Here 'tis- right from USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/science/lsd1.htm
Alex
Michele Gale-Sinex/CIAS, UW-Madison wrote:
> Howdy, all--
>
> This may offend some of you because it's about people. If it does,
> please pretend I'm talking about bulls or boars.
>
> According to the Nobel Prize Web site, the 1998 Nobel Prize in
> Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Robert F Furchgott,
> Louis J Ignarro and Ferid Murad for their discoveries concerning
> "nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system."
>
> Weren't these guys the inventors or discoverers or whatever you'd
> call it of Viagra? I mean, that's the mechanism by which it works,
> innit?
>
> Why is this a sustag question?
>
> Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly consolidating their hold on
> the food system. It says something about their prevailing value
> structure, doesn't it?, that this particular notion of male
> "virility" is normatized, celebrated, and marketed (hyped) to the
> exclusion of others. And given a Nobel Prize? And its implications,
> particularly the food system ones, aren't apparently taken into
> consideration by the Nobel folks. Yeah, I know that Alfred Nobel
> invented dynamite (also an NO-related compound), and that a systems
> view of inventions is not exactly the Nobel Foundation's strong suit.
>
> Anyone tracking this issue who could clarify this for me, I'd really
> appreciate. I did a Web search on "Viagra" to try to find the names
> of its inventors, but quickly grew so slack-jawed by the hype around
> it (such as users of the drug bragging about their number of scores
> in a night), I had to stop. It was painful seeing men's sexuality
> reduced and commodified in this way to sell a drug.
>
> It's always seemed to me that a sustainable ethic of responsible
> sexuality has got to be part of sustainable ag, since the
> relationship of sexuality to reproduction has considerable impacts
> on food issues and communities. And men's sexuality in
> particular--Stephen Jay Gould pointed out some 15 years ago that
> while women's bodies have evolved past the point where sexuality and
> reproduction are connected, men's bodies still conjoin the two
> functions. Alone of all the primates, human women's reproductive
> cycle is independent of sexual pleasure.
>
> And say for a moment I buy the Viagra hype and the pathetic image of
> menfolk it presents ("well you know, they only want one thing, har
> har har"), it seems to me that the last thing that an overpopulated,
> industrially polluted, community-weakened, food-insecure world needs
> is men aged 20-70 "who feel like 16 again," which is Code for one
> particular type of physical functioning, but has other implications
> too. Seems to me that what we really need are menfolk who feel
> exactly their age, and carry the full diverse wisdom of it.
>
> Womenfolk too.
>
> I kinda thought that Mama Earth was sending us all a message around
> this with low sperm counts, et cetera, and the renaissance of the
> understanding that there's more to love, relating, family, and
> community, for men as well as women, than Har Har Har Wham Bam.
>
> Just another part of Vertical Integration, I guess--you synthesize
> and sell people fractionated, denatured food, you might as well sell
> them a vision of fractionated, denatured sexuality that fits with
> that. I wonder when men are going to wake up and stop letting
> themselves be used like this to sell products that don't necessarily
> represent or honor their full selves. (Not just Viagra--guns, cars,
> beer, sports, tools, and huge agricultural implements.)
>
> If I'm wrong about the connection between these Nobelistas and
> Viagra, somebody please let me know.
>
> peace
> misha
>
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
> Michele Gale-Sinex, communications manager
> Center for Integrated Ag Systems
> UW-Madison College of Ag and Life Sciences
> Voice: (608) 262-8018 FAX: (608) 265-3020
> http://www.wisc.edu/cias
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Community--that's what Jah say. --Alpha Blondy
>
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