Bonus 9 crazy inventions

The speaker discusses the history and development of the drug Viagra. Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company, conducted research to find treatments for heart and cardiovascular diseases. They discovered that inhibiting phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) could affect cyclic guanosine monophosphate (CGMP) levels, which led to the development of the compound UK92-480, later known as sildenafil or Viagra. Clinical trials showed that Viagra was effective in treating erectile dysfunction (ED) with minimal side effects. It was approved by the FDA in 1998 and became a popular medication. Viagra also showed potential in treating other conditions such as pulmonary hypertension and heart failure. click illequipped history illiquipped history bonus episode you better like us singing because it ain't gonna stop I am good. I'm still recovering from yesterday when we recorded for our bonus episode listeners. I don't know if these episodes will be out yet when this releases but Emily's episodes are I am good. I'm still recovering from yesterday when we recorded for our bonus episode listeners. I don't know if these episodes will be out yet when this releases but Emily's episodes are I am good. I'm still recovering from yesterday when we recorded for our bonus episode listeners. I don't know if these episodes will be out yet when this releases but Emily's episodes are I am good. I'm still recovering from yesterday when we recorded for our bonus episode listeners. I don't know if these episodes will be out yet when this releases but Emily's episodes are yeah yeah okay yeah sounds good yes which I think the first one came out yesterday yeah it's weird to talk about it in the future yeah it's hard anyway so yeah it's Emily's month this month and I'll be at the very very end it's fine it's fine and we have some we have some cool things ready releasing today or tomorrow for our one year anniversary I know yeah like yeah as long as we have a listener we're still going to do this because it's a lot of fun mm-hmm yeah we can tell you all kinds of fun facts because we don't report on every single thing that we learn in our research have you decided if we're doing it day of or day after or day before or day of that's what I meant mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm just back to back yeah and I think it's going to be much needed this month because it's going to be a really depressing month mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah I got this idea I was out with some friends and one of my friend's husband started talking to us about how Viagra was invented and I was like Emily let's do this episode so alright well Emily starting off with slinky slinky we all love the slinky mm-hmm I couldn't remember the rest of the words but I remember seeing the jingle as a kid mm-hmm mm-hmm yeah right mm-hmm mm-hmm that's hilarious mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm oh dang they're just popping off oh dang oh that's really cute honestly mm-hmm that always made me mad I was like I see it doing it on the commercials why won't it do it at my house mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm that's delightful that's like a slinky sound and just the name slinky the more you say it the less it starts to be a real word mm-hmm what is a tree mm-hmm or you would make an excellent philosopher no it's just my brain what's a brain mm-hmm oh damn yeah they're super fun I know I had one when I was a kid mm-hmm short it yeah that was the one thing it's like if you stretched it even just a little bit it was ruined forever all right so we're going to start with my because why not just go ahead and get it out of the way so all of my information about this comes from a an article I read that I was not expecting to have like all of the information that I could find but it's called from angina to erectile dysfunction to pulmonary hypertension and beyond by Hossein A. Ghafrani, Ian H. Osterloh, and Friedrich Grimminger so to start our story off research was underway at the Pfizer European Research Labs in Sandwich, United Kingdom to find treatments for heart and cardiovascular diseases especially hypertension which is like high blood pressure so I'm going to get a little science-y because it's important to like how this drug was developed just know I do have no idea what I'm talking about so the scientists wanted to see if there could be benefits in targeting cyclic guanosine monophosphate or CGMP levels I don't know what that is it's just a chemical in your brain I think it deals with thank you I think it's something that has to do with like the muscles in your heart and there's different I think it's like a protein maybe I'm not entirely sure anyway so at this time this is like the 1980s-ish nitrates were used a lot to treat heart diseases and different cardiovascular issues such as the target of this particular study which is angina pectoris or quote severe chest pains caused by insufficient supply of blood to the heart that's a quote from the article it had a nice little definition bank at the bottom so the manipulation of the CGMP using nitrates causes the heart muscles to relax so it will ease any kind of heart disease and the chest pains, the angina but too much use of the nitrates can cause tachyslaxis or basically drug tolerance and as the body becomes more accustomed to the drug it over time loses its effectiveness and you have to increase the dose and they're like that's not really good like they don't want too many nitrates in the body but we want to continue to find a way to treat heart disease so Pfizer was trying to find a new way to affect the CGMP levels without using too many nitrates so using a bunch of medical science I did not understand and the team determined alright I'm going to do my best here phosphodiesterase type 5 or PDE5 breaks down the CGMP and they developed a compound to inhibit the PDE5 which was named UK92-480 and the UK92-480 would later be known as Hildenafil so all this science stuff they found this this chemical affects this chemical and then they developed a chemical to inhibit that chemical science so in 1991 so they created UK92-480 and they're like alright great like it seems like it's really effective at treating the heart so in 1991 it went to clinical trials for a year clinical trials are still going on and we're entering 1992 so there were some test subjects who were tasked with taking up to 75 milligrams of UK92-480 three times a day for 10 days in a row and they started reporting some side effects including headaches flushing, like cheeks flushing, indigestion, muscle aches and in some male participants, erections so they're like hey this is a side effect yeah yes yes well now you have to say it in old Greg's voice I'm on Greg I drink Bailey's from the shoe the Great British Bake Off yeah so yeah so by the middle of 1993 UK92-480 was not looking super good as a treatment for angina pectoris or the chest pain it wasn't very stable and it deteriorated quickly so and you're still trying to look like you're still trying to hold back laughter I know every time I typed out angina I was like why is it like called that because it's just chest pain but anyway so we're going to be talking a lot about boners here okay so we'll get our giggles out in conjunction with the focus on cardiovascular health more attention was being brought to erectile dysfunction or ED up to the 1980s it was widely considered a psychological issue it's all in your head you know right so there was one treatment that was being done that ED patients were receiving with vasodilating drugs and these were drugs that were from what I gathered were injected they were injected I don't know if it was directly into the penis or what I couldn't figure that out but what the injection did that particular treatment it was it would dilate like the blood vessels but this and urologists were doing this but it was very uncomfortable very painful actually and the resulting erections would last like a really long time and it was more akin to like artificially inflating the penis not very fun so doctors researching treatments for ED turned their they like had heard the results from the other clinical trials the Stildenafil trials and they're like hey this medication this drug is doing the it went into a lot of detail about everything that it does I did not understand a word of it was like it affects this or this and this but it does all the things that they were looking for essentially for a drug to treat ED and especially to create an erection alongside sexual arousal because with the injection they were just like it was just there whether you wanted it to be I mean assume they wanted it to be there but you had no control over it whereas this treatment was like it's not going to artificially inflate it's going to help like kind of give the penis a turbo boost with sexual arousal I know boners we are so clinical trials for Stildenafil as a treatment for ED started in 1993 and in 1994 the study showed a very big potential for being a much more pleasant treatment of ED it was not painful it was not uncomfortable it was a lot more natural in the process and additional trials showed it was functional in patients suffering from a variety of cardiovascular and nervous system so they were doing clinical trials on people without heart conditions but also found that patients or test subjects with heart conditions they were being treated for ED and other heart issues yeah really and about it had about 70% efficacy with no major side effects it was mostly similar to what we discussed earlier the headaches, flushing, indigestion some distorted vision and I think that what was the cause of it there was a concern about too much of the too much of the PDE5 could affect the color of your vision something like that too much of the Stildenafil like someone took too much of it could affect the color of the person's vision so Stildenafil was eventually labeled Viagra by Pfizer and was approved by the FDA and other European medical agencies in 1998 just a few weeks after it hit the market over 1 million patients received the treatment it sold like hotcakes in 1998 like the year it hit the market there were some cases of heart attacks strokes and sudden death but by all accounts and like investigations into those deaths it was found that those people were most likely taking too much they were overdosing but by with extensive research and stuff if you take the correct dosage you are not you should be fine and actually could protect your heart it can actually protect against heart attack and stroke which I yeah yeah and it also appears to be an effective treatment for other conditions such as pulmonary hypertension respiratory issues heart failure and stroke like I said so yeah it's Viagra was that an uplifting topic for you did it arouse your curiosity I've been living in boner world for like a few days now oh boy talk about your topic now oh man oh man really really really okay okay oh it's an irregular heartbeat rhythm okay okay mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm wow yeah and it's crazy how that why how what okay oh yeah yeah androgen they are hormones that are more like for male characteristics so they're taking like anti-man drugs essentially okay but this is a serious thing it's very effective to people's self-confidence okay okay mm-hmm mm-hmm mm-hmm and on your skin and stuff mm-hmm okay oh okay okay okay yeah that's a very unpleasant mental image okay I purposely did not look up pictures I I looked up Sildenazil I did not scroll down I like in our pictures for our notes so we can show each other I picked up the first picture I saw and I copy pasted it into our notes I did not scroll any further I am not all right so my next invention is Listerine we're all kinds of medical today so to talk about Listerine we need to go back just a touch we first need to talk about a man named Louis Pasteur who Emily has talked about before he Mr. Pasteur, Louis Pasteur he is the one who developed the process of pasteurization but he also developed a germ theory of disease in 1857 one of the first ones to do so mm-hmm yes and it was while he was researching alcohol fermentation he discovered bacteria was the cause of milk and wine going bad and through heat bacteria can be destroyed or pasteurization so a man named Joseph Lister who is a contemporary of Louis Pasteur he took Pasteur's germ theory and focused it to the medical field specifically for gangrene and infection so he was like okay if bacteria infects our food it probably infects like operating theaters and you know infections it's probably the cause of infections no well maybe at some point but not right now so in the 1860s Lister made considerable efforts to sanitize not only the operating room but himself and his patients so he yes before this surgery was a horror show there was no there's barely any anesthetic no antiseptic nothing would really be cleaned and sometimes tools would even be reused between surgeries without being cleaned between yeah yeah here's some topical cocaine or let's just pour whiskey on it you know yeah so surgery was essentially a death sentence at this point because there were not any efforts to clean not only the tools but the environment that the surgeries were taking in or even the patients themselves and again like that's where gangrene and infections come from so Lister started using carbolic acid to sanitize patients wounds and the air he actually had a mister that he would spray carbolic acid around in the air and he basically revolutionized surgical practices and antiseptics and this was in 1865 so he greatly influenced Dr. Joseph Lawrence and Robert Wood Johnson who would go on to eventually make Johnson and Johnson yep so Dr. Joseph Lawrence he is the one who invented Listerine in 1879 as a topical anesthetic or topical antiseptic and he named it after Dr. Joseph Lister because he contributed so much to the medical field it's basically an honor of him so he yeah and I saw something that like Lister was like no don't name this after me but also like didn't try to stop them he was just like yeah so right no you're good Dr. Lawrence paired up with a pharmacist named Jordan Wheat Lambert and they like Lawrence bought the chemicals from Jordan Wheat Lambert and using thymol menthol eucalyptol eucalyptol essential oils and alcohol invented Listerine so it was pushed as a local antiseptic you know like clean your little cuts and scrapes and stuff to be sold not to the general public but to like pharmacies and doctor's offices and stuff but later they're like oh it can do all kinds of things it's a floor cleaner it's a deodorant it's a dandruff treatment it's toothpaste it's a gonorrhea treatment but Listerine was not too harsh on the skin or irritating so it it was working at the time and also I thought this is me it was one of the first products ever to list all the ingredients on the label because Dr. Lawrence was like everyone's going to know exactly what's in this bottle yeah and it was starting to be advertised to dentists to be used as an oral antiseptic but that didn't really start getting big until the 1920s in 1881 Lambert who's the pharmacist he licensed the Listerine formula and created the Lambert Pharmaceutical Company and in 1895 that's when it started being marketed as an oral antiseptic in 1914 Listerine started becoming available over-the-counter and Listerine is has a very unique history um it has a lot of firsts attributed to it so when it started being advertised as an oral antiseptic Jordan Wheat Lambert and his son Gerard wanted to increase sales the Listerine especially for use as an oral antiseptic so they essentially created the term halitosis to market Listerine to create fear that you would have bad breath. And that's where we get the the phrase often the bridesmaid never the bride from one of these ads and I actually have that ad in the in the images if you scroll down there's two and these two were like there's often a bridesmaid never a bride and it's like an ongoing serial ad about this woman who was always a bridesmaid and no one liked her because of her stinky breath and and I think it was also a similar like the same character in the second ad halitosis makes you unpopular so you should buy Listerine so you have nice breath but yeah it's not a it's not an actual medical condition everyone was terrified of having bad breath because of this ad campaign and it was incredibly successful it actually developed its own like like effect that advertisers use called the halitosis appeal to use fear to sell a product yeah and there's actually there's a whole niche of research dedicated to the way Listerine company manipulated the market and doled out advertisements it's it's so interesting and it was also being marketed as like a treatment for colds a treatment for sore throats like it was like it is the one-all be-all potion to cure all of your ailments of bad breath and clean your floors and get rid of your dandruff and your gonorrhea and make your armpits smell good. Yes, so I just it's very interesting and then I got a timeline from the Listerine website it didn't go so much in detail about like the sketchy advertisements but also at some point got fluoride in it and fluoride was found to be a very effective treatment against plaque and bacteria very useful for oral health in the 1960s plaque is found to be a primary cause of oral and wellness like gum disease and then in 1985 the ADA begins developing oral health guidelines and two years later the ADA approved Listerine as an official mouthwash and I thought this was super interesting Listerine is distributed in glass embossed bottles until 1994 before it started shifting to plastic bottles I know yeah super fancy mouthwash in a glass bottle hell yeah so that's the history of Listerine make your breath make your breath smell good all right yay hmm absolutely not okay just yeah right you're shitting me I love that that's so funny what were these tins made out of did you see yeah I can understand why people watch out yeah I don't want to lose the top of your head you I'm sorry spurred melon sorry I'm sorry what iconic fellas his origins Wow oh yeah I definitely played it a lot as a kid mm-hmm actually Kyle is a really big disc golfer and I've gotten pretty good at throwing discs and frisbees and maybe not frisbee so much because their discs are a bit heavier than frisbees but I'm got pretty good at throwing them mm-hmm oh there's a penny that's fun what a fun toy oh god that would be awful so my next one can also be considered a fun toy bubble wrap this is going to be super short because there's not a lot to the history bubble wrap I try to find more I have to two big bullet points with like three little bullet points so in 1957 there's two American engineers Alfred Fielding and Mark Chavannes Chavannes they wanted to create a fun new 3d wallpaper they sealed two shower curtains together with bubbles inside it didn't really sell very well yeah it was a 50s you know like people are experimenting so they're like let's make this cool textured wallpaper that is like really neat it didn't sell very well was not very successful and then they're like let's try to pivot and make it greenhouse insulation also didn't do very well so about three years later like in the like at the beginning of 1960s we have sealed air which is a company co-founded by Alfred Fielding they were like hey it was a marketer working for sealed air like hey like we could potentially use this product to protect IBM computers that are being shipped and they approach IBM and they're like hey we have this neat product that can protect your computers and they're like yes we want that and then bubble wrap was like formally invented and the trademark is owned by still still by sealed air and that's the history bubble wrap now it's used for packaging and to pop the bubbles and no one else thought that was a good idea it was right at the start of the 60s man right oh no okay oh I I almost covered this one I was like now you ended up doing it anyway you yeah Oh no Oh I hate that uh-huh uh-huh you you Oh you hate it hate it hate it okay mm-hmm you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you okay it's like a hand whisk but a blade you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you 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