online Pharmacies are not legal in most civilized countries. There are very good reasons why this is so and it is not just a case of “control” or of big brother keeping an eye on you. Here are just a few reasons why online pharmacies in general can be bad for your health. I will return specifically to Viagra later.
– Most prescription medications need the input of a health care profession if they are not to be abused. Often, simple lifestyle changes can render the use of medications obsolete. However, lifestyle change requires human effort. It is so much easier to buy online than it is for example to loose weight, take more exercise, stop smoking or talk to your lover about your erectile dysfunction.
– Prescription medications need to be taken in the proper dose and in a prescribed manner. Otherwise, they are open to abuse and can be damaging or addictive. Sleeping tablets are a good example of harmful medication when not controlled. Online Pharmacies offer no such control.
– Online pharmacies are uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Therefore no assurances can be given that product is in fact what it says it is on the package. Generic or worse still, totally fake tablets or capsules can be dispensed. You simply have no way of knowing what is or is not what you hope it is.
– But even more worrying than this is the possibility of lethal contamination. There are on record cases of where active ingredient or excipients have, wittingly or unwittingly, found their way into spurious pharmaceutical products with fatal consequences.
These serious reservations apply to all medications purchased from Online Pharmacies. However, in the case of Viagra and other erectile dysfunction treatments, there are additional pitfall and dangers that are particularly worrying. I can only touch on a few of these here but this should give you an idea:
– Viagra is now the biggest selling online pharmaceutical in the world.
– Not all, or even most, erectile dysfunction requires Viagra to fix it.
– Viagra is now widely used as a ‘recreational drug’ in the mistaken belief that it improves erections where no dysfunction exists. If it were not for internet selling this situation would not have evolved.
– Taken in this way Viagra can actually CAUSE erectile dysfunction by allowing for a ‘performance anxiety’ situation to develop. Performance anxiety is the commonest cause of erectile dysfunction that there is.
– Much erectile dysfunction is not in fact fixed by using Viagra or Cialis. However, the self-medicating may not realize this and be inappropriately driven to depths of despair when these drugs fail to work. I see this all the time in my practice.
Normally I am all in favor of patient’s autonomy and of people taking charge of their own illnesses. I am not in principle opposed to sensible self-medicating and self-care. People cannot go running to their doctor or drugstore with every little sniffle and sneeze. Indeed, I once argued for the free availability of the “morning after” pill as a means of reducing abortion demand. But Online Pharmacies? I think not and I hope that after reading this you might agree with me. Erectile dysfunction is a classical case in point.
