Female Sexual Dysfunction: Medicine or Marketing?
Nothing wrong with good, healthy sex—millions of people are into it. But experimenting on animals in order to push drugs that are supposed to increase sexual drive is just about as wrong as it gets. Men—always pressured to “perform”—now have their Viagra and Cialis, thanks to the suffering and deaths of rats, dogs, and monkeys. Now it’s women’s turn. Drug companies (especially Pfizer and Procter & Gamble) are sending them the message that too little sex is abnormal and sick. According to drugmaker Pfizer, 43 percent of American women are sexually dysfunctional and should be medicated.1 Apparently not wanting to have lots of sex indicates a condition that the pharma industry has labeled “female sexual dysfunction,” or FSD. This “disease” includes the tiny group of women with sexual problems related to hysterectomy or child bearing as well as the far larger group of women who just don’t enjoy or desire regular sexual intercourse. It should come as no surprise that Pfizer has tried to market its impotence drug Viagra to treat FSD or that P&G is now attempting to market a testosterone patch called “Intrinsa” for the “treatment” of low sexual arousal to millions of women.
Playing Doctor With Rabbits and Rats
“My irritation is the great sucking up of brain power, research and attention devoted to endless meetings about rabbit vaginal tissue,” complains Dr. Leonore Tiefer, psychologist and sex therapist at New York University Medical School.2
We couldn’t have said it better. In order to sell FSD as a medical disorder that can be treated with drugs, researchers have targeted physiological symptoms. And the easiest way to reduce a complex psycho-social problem into a simple physical trait is through simplistic animal “models.” In this case, researchers focused on genital blood flow and clitoral engorgement in rabbits and rats. In these bizarre studies, experimenters stimulate the genitals of female rabbits and rats and measure blood flow to the vagina and clitoris. Researchers then give the animals drugs in an attempt to increase blood flow and clitoral swelling, arguing that such drugs can be developed as treatments for FSD.
Selling Out Women and Animals
Animals are suffering in order to medicalize love and sex, labeling healthy women “sick” so that Big Pharm can reap billions in drug sales. But psychologists and sex therapists agree that the factors behind a low or declining sex drive for most women are stress and relationship difficulties. These problems aren’t going to go away with a pill or a patch. Pfizer was severely disappointed to discover that Viagra use increased genital blood flow but didn’t do anything to increase women’s desire or enjoyment of sex. Likewise, P&G’s patch didn’t perform up to expectations and was rejected by the FDA because it only improved women’s sex lives by one episode per month as compared to a placebo. Moreover, the FDA decided that P&G’s animal safety tests couldn’t predict potentially dangerous side effects of long-term testosterone use, such as an increased risk of heart attacks or breast cancer, or unpleasant short-term side effects, such as acne, weight gain, and hair growth.3
Sadly, P&G is continuing to test its testosterone patch, and other pharmaceutical companies are following suit—which means more research on animals’ genitals.
1Roy Moynihan, “The Making of a Disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction,” British Medical Journal 326 (2003): 45-7.
2Valerie Reitman, “Now It’s the Women’s Turn,” Los Angeles Times 28 Apr. 2003: F1.
3Moynihan, “The Marketing of a Disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction,” British Medical Journal 330 (2005): 192-4.
