A German drug company is poised to start marketing a drug for women with a low libido -- or rather, those who suffer from "female sexual disfunction" or "hypoactive sexual desire." Not surprisingly, this has spawned a debate.
The effort has set off a debate over what constitutes a normal range of sexual desire among women, with critics saying the company is trying to turn a low libido into a medical pathology. On Wednesday, an F.D.A. staff report recommended against approving the drug, saying the maker, Boehringer Ingelheim, had not made its case and that the benefits of the daily pill did not outweigh its side effects, which included dizziness, nausea and fatigue.
Because nothing helps get you in the mood like feeling dizzy, sick and tired. The Times quotes a medical expert, Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman, who says this is a classic case of disease branding -- an excuse by drug companies to pathologize a low sex drive and turn a profit. But the ploy is especially harmful to women, who have always been made to feel guilty about sex. Not long ago, women with a hyperactive sex drive were considered abnormal. Now we've come full circle, but not in a good way.
Medical queries -- and sheer mystification -- about women's sexuality are nothing new, and neither is blurring the line between normal human emotions and pathology. This is not to undermine the real problems some women have, physiological or mental, with respect to sex, but a broad campaign to redefine what is normal where sexual desire is concerned is likely to capture many women who didn't feel sick until they were told they should.
-- Monica Potts
