It has been a typical week on Planet Primary Care. Whether it's misdiagnosing childhood strokes, misconstruing government health policy or failing miserably to produce a British winner at Wimbledon, I guarantee that we GPs are to blame. But one particular story, and its oblique criticism, has stood out: “Sex diseases double in the over-45s.”

Apparently, the rates of sexually transmitted germs such as genital warts, herpes and gonorrhoea have shot up in the middle aged, particularly in men. And it's all my fault.

Of course, I'm not responsible for blokes having midlife crises, for internet dating and international travel, or for the menopausal binning of condoms, all of which are leading to a rampant, carefree sex life in the fantastic forties and beyond. Except in my house, obviously.

But I do prescribe drugs for impotence, and that's thought to be a key factor. Which might be a fair cop. After all, I still recall the dark, pre-Viagra days of the “hand-on-knob” consultation. This is what used to happen. I'd interrupt my patient's flow with: “Well, Mr Smith, that was an exhaustive account of your nasal catarrh. Now...” (this last part was said with an earnest, fluffy expression, designed to uncover his hidden agenda) “...are you sure there's nothing else I can help you with?” To which he would reply: “Absolutely not, doctor, no, I'll try the steam inhalations like you've suggested.”

And only when his ten minutes was up and his hand was resting on the door knob would he pluck up the courage to point tentatively pantwards and say: “Oh, before I go, can you help me out with a little problem I have downstairs?”

The frustration impotent men felt was nothing compared with what we GPs experienced. Conscious of the heaving waiting room, we would sometimes cut to the chase after 30 seconds with, “It's not really about your ingrowing toenail at all, is it? Come on, out with it - you're impotent, aren't you?” Which worked well in that, after a while, I began to see very few men with ingrowing toenails.

Not that there was much point in exposing their real problems as there was little we could do. There was psychosexual counselling, of course, but, to the average man, that was as attractive as sticking needles in his penis. And there was sticking needles in his penis, which seemed an odd thing to do when you were trying to coax it into life - and, therefore, worked about as well as psychosexual counselling.

No wonder men would ask, plaintively: “Isn't there just a pill you could give me?” And we would shake our heads.

How things have changed. Impotence has had a makeover. It's now a serious health problem and has been re-badged as the less pejorative and far more impressive erectile dysfunction. No longer are men as poor at raising the subject as they are at raising their members. Now they march in, chest out and nostrils flaring, to demonstrate their determined machismo and catarrh-free nasal airways.

In other words, they mean business. The result has been an epidemic of erectile dysfunction and a flurry of prescriptions. I don't dish out the magic pills willy-nilly, as it were, but, some days, I have as much trouble keeping up as the patients do. Polyclinic? Pornoclinic, more like.

Maybe, with this rise in sexually transmitted germs, Viagra-fuelled middle-aged men are getting their comeuppance. And perhaps we GPs should think about balancing our prescribing with the same type of sexual health promotion that we usually dispense to acned and giggly adolescents.

True, it will seem odd discussing safe sex with older people - they might reasonably see the main danger as infarction rather than infection - but at least the conversation will go beyond “Whatever”.

So I fully accept some blame for the clapademic affecting these men. As for the tennis, I wonder if a dose of Viagra might have helped?

Dr Copperfield is a GP in Essex. He also writes for Pulse magazine and pulsetoday.co.uk

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