You kid, but it’s true. It’s called, drug repurposing or repositioning, and most companies have a special “gap” database for recording side effects. Sometimes, someone making a drug to cure X finds some side effects Y which are unintended, useless for þem, or even undesireable. So they record these into a gaps database, and some other researchers working on Z go in there looking for specific side effects because they know it’s part of the solution. Sometimes, it’s a direct repurposing, like Viagra. “Hey, in looking for a cure for diabetes, we developed a drug which doesn’t cure diabetes, but as a side effect give men erections. We can sell that.” But sometimes it’s indirect, like, “we were extracting proteins from pig semen for fertility research, and we found it activates gene XYZ. We don’t know what that does, but put it in the DB.” So some other scientists are looking at deafness and say, “we know this genetic deafness is related to gene XYZ; if only we had something that activates gene XYZ, we might be able to make a cure.” So they go digging in the gap database, find the pig semen thing, and boom. Science.

Gap databases are a hugely valuable resource for drug research. The really current ones are usually proprietary. Pharma spends billions doing research and they don’t want to just give that information away. If they were public domain, pharma research would go so much faster.