Yeah, you told me you thought Reagan was one of the greatest men in human history j/k 
Haha wow. That’s some story. I actually did something similar when I finished college. I lived in Georgia, took all my money and drove out west to San Francisco, where I had a friend living. Even had a 1996 Ford Escort too. I was on the antidepressant drug Effexor at a fairly high dosage, and it made me do crazy, impulsive things like that. Ended up settling in Reno and setting up a little small business there that was doing pretty well. Those were the days. Now I feel like I’m about 100 years old.
Anyway, the problem is not capitalism or corporations per se. It’s the collusion of corporations with government. We don’t live in a true capitalist, free-market system… you can’t have that when you have a privately-owned central bank(Federal Reserve) that controls the issuance of the currency, and government regulatory agencies that bend to the every beck and call of the major corporations. If we had a government that would stay within its constitutional boundaries, then many of the economic problems in this country would gradually be resolved. But I digress.
Right here we have as good an example as any with Propecia of a major drug corporation working hand in hand with a government regulatory agency to hide the dangers of a terrible drug. If it was some mom and pop operation helping thousands of people with some herbal remedy, but one person complained, they’d probably be swat-teamed out of existence.
Merck is bad so that means all corporations are bad? Using that kind of logic, I should hate all black people because I was mugged once by a black person 
We should be critical of pharmaceutical companies for their mistakes, but in the meantime we probably cannot find a cure for this without their scientific cooperation. And it is in their interest to find a profitable cure for sexual dysfunction.
I doubt that a “cure” for this specific problem will be profitable. In order for a cure to exist, for one, Merck has to admit that they made an error and made us sick, which they will not do because that would invite litigation against them. Secondly, even if they did somehow invest some funds and found a cure for us, that wouldn’t benefit them either since that investment would be paid out of their pocket (due to the subsequent legal proceedings against them).
I agree that the “all corporations are evil” mindset isn’t constructive, but I also think that we should not be waiting on Merck or another pharmaceutical company to bail us out. More than likely, this is a problem we’re going to have to solve by ourselves with the assistance of the few doctors out there who are willing to try to treat us. Eventually someday, consensus against this drug will be built, but until then the most profitable thing that Merck can do is push back pending litigation for as long as possible.
This problem isn’t as rare as you think. Millions of people have sexual dysfunction. I’m also part of an SSRI forum where people have similar problems, similar bloodwork, and specific symptoms that are identical. Some people get screwed up from finasteride, some from SSRIS, some from accutane, and some from who knows what else. We’re all suffering, We’re all in the same place, just some of us took a different train to get there.
There is a lot of money to be made in treating sexual dysfunction. There is a new class of pharmaceuticals which they call “prosexual drugs” that may be able to help us. One that I am particularly interested in is Zoraxel. It’s not a blood flow increasing drug like viagra, but a drug that works by focusing on the central nervous system.
From the company’s website:
‘Unlike PDE-5 inhibitors targeting peripheral blood flow, Zoraxel™ works to boost sexual function by directly affecting the brain circuit. Zoraxel™ enhances the action of serotonin and dopamine in the brain, which play key roles in three phases of male sexual activity: arousal, erection, and release. Preclinical studies suggest Zoraxel™ increases dopamine and serotonin levels in nucleus accumbens, a brain region that influences the parasympathetic nervous system which, in turn, controls penile erection.
Because Zoraxel™ may have the potential to reinforce the parasympathetic tone toward the genitalia by modulating either the autonomic spinal cord nuclei controlling penile smooth muscle or parts of the brain projecting to the region, it may offer important treatment benefits for patients with “psychogenic” ED.’