Female Sexual Dysfunction And The Pharmaceutical Industry
Is there really such a thing as "female sexual dysfunction?" What is the role of pharmaceutical companies in this diagnosis? Will there ever be "Viagra for women?" Dr. Joy explores. For more information on love and health, or to read a full transcript of this video, visit http://www.loveandhealth.info
Step 1:
Welcome to the Joy Spot. I am Dr. Joy Davidson. I am one of the advisors on the Health and Science Advisory Board and an expert on love and health. I an also a board certified sex therapist, a licensed marriage and family therapist and I am based in New York. Today, I want to talk about the myth of female sexual dysfunction, why 43% of American women are not dysfunctional and why the pharmaceutical industry would like you to believe otherwise.
Step 2:
Now, you've probably heard this 43% figure. You've probably heard the terms sexual dysfunction. You probably read that the most common problem facing women is what we call "hypoactive sexual desire disorder", in other words, low desire. You've seen in newspapers and on television and in magazines this figure of 43%. You've heard that 43% of American women have a sexual dysfunction. You've heard this, but no one has probably explained to you that that's a false figure that got picked up by the media and literally took on a life of its own. I doubt very much that any of the articles that talk about sexual dysfunction also talk about the fact that there's an enormous controversy over that very phrase, the use of it and what it means. Well, I am going to explain this to you, and I am going to show you why the idea that women are by and large dysfunctional is a myth, and I'll tell you why the pharmaceutical industry particularly doesn't want you to know the truth about your own sexual experience.
Step 3:
More than ever before, women's sexual health has been in the forefront. It has been getting a great deal of air play with drug companies scurrying to find what the media likes to call "the little pink pill", the pink Viagra that will do for women what the blue pull did for men, the pill that will turn women with flagging libidos into lustful she-devils. Well, it was the introduction of Viagra to the marketplace that began to generate all of this interest in women's sexuality.
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In 1998 the issue was moved to the front burner from the back burner because now that you have so many men who previously couldn't get erections or couldn't get them reliably and didn't want to have intercourse on a consistent basis being able to pop a pill and have intercourse at will. You now had their partners saying, "That's very nice, honey, but I'm not all that interested". Well, if you're a man you have a problem, but if you're a pharmaceutical company you have a red hot problem. Obviously, the issue of female desire must be addressed, or the market for the little blue pill will lose its impressive tumescence. The good news of the so far fruitless search for that little pink pill is that finally women's sexuality is getting the attention that it deserves.
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It's not news that profit drives pharmaceutical companies and that pharmaceutical companies don't spend millions of dollars on research if they can't point to a verifiable illness to treat. So, it isn't enough for doctors and therapists to say that women have some sexual concerns or that some relationships produce some pretty serious sexual problems that women may need help overcoming. OK. That's not good enough. It's interesting that in our culture which has repressed female desire for so many years. Suddenly, the issue of female desire matters but only to a point. Still, women with high desire are marginalized while the drug companies would like to help women with low desire have ordinary desire. But none of this does the trick when we look at ailments through the lens of the medical model because the goal is always going to be to match an illness with a treatment. And if you're being supported by a drug company the treatment has to be a drug treatment.
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So, what is needed is a bonafide illness to treat, and that illness stamped with a medical seal of approval is the one we are calling "female sexual dysfunction", or FSD for short. FSD is divided into four sub-categories: sexual desire disorders, sexual arousal disorders, orgasmic disorders and sexual pain disorders, that is, if you are buying into the medical model. It has been argued, however, that female sexual dysfunction is and I quote here from the British Medical Journal, "the freshest, clearest example we have of a corporate sponsor creation of a disease.
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By capitalizing on women's sexual concerns, pharmaceutical companies can research and profit from any pill, cream or patch that shows the promise of sexual enhancement with the idea that women, once on the road to recovery can begin racking up notches on their bedposts and telling of multiple orgasms and probably collecting bundles of roses from relieved spouses. And drug companies can start counting their blessings in greenbacks. Thus, everyone lives happily ever after.
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Well, not so fast. It doesn't quite work that way. We all feel comfortable when life seems simple and when we can point to a leaky faucet and just replace the washer or point to a leaky libido and figure that a dose of this or that will have us awash in desire once again. As it happens, the frantic search for a magic potion is based on some flawed or, at best, incomplete thinking about how female sexuality actually operates, which I will get to in a minute. But, first it's based in some flawed thinking about that pesky 43% figure that I mentioned earlier. The media has played up statistics about the rates of female sexual dysfunction, using that figure to blow the issue out of proportion.
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How exactly did that happen? Well, it happened when the answers to one question in one 1994 survey were re-analyzed in 1999, and it appeared that when you added up the percentages of women and stay with me here, I'm going to take it slow, the percentages of women who said that they experienced any one of seven possible different sexual problems over a period of two months in the prior year, you got a figure of 43%.So, if 3% of the women said that they experienced low lubrication for more than five years.
