VIAGRA MADE ME BLIND

Viagra Made Me Blind
By Delevan H. Barrett

Believe me. I'll never forget it was the week of Valentine’s Day in Bangor Maine 2002. Upon leaving my doctors office for an annual checkup getting and receiving clean bill of health.

I was questioning the doctor if he had any sample of the little blue pill (Viagra). He gave me a sample of nine. There were no warnings on the bottle in regard to harmful effects.

That night I took one Viagra pill at approx 10:00 pm awaiting for the inevitable result to begin. It was very disappointing that that pill didn’t work. The next night I took another pill hoping for better luck. Nothing transpired again so decided to put them away and thus forgetting about them.

Two days latter my eyes were getting a little fuzzy. I thought I was coming down with the FLU so I went to bed about 11:00 pm.

At about 4:00 am I awoke to the sound of my TV but could not see the screen. I turned on my bed side lamp also to find that there was no light visible. I couldn't see anything out of both eyes. Hence I went to the Hospital via Taxi.

The Bangor Medical Center (Very good hospital) took my problem seriously and ran test on my eyes and determined that both of my optic nerves had died. With that, about 45 blood and chemistry test were performed over a three week period; they took consideration of all my other medications and my diet and they still couldn't find out why I suddenly went blind.

Upon review of my list of medications with a Pharmacist and the fact that Viagra was on the list
It was discovered that approx 500 other Men went blind after using Viagra. Most of them had lost only one eye. However I was on of the unlucky two that went totally blind in both eyes.

A few years later A Class Action Lawsuit was filed against Pfizer in Minneapolis Minn where the first case occurred.

After about two and a half years of deliberation the Judge found that there was no proof that Viagra caused Blindness even though by that time there were 500 other cases documented; the Judge said that the 36 hour time delay in causing blindness could've been caused by something else. Pfizer offered us a $1000.00 settlement to sort of set a gag order that some of the 500 took. But I decided to reject the offer because I wanted to spread awareness so others wont be affected by this drug like I was.

Now I am living here alone in Asbury Park New Jersey ten years later sitting here blind in both eyes spreading the word nationally about the un-fairness I received from a big business such as Pfizer and the Handling of this issue by the U.S. Government.

Pfizer should have better warnings on drugs to stop this happening again.