| Jedimaster |
05-05-2004 06:23 AM |
Viagra User Is 99 Years Old
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore's oldest user of Viagra is 99.
That shows the spirit is willing, even if the flesh might be weak, in the strait-laced city state of four million, where people are reputed to have less sex each year than any other place in the world and where birth rates have dropped alarmingly.
"I hope I can still go for treatment when I am 99," said Li Man Kay, a consultant urologist who surveyed the man, among 1,520 patients who used the drug in Singapore, for a study published in the International Journal of Urology.
He said the man was a very fit retiree who was on his second marriage, to a woman in her sixties, but gave no further details.
"There will be a lot more older people in the years to come," Li told reporters Wednesday at a function marking five years for Viagra in Singapore, where more than 1.5 million prescriptions for the drug have been filled since 1999.
"So it is crucial for people who are most likely to get erectile dysfunction to be healthy and productive."
Singaporeans make love an average of 96 times a year, an annual sex survey by condom maker Durex showed last September, the second time in a row that the island ranked last worldwide.
The city state forecasts that the number of people aged more than 65 will grow nearly four-fold to 800,000 by 2030, with no corresponding growth seen in the working-age population to support them.
"The idea of older people being sexual has been a difficult one for us to come to terms with," said Rosie King, an Australian sex therapist on the editorial board of the Journal of Sexual and Reproductive Medicine.
"In Hollywood movies you don't see old age-pensioners locked in passionate embrace."
She called for more rigorous studies of Viagra, made by Pfizer, and its rival products -- Levitra, promoted as fast-acting, from GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer, and Cialis, the effects of which can last up to 36 hours, sold by Eli Lilly and Icos.
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