Fake Viagra

Yes, yes, I know, weall get emails offering us fake Viagra and Cialis all the time. And there's a booming global trade in it:

French customs officials have intercepted a shipment of 224,000 fake Viagra and Cialis anti-impotence pills worth 2.4 million euros ($3.5 million), the Budget Ministry said Monday.

The copies of the bestselling drugs were found on December 18 during a search at the French capital's main air hub at Roissy, in a freight cargo on its way to Brazil from India.

"Branded Powergra and Erectalis, each box contained, in fact, four tablets in the characteristic shape and color of Viagra or Cialis pills," Budget Minister Eric Woerth's office, which is also in charge of customs, said in a statement.

"The companies Pfizer and Eli Lilly, which respectively own the Viagra and Cialis brands, quickly confirmed the counterfeit nature of these products and the 224,000 pills were seized," Woerth's office added.

But the thing is, for some 30% of people who take the fake drugs they'll actually work. There's something called the placebo effect, you see, which means that that number around and about 30%, will have the correct reaction to a drug if they're simply told what that reaction should be.

You think you're going to get a hard on, you might well do, pills being fake or not.

Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that you should buy the cheaper fakes: if you know they'renot the real thing then it doesn't work.