A Sexual Revolution

A CBS 2 News Special Assignment

CBS 2 News' Special Assignment: A Sexual Revolution aired Wednesday, February 25, 1998 at 11 p.m.

Music, candelight, and a little romance. It doesn't take much to get in the mood -- but what doesn't happen in the bedroom isn't what most couples are comfortable talking about.

Everywhere we turn we're bombarded with images of sex. But there's one part of sex that you don't hear much about -- it's when a partner can't perform.

"We are people with a very active and interesting sex life," Alfred Pariser told CBS 2 News' Lonni Leavitt. "And suddenly we find I was impotent."

Pariser said the news was devastating. He had just beaten cancer and now he was suddenly faced with a new problem.

"A man's entire self-confidence is locked up in his performance," said Pariser. "And the way men prove their performance is with erections.

"So suddenly, how did I feel? I felt terrible. I thought, 'God, my life is half over,'" said Pariser.

Jill and Tolman Geffs have also dealt with a similar problem in their love life, said Leavitt.

They were married in 1990, but five years later, Tolman was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"I mean we were just like empty-nesters," Jill Geffs told Leavitt. "My last son had just moved out. We were like newlyweds, I mean, 'Oh, boy come find me'."

Tolman Geffs had surgery to remove the cancer but after he healed, he learned he was no longer able to have intercourse.

"I had the very, very deep fear that if I could no longer perform as a male, am I going to ultimately lose my mate?" Toman Geffs told Leavitt.

More than half of the men over the age of 40 will have problems in bed, but only 5 percent of those men ever come forward for help, said Leavitt.

The causes for impotency can range from stress to injuries on bicycle seats to vascular disease. Impotency affects as many as 20 million men -- some as young as 18 years old.

There are ways to help men get back their sex life, but they aren't pretty ones.

There are implants, a vacuum-type contraption, a suppository placed through the urethra or an injection right into the penis that could help lower the statistics of impotency in men, said Leavitt.

"Are you kidding me?" Alfred Pariser said. "Most men putting a needle into their best friends?"

There is however, a little blue pill that is expected to give another alternative to those not-so-pretty options, said Leavitt.

As the birth control pill in the 1960s allowed women to have sex without the fear of pregnancy, the little blue pill -- called Viagra -- could bring performance confidence back into men.

But according to Leavitt, not everyone can take Viagra.

"It works only in men with erectile dysfunction," Santa Monica urologist Harim Padma-Nathan told Leavitt. "It's not a libido enhancer. It produces better erections in men that have erectile dysfunction."

For the past few years, Tolman Geffs and Alfred Pariser have been part of a test group that has been trying out Viagra.

The Parisers say all of their friends are now begging for the blue pills because after Alfred Pariser started taking the pill, "he feels like he's Tarzan," said Leavitt.

"At 58 years old, to have an erection like a 25-year-old... that's pretty good," said Alfred Pariser.

According to Leavitt, Viagra should be available through your doctor as early as May. So far the side effects to the pill are very minor.

More information:

• To participate in Dr. Harim Padma-Nathan's study, e-mail The Male Clinic at maleclinic@pobox.com or check out their Web site at www/insyght.com/maleclinic.
• Learn more about Dr. Harim Padma-Nathan.
• Read a 1996 report on Viagra
• Pfizer Inc. is a company expected to market Viagra