Viagra for Women: Medical Miracle or Snake Oil?

For some, the fact that there isn’t a drug as effective and successful as Viagra for treating female sexual disfunction is proof positive that we live in a sexist world. For others, it’s a sign that drug companies are misusing studies about female sexuality to make money.

In an op-ed for the LA Times, researchers Ellen Laan and Leonore Tiefer outline their issues with the recent big pharma-backed push to get more drugs to treat female sexual issues on the market. They describe a two-day meeting held by the Food and Drug Administration last month which was organized to hear from women who feel they suffer from female sexual disfunction, or FDS. During that meeting, Laan and Tiefer were “horrified” to see drug companies using “the language of equality to pressure the FDA to approve a potential billion-dollar blockbuster ‘pink Viagra.'”

Laan and Tiefer point to the recent campaigns #WomenDeserve and Even the Score as proof-positive that drug companies like Sprout (responsible for a recently rejected female Viagra option) are behind a push for drugs that won’t actually “cure” FDS. (#WomenDeserve made the Viagra ad parody above). They argue that instead, “most sexual problems in healthy people as related to what is going on in the bedroom, the relationship, the partners’ individual lives and shifts in cultural norms.”

Furthermore:

If the pharmaceutical industry were truly concerned with women’s sexual well-being, companies would market drugs that are effective for women whose sexual problems are caused by physical problems or disease, such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. Yet efforts to test drugs for narrow markets have been curtailed on several occasions as the industry pursued its blockbuster dreams.

Campaigns like #WomenDeserve and Even the Score argue that “1 in 10 women suffer from sexual dysfunction with distress” and “43% of women suffer from sexual dysfunction, while 31% of men suffer the same,” stats that Laan and Tiefer take issue with. They are hardly the first to do so; as Orgasm, Inc. outlined years ago (a movie that featured Tiefer’s New View Campaign, which works to “challenge the distorted and oversimplified messages about sexuality that the pharmaceutical industry relies on to sell its new drugs”), drug companies are looking for a quick fix for female sexual issues, without defining their terms and distinguishing what those myriad issues might be.

The opposition to these campaigns argues that women who suffer “from low desire or arousal, orgasm changes, and other sources of sexual dissatisfaction” should be treated, but that those issues don’t necessarily belong in the category of “female sexual disfunction,” which is far too vague.

But there are still many doctors–and government representatives–who support this push and consider it a sign that women are finally being taken seriously in this realm. “This meeting was long overdue,” said Dr. Mohit Khera, a urologist at the Baylor College of Medicine, who specializes in female sexual dysfunction, according to Yahoo News. “We have made such advances for men — we have 26 drugs [for sexual dysfunction] now available for men,” she added, before arguing that male sexual issues are more obvious and that FSD isn’t taken seriously.

Whether you side with those who are concerned that the FDA is being manipulated by big pharma or those that think that this is a sign that finally, finally women are getting theirs, it’s something that this is being talked about at all. Or, for the pessimists among us, not enough of something, given that we’re still having the same conversation without very much progress.