Impotence & ED treatments Scams: Swindlers and Quacks

When impotence happens, it is the quacks that make the most bucks – Rutherford Morison, 1965.

Before Viagra came into existence, many men who were affected by erectile dysfunction were left untreated. Physicians as we all know never took any keen interest in cases where they felt that they would never find a solution.

Since impotence was something which nobody had a cure for treatment, many doctors used to give up hope and never really bothered to treat patients suffering from impotency. Millions of men had been suffering from the dreaded erectile dysfunction and there was a huge space which required to be filled.

It was during the 20th century that centers for providing ‘men’s health’ began to come into existence. These centers seemed to specialize in providing management and evaluation for impotent men.

Most of these health centers were opened by non-urologists who used to be a better businessman rather than being a physician. These centers were located in such places where they could cater to the vast number of impotent men who could never get any solution when they meet their regular doctor’s clinic.

These patients came to know about such men’s health centers through word of mouth of through advertisements which are placed mostly in the sports column of leading newspapers.

Those men, who used to enroll in this program, were considered to be as tapping sources of gold. There was nothing considered as goal oriented and the main objective of these so called men’s health centers were to take as much revenue as they could get.

These counters used to take the blood test of the patient. Most of the patients undertook the blood test. After conducting many different types of tests and by spending thousands of dollars on these tests, all the men were given the diagnosis which mentioned ‘You have erectile dysfunction’.

All these men who approached such quacks never required conducting any of the tests as they were already informed by their doctor that they were impotent.

After all these tests were conducted by these quacks on all unsuspected patients, most of the men were given vacuum constriction devices, testosterone replacement or intracorporeal pharmacotherapy. All these options were true but the tests never required to prove it.

Unluckily, patients in such clinics were not in any position for shopping around. Many physicians never had relatively anything that they required to give them.

Additionally, problems such as erectile dysfunction were not something which people would prefer discussing openly. Hence, once they were inside closed doors, all these impotent men had no other option but at the mercy of these proprietors.

Many of these adult men experienced complications from the treatments offered. Considering that the prescribing medical professionals were not technically qualified in the methods, they generally were unable to handle issues like priapism or fibrosis.

More effective businessmen than physicians, they consequently told affected individuals to go to a urologist or the emergency department of a local hospital if problems occurred.

Urologists recognized the ethical outrage that was occurring and took a public stance against such endeavors in the nineties.

Thankfully, the majority of of these centers have shut down. The overriding cause for their demise was the sudden availability of oral therapy for erectile dysfunction. After the media overwhelm of Viagra’s launch, it started to be acceptable for men to talk about erectile dysfunction.

Adult men discovered that they weren’t alone. Moreover, most medical professionals had become aware of the opportunity of impotence in society and became more comfortable in talking about it with patients and suggesting treatment or appointment with a urologist. The cash cow for these centers disappeared.

KEY POINTS

• The American Urological Association and the 1992 NIH Consensus Statement define erectile dysfunction as the inability to achieve or maintain an erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance,”
• Primary impotence means that a man has never been able to achieve an erection. Most cases are secondary, occurring only after having normal erections previously.
• Erectile dysfunction is the preferred term for impotence. The latter term is less favored these days from a politically correct standpoint but remains the most common term for most people.
• The goal-oriented approach is appropriate for most men with erectile dysfunction. In cases that don’t appear straightforward, or if a man feels it is imperative to know the cause, further testing is sometimes performed.
• A brief medical history and physical examination are adequate for most patients. Sexual questionnaires like the IIEF or SHIM can help quantify how much difficulty a man is having.
• Measurement of testosterone is usually performed, but involved tests of vascular status and neurological testing are rarely conducted.
• Differentiating between physical and psychological causes is useful, but most cases involve a little of both, The presence of nocturnal erections indicates that a man has at least some ability to have an erection.