Viagra is good for treating pulmonary hypertension, an often deadly form of high blood pressure that affects the lungs. This isn’t as strange as it sounds, since Viagra was originally created to treat the chest pain of angina by opening up blood vessels. Its more popular use was only discovered accidentally.

Pfizer hopes to find some new uses for the drug, since it has new competition for the male sexual market, including Cialis, which claims to offer 24 hour potency. However, not many men of Viagra-taking age are interested in all day sexual sessions, so Pfizer isn’t that worried.

And if Viagra replaces your current blood pressure pill? Oh, those side effects! That’s one more thing your doctor didn’t tell you.

read more

There’s a long-running controversy among scientists about whether or not early humans interbred with Neanderthals,and if they didn’t, why not? Now DNA has answered the first question by revealing that modern humans show evidence of Cro-Magnon ancestry, but there’s no evidence we had Neanderthal ancestors.

Neanderthals and our early human ancestors were distinct species, although they lived during the same period, often side by side. If they didn’t interbreed, what stopped them? It could have been that they were too distinctly separate to produce offspring, although this is doubtful.
read more

Iran feels under threat from the U.S. since it’s now surrounded by U.S.-controlled Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the mullahs who run the country are being threatened from within, as reform Iranian MPs tell them that they’d better institute the reforms they promised, unless they want to end up like Saddam Hussein.

An open letter signed by 153 of the 290 member Iranian governing body, says Iran is in “a critical situation” and the rulers are losing the support of the people, who overwhelmingly voted for reform. President Mohammad Khatami, who got 70% of the vote, has failed to deliver on his extensive reformist promises.
read more

While viruses can mutate and spread from animals to man, there’s no evidence this has ever happened between dogs and humans, and we can’t catch diseases directly from dogs (or vice-versa). The only thing they can give us is fleas and parasites; however, the Chinese fear dogs are one of the reasons SARS is spreading, so people are beginning to kill their pets.
read more