Bitter pill to swallow

Published on Tuesday 20 April 2004 01:00

Like so many success stories, Viagra may be about to learn the lesson that what goes up, must come down. Those little blue pills, hailed for restoring joy to the marital bed, have for the first time been cited as a factor in a British divorce. A wife claims that her husband became "sexually aggressive" after taking the prescription tablet and has filed for divorce on grounds of "unreasonable behaviour".

The case of the fifty-something couple is the first alleged case of "Viagramony" in the UK. But will it stand up in court?

The first thing to note, is that it has taken a relatively long time for this problem to raise its head on these shores.

In the US, Viagra has been blamed in dozens of divorces since 1998, when it was first unleashed on a self-congratulatory generation of middle-aged men and their supposedly delighted partners.

New York matrimonial lawyer Raoul Felder was quoted in a Canadian newspaper last year, saying that Viagra had played a part in at least 70 cases his firm has handled. According to Felder: "Older men are able to perform, so they are going elsewhere - they’re seeking younger, greener pastures.

"I have had it the other way too - where, with older couples, the woman does not want sex. They have gone into some other stage of the marriage and the husband is now performing. So they go to a lawyer."

Manhattan attorney Dominic Barbara told the Malay Sunday Mail last year that around one in every 15 new divorce cases taken on by his firm in the noughties involves Viagra.

"They ought to put a warning label on that bottle," Barbara was quoted as saying. But is there any science to back the claims of these marriage escapees?

Visit the Viagra website and - along with the 14 million or so others who have checked it out - you will find that sildenafil citrate is designed to treat "erection difficulties". Manufacturers Pfizer estimates that more than 16 million men have used it, or if you want a snappier statistic, "nine tablets are dispensed every second worldwide".

It works by increasing blood flow to the appropriate parts and is estimated to work in four out of five cases. But when it comes to side effects, Pfizer limits its advice to the medical rather than the emotional. The company stresses that Viagra is not a hormone or an aphrodisiac and that unless a man is sexually stimulated, Viagra alone will not cause an erection. So, if Viagra doesn’t actually work in the absence of sexual desire, can it really be held accountable as the cause of unreasonable sexual demands, infidelity and divorce?

A spokeswoman for Pfizer gives an unequivocal "no". There is no evidence to suggest that Viagra can cause aggression, sexual or otherwise. In fact the truth about the drug would appear to be quite the opposite.

"We would say that it’s unfair to blame a medicine for divorce," a spokeswoman says. "If anything, Viagra has done a huge amount in bringing couples together."

Indeed Pfizer has never had to pay any self-professed Viagramony victim a penny compensation. However, the company advises that couples who are using Viagra and experiencing problems should consult their GP or relationship counsellor before heading to the divorce courts.

The woman from Pfizer points out that the alleged 70 divorce cases citing Viagra as a factor is negligible when compared with the number of men popping the little blue pills.

"More than 600,000 doctors around the globe have written more than 100 million prescriptions for Viagra," she says. "I think that puts it in perspective." With the NHS in Scotland spending an estimated 4 million a year on Viagra prescriptions and impotence drugs, are we facing an epidemic of late-life divorce? Paula Hall, a counsellor for the relationship guidance service Relate, says marital breakdown is likely to have less to do with the drug and more to do with sexual communication problems.

"It’s not actually Viagra’s fault," she says. "One assumes that in this recent divorce case there were sexual problems before Viagra came along."

Hall echoes the words of Viagra’s manufacturers when she suggests that impotence pills such as Viagra help more marriages than they wreck. But she says problems can emerge if a man starts to think "because I can physically have sex, that means we should".

This seems to be the scenario in the first Viagramony case in the UK, although details are sketchy at this stage, as the husband and wife have managed to guard their anonymity - so far. A solicitor involved in the case of the London couple, yesterday refused to comment.

So if you are an over-demanding Viagra-fuelled husband, or an exhausted fifty-something wife, will you be able to cite Viagra in a divorce in a Scottish court of law?

Andrew Gibb, a family law specialist at Edinburgh solicitors Balfour & Manson, says it is not as simple as that.

"It could be said that the taking of Viagra in itself would not seem to justify divorce," explains Gibb. "But if it did result in an ‘aggression’ that was unreasonable and it was not welcomed, then it might amount to ‘unreasonable behaviour’." And if your spouse is unfaithful after popping Viagra, can you cite the blue pill as the third party in an adultery case? Absolutely not, says Gibb.