Health Beauty & FitnessHealth, Beauty, Fitness Tips

The law is often accused of being dull and boring but, every now and again, we get into cases involving sexual matters and life is suddenly interesting again. The law defining patents is more or less the same all around the world. Whoever is the first one to invent something new is entitled to a monopoly to exploit it for a given number of years. If something has been around for years, it is no longer original and it cannot be patented. This should be completely straightforward. All the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has to do whenever anyone submits an application for a new patent or trademark is walk down to the library (or fire up the databases) and check to see whether the idea is new. Except, life is too short to read through a library of books and not everything is available in digital form to check on a database search. Just think Google and all the problems it faces in its efforts to digitize books. Now translate this to a Government Department with a small budget. Sometimes, you do a keyword search and it comes up zip.

All this was making the medical profession in China and India less than happy. Between them, they have centuries of medical texts documenting the use of almost every herb, root, fungus and spice as specific treatments for what are still common diseases and disorders. But the West kept reinventing traditional cures as modern drugs and patenting them. How was this theft of medical knowledge to be stopped. The problem was access. All the major texts were in old languages. So, over the last decade, teams of medical support staff have been working hard to translate thousands of Chinese and Indian medical texts into English. All these texts have been supplied to the USPTO in digital form. That’s why the officers responsible for deciding whether Pfizer’s little blue pills are sufficiently original to justify patent protection were excited to discover Yin Yang Huo (which translates as the Horny Goat Weed). This weed has been known to the practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for the last two thousand years. From its name, you will understand it is a treatment for erectile dysfunction. By a remarkable coincidence, it is also a naturally occurring version of the chemicals forming the basis of viagra. So, shock and horror prevails in the US as part of the patent protection for all the modern erectile dysfunction drugs is cancelled. Delight in China that another natural weed has been saved from the running dogs of Western capitalism. The TCM practitioners can continue to prescribe Yin Yang Huo without having to pay royalties to a Western pharmaceutical company.

Assuming you still to be awake, this interesting development in the erectile dysfunction market is likely to become a more common phenomenon as more translated texts are loaded into the database at the USPTO. Rather a lot of US companies are about to discover that there’s little that has not already been discovered somewhere in the world. As to those of you suffering from erectile dysfunction, supplies of Horny Goat Weed are difficult to locate in your average Main Street pharmacy so, until Chinese exporters respond to demand, you can still buy viagra online. It has been the market leader since its launch ten years ago. It will no doubt continue to dominate despite the claims of the horny goat.

When at our mother’s knee, we all hear this friendly voice warning us never to forget, “The world is full of thieves and villains.” It first surfaces in unexplained instructions never to walk off with adults we do not know. This is “stranger danger” and it’s only in later years we realize how many predators there are and what they want. Then come all the other warnings about value. This is the “if it’s cheap, it must be bad value warning. Yet, remarkably, we never seem to care when buying a fake Rolex for a few dollars. It just seems like a fun thing to be able to wrap round our wrists and impress our friends for a few hours. The fact this may be stealing from the owners of the brand in some way never seems to connect. Well, ladies and gentlemen, here’s an adult warning for you. There are folk out there on the internet who want to steal from you and, this time, it’s personal. You are the ones who will bear the loss. These particular thieves pick a product where your own defenses may be down. This is the erectile dysfunction market. It exists in both a direct and indirect form.

On the direct sites, these businesses claim to be selling the little blue pills at a fraction the usual retail price. They are full of convincing explanations and promises. All you have to do is send the money and await results. The safer version simply disappears with your money and never troubles the mailman. This is the “smash and grab” approach to theft. There’s no subtlety involved. Like the robber who bashes you over the head to steal your wallet, these guys advertize and run. The more dangerous actually send you some pills. If you are lucky, these pills are completely harmless and will not injure you in any way. If you are unlucky, the pills contain something dangerous and they make you ill. So only buy from trusted online pharmacies. That way you get the real product.

All of which brings me to the latest news out of the FDA. It’s their job to police the way in which all drugs and “natural” products are sold. They have just added Stiff Nights to the list of some 24 similar products offered for sale over the last four years. This was a male enhancement product, coming with claims to make you a spectacular sexual athlete using only completely natural ingredients. These ads play on your insecurities and, for a high price, offer you the answer to all your prayers (whatever they are). Well, Stiff Nights was a highly effective product. As the word-of-mouth confirmed, it produced really hard erections. The reason? The manufacturer mixed in viagra. Instead of this being an all natural product as claimed, it was the little blue pill repacked and sold on at an inflated price. So make to our idioms. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Do not be taken in by empty promises. There is no need to spend your hard-earned dollars on enhancement products. Buy viagra online from one of the trusted online pharmacies and get spectacular erections for a really low price – the best value-for-money pills on the market, bar none.