Do you think it would be a positive or a negative thing if pharmaceutical companies came up with a medicine like Viagra for women? You might want to read this article before making up your mind:
Where is the women’s version of Viagra?
The short answer: They’re still working on it. A bunch of companies have tried and failed to create “pink Viagra,” as it’s often called. Other companies have drugs in late stages of clinical testing, including a gel that recently began a make-or-break nationwide study with several thousand women. Give us five years, maybe less, say the most optimistic researchers and doctors. Though it’s unclear exactly how many women would ask for a prescription, no one doubts that the first company that gets to market a remedy for female sexual dysfunction, as it’s formally known, will earn a fortune.
A modest-size but fervent group of psychologists, academics and public health advocates contend that FSD isn’t an authentic medical condition, or at least not the sort of problem that should be treated with drugs. These aren’t the obtuse male physicians who for decades have been telling women distressed by their lack of libido that “it’s all in your head.” The anti-FSD crowd is mostly women, many of them self-described feminists. The most prominent is Leonore Tiefer, a psychotherapist and clinical associate professor at New York University, who has long decried what she calls “the medicalization of women’s sexuality.”
“Drug companies want to say to women, ‘You don’t need to know anything; you can have the satisfying sex life that you seek — people dancing on TV, the whole bit — without knowing anything. Just ask your doctor,’ ” she says. “I resent that, because there are specific harms that come from being ignorant and dependent in the world we live in. There may be lots of people who aren’t interested in sex, but is there a medical reason for that, and do we diagnose that?”
Arousal for women does not always lead to desire: Even Pfizer had a hard time grasping that concept. The company tested 3,000 women over the course of eight years before finally abandoning hope, in 2004, that Viagra itself could be the female Viagra.
“What we know is that very little of what’s going on with women and sex is below the waist,” says Anita Clayton, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Psychiatric Clinical Research and co-author of “Satisfaction: Women, Sex and the Quest for Intimacy.” “Almost all of it is above the neck.”
I can’t help but smile at that remark; “above the waist.” I suppose for women to be more interested in having sex with their partners, a pill should be made to help them with juggling housework, raising kids, excelling at their jobs, being socially perfect, AND being content with their partners’ practical approaches to sex, if that is the case.
So now you tell me, will Pink Viagra be good or bad?
Viagra and related products work by increasing blood supply to areas in question to mimic the natural response in the healthy and fit. We can not equate desire, arousal and ability to enjoy. No amount of Viagra and cialis can help arouse a male whose mind is pre-occupied with how to pay the rent or the electric bill or whatever. These medications work only if the desire is there to start with and desire is controlled by the mind in both male and female. Once desire is there the drug can set a proper biological response leading to arousal. This theoritically should apply to women physiology too although to lesser degree. However there is also the placebo effect in some which means if it is supposed to work this way it is going to work this way in a limited percentage of subjects. Physiologically and pharmaclogically speaking the drugs works the same in both males and females i,e increase blood supply but what makes each gender tick is a different story altogether. Saying that man is more physics and less brain have been proved a myth as many studies proved that women are also attracted to a set of physical attributes considered desirable same way as men are attracted but to a different set attributes. I would not take many psychology theories as the last ones as this is evolving science as scientists are unravelling the mystries of the human brain and mind, example – many new studies question bereavement couseling now and believe it delays closure while it is still the rage now.
A new rage in creating desire as opposed to arousal is dappling in the science of pheromones emitted by males and females in humans. Combine these two drugs together and may be you got a magic bullet to a large extent but still you have to contend with the mind as pheromones does not explain attraction to same gender.
Libido should come with an on-off switch. It’s a design flaw
*looks up*
I have a female patient who has been taking three tablets of Viagra daily. Viagra helps patients with pulmonary hypertension ( a lung disease). I haven’t asked her yet about her sexual activity but I doubt it’s different now, her illness takes all the libido away
I love the part about the pill that would help “with juggling housework, raising kids, excelling at their jobs, being socially perfect, AND being content with their partners’ practical approaches to sex, if that is the case.”
Perfect! You took the words right out of my mouth, dear. Well, maybe my brain. In any case, all you forgot in the juggling list was the part about being a beauty queen and having the figure of a supermodel even after having 5 kids.
So is it all in women’s head or not!!?
"a pill should be made to help them with juggling housework, raising kids, excelling at their jobs, being socially perfect, AND being content with their partners’ practical approaches to sex, if that is the case", its called Prozac :)
Qwaidar, I thought that question was already answered in the post? :P
with prozac when you are purring as a cheshire cat who needs sex.
If they ever make pink pill it will banned in countries where they chop and slice the tiny little button it is meant to stimulate.