Viagra's Accidental Discovery and the Question It Left Open
Viagra was discovered by accident and became the fastest-selling drug of the century, which is how Psyche frames a BBC Ideas and Open University video on its history. The question the video poses is the more interesting half: did the drug revolutionise sex, or reinforce old ideas about it? A pill can change what bodies do without changing what people expect of one another — or, more awkwardly, it can do both at once, which is why the question resists a clean answer.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The interesting thing isn't the molecule, it's that a treatment arrives with a script attached: who is supposed to want it, and what it means if they do.
'Fastest-selling drug of the century' tells us about adoption, not about attitudes. People buy things for reasons that have nothing to do with the story we later tell about them.