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Medical breakthroughs typically take years, sometimes decades, before they're available to the public. Get a load of the backstory on these historic innovations.


Viagra
7 years
British researchers originally patented the little blue pill in 1991—as a heart disease drug. They realized something was up by 1994, when patients started talking about the medicine’s surprising perk. The FDA approved it to treat erectile dysfunction on March 27, 1998, also known as the happiest day of men experiencing mid-life crisis.

The Pill
24 years
In 1941, chemistry professor Russell Marker made synthetic progesterone using a compound found in Mexican wild yams. His innovation paved the way for creation of the Pill, approved by the FDA in 1960. Yet it took five years and a Supreme Court ruling before American women got the right to take it.

HPV vaccine
26 years
In the early 1980s, German scientist Harald zur Hausen nailed down the cause of most cervical cancers: certain strains of human papilloma virus (HPV). But it took scientists two decades to figure out how to prevent the infection. In 2006 the FDA approved the vaccine Gardasil for girls aged 9 to 26.