Female sexual interest/arousal disorder

Sexual desire: risky drugs with minimal benefit being used to treat dubious conditions.

. New conditions, new treatments
. The search for a female drug
. ‘I would never have done it’
. More drugs in the pipeline

– Read Sexual desire: Risky drugs with minimal benefit being used to treat dubious conditions, by Journal Sentinel‘s special report: Illness inflation, How everyday conditions become medical disorders.
– Enjoy our health infographics album on Flickr.

Women’s Sexual Desire

When pharma turns lack of desire into a disease…

Sources and more information

• Daily Cartoon, newyorker, Friday, June 5th.
• The Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder and the Female Sexual Function Index.
• Flibanserin explained on Video.
• Addyi Flibanserin HSDD Drug is FDA-approved!.
• Watch this health cartoons, comics album on Flickr 

The Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder and the Female Sexual Function Index…

The FSFI is a brief questionnaire measure of sexual functioning in women…
The Journey, woman and frog image by Thomas Hawk.

Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD)

Alan Cassels, a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria said:

“The main hurdle (for – Addyi – approval) was to try and define the disease,”…
“And I think (Sprout) bamboozled the FDA into considering this a disease.”…
“This (HSDD-targeting) drug will be marketed to everyone who doesn’t want to have sex, for whatever reason – the ‘Not tonight, honey, I have a headache’ market.“…
“The market has been shaped around turning lack of desire into a disease and I think it’s highly problematic,” …  “This idea that you can tamper with and increase sexual desire with a pill – this is the brave new world.”…

Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman , Director of PharmedOut, Georgetown University Medical Center said:

“Creating a diagnosis gives a company monopoly over the market it created,” …

Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI)

Ray Rosen, the psychiatrist who led the FSFI panel said:

“Obviously, there’s no biochemical thing you can measure to say ‘this women has so much desire,’ so it has to be a subjective rating of some kind,”…

Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman , Director of PharmedOut, Georgetown University Medical Center said:

“The industry-generated tests are rigged tests, designed to make healthy people think they are ill,”… “They medicalize normal human variation and normal ups and downs.”…

Sources and more information

• FSFI © Questionnaire PDF File.
• FSFI Scoring Appendix PDF File.
• The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI): A Multidimensional Self-Report Instrument for the Assessment of Female Sexual Function, Journal of Marital and Sex Therapy: 2000: 26:191-208.
• Drug industry links run deep in field of sexual medicine,
  medicalxpress, August 20, 2015.
• Female Viagra’ okayed in U.S., may come to Canada, thestar, Aug 19 2015.

About Female Sexual Dysfunction and (new) sex drugs for women

To date, clinical trials for FSD drugs have shown no evidence of efficacy, and their high placebo rates indicate that anticipation effects alone may be as effective as any pill.

• “My personal drug-therapy breakthrough for sexual dysfunction turned out to be stopping a drug, not starting one.”
• “For this young Turkish woman, now a graduate student at Yale, books rather than pills were the key to overcoming her sexual difficulties.”
• “Transforming everyday problems of life into medical problems with pharmaceutical treatments also transforms the people who experience those problems.”
• “DES Daughters are living proof that good intentions and poor research lead to disaster, potentially for generations to come.”

Read: Pink Viagra or Pink Elephant?, Rxisk, December 1, 2014.
Related: Evening the score on sex drugs: feminist movement or marketing masquerade? Rxisk bmj.g6246.full_.pdf.