A Sacred Recipe for Virility or a Dangerous Drug?
The manufacturing and consumption of unregulated drugs meant to enhance the male sex drive have been on the rise across Ivory Coast, a West African nation of 31 million. Customers include young men seeking to impress their partners with displays of unmatched virility. To do so, they take stimulants with side effects they know little about.
Although the authorities in Ivory Coast have banned the production of such drugs and are seizing them, they continue to flood the streets of West Africa. Popular products are being exported to neighboring countries and the West, and are available on Amazon and Walmart, where they are advertised as '100 percent natural,' though the ingredients are not listed on the bottle.
Products like Attoté, a manufactured beverage, and other so-called artisanal sex stimulants made in Ivory Coast contain high levels of sildenafil, the drug commonly known as Viagra, according to public health officials and laboratory tests obtained by The New York Times. The pills are manufactured in India, smuggled into Ivory Coast, crushed, mixed with other ingredients and sold for $1.50 domestically, $15 in France and $20 in the United States.
Up to half of the drugs in West Africa are unregulated, according to the United Nations' drug agency. More than 500,000 people are estimated to die every year in sub-Saharan Africa from the consumption of dangerous, unregulated medications. Sexual stimulants like Attoté are among the most frequently reported, according to the World Health Organization.
'It's coming in from everywhere,' Dr. Assane Coulibaly, the head of Ivory Coast's pharmaceutical regulatory authority, said about the sexual stimulants. 'It's a war.'
MALI
BURKINA
FASO
Korhogo
IVORY COAST
ALGERIA
GHANA
AFRICA
SENEGAL
MALI
Abidjan
Gulf of Guinea
IVORY COAST
100 mileS
GHANA
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Once a darling of the direct-to-consumer genomics boom, the company amassed genetic data from more than 15 million people. It offered inexpensive at-home DNA tests, promising ancestry insights and health risk predictions. But the real business model was always data. 23andMe struck multiple deals with pharmaceutical companies, including a major collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline. These agreements were designed to monetize its enormous trove of genomic and phenotypic data for drug discovery and clinical research. Yet by 2025, the company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Just weeks later, it was acquired by Regeneron for a mere $256 million—a dramatic fall from its $6 billion valuation just a few years prior. The decline was accelerated by a 2023 data breach affecting 6.9 million users, and growing public unease over privacy practices. The 23andMe story is a cautionary tale. Consumers willingly handed over their most intimate biological data, only to see that data become an asset in corporate transactions they had no control over. Even if Regeneron maintains 23andMe's stated privacy policies, the legal and ethical framework governing genetic data in the U.S. remains weak and fragmented. Conclusion: A Market With Limited Participation We began this story on papyrus scrolls, when medical records served the care of a single person and had little value beyond their immediate use. Today, we live in an age where those records are digitized, replicated, analyzed, and sold, often without the knowledge or benefit of the people to whom they pertain. So what is your health data worth? The disappointing answer is: it depends, but don't quit your day job, because you likely can't capitalize on it yet anyway. As the health data economy matures, we must grapple with fundamental questions: Who benefits? Who decides how data is used? 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