Rob Stein (npr.org); Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly; New York Times
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| Now you're all wet, baby! - Shut up, you sexist jerk with your for-profit science. |
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| Oh-my-bodhisattva, what have I done under placebo? |
For 15 years, Carla Price and her husband's sex life was great. But then things began to change.
"Before,
I would want to have sex," says Price, who is 50 and lives in central
Missouri. "But over the years my sexual desire has just dwindled to
nothing."
Price has no idea why. She's healthy. She's not
really stressed out about anything. And she's still totally crazy about
her husband.
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| Poison all problems. |
"It's not that our relationship got boring," Price
says. "Because it's actually the opposite -- we became closer as we got
older together."
"We live in a culture that has historically discounted the importance of sexual pleasure and sexual desire for women."
- Terry O'Neill, president, National Organization for Women
- Terry O'Neill, president, National Organization for Women
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| Junior Anti-Sex League (1984) |
But her lack of interest in sex almost wrecked their marriage.
"It did get to the point where my husband thought that perhaps we just needed to divorce," she says.
Women
like Price, who see their decreasing sex drive as a problem, are at the
center of an intense, emotional debate that's been raging for years
over whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve the first
drug that claims to boost a woman's libido [sexual desire].
NPR reached Price through Sprout Pharmaceuticals Inc., the company that makes the drug.
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| A sea of chemicals |
"Men have a number of treatment options for sexual dysfunction, says Cindy Whitehead, Sprout's CEO. "We haven't yet gotten to one for women's most common dysfunction."
"Up
until now," she says, "the treatment paradigm for women with sexual
dysfunction has essentially been: Let's take a drug that works in men
and let's see if it works in women."
"The misrepresentation that 'everybody should be having it...
has a problem if they don't have it,' is to change what sexuality is
into more of a medical thing."
- Leonore Tiefer, psychologist, New York University
- Leonore Tiefer, psychologist, New York University
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| If you struggle you'll fail (LiH). |
None of them did. But Sprout's drug, flibanserin, takes a totally
different approach than, say, Viagra. Instead of increasing blood flow
to the genitals, flibanserin affects a different part of the body: the
brain.
Flibanserin shifts the balance of three key brain
chemicals, Whitehead says. The drug, she says, increases "excitatory
factors for sex" -- dopamine and norepinephrine -- and decreases
serotonin, which can dampen the sex drive.
But there's a lot of
skepticism about flibanserin. The FDA has rejected it twice, saying
there wasn't much evidence it works. The agency also questioned the
drug's safety, especially with long-term, daily use.
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| Sprouts' Whitehead (Allen G. Breed/AP) |
"The
combination of...not very robust effectiveness, and the fact that the
safety profile had not been really characterized very well at all made
us reach that conclusion, that it really wasn't ready for approval,"
says Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs.
The
company acknowledges flibanserin can have side effects, including
sleepiness, nausea, and dizziness. And there are no results yet, Sprout
says, on whether the drug might interfere with the [presumably] helpful action of
Zoloft, Prozac, or other SSRI antidepressants, which are thought to work
primarily by boosting levels of serotonin in the brain.
"Women...want drugs that work.
And this doesn't seem to be one of them."
- Cindy Pearson, executive director, National Women's Health Network
- Cindy Pearson, executive director, National Women's Health Network
But Whitehead argues that flibanserin is safe and says the company's studies show it can help many women.
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| Testosterone power! |
Whitehead argues the FDA
is holding flibanserin to a higher standard than it uses to evaluate
drugs for men. And some women's rights advocates worry that might be
true.
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| Choose sex over hypocrisy (Stivers) |
"We live in a culture that has historically discounted the importance of sexual pleasure and sexual desire for women," says Terry O'Neill,
president of the National Organization for Women. "And I fear that it's
that cultural attitude that men's sexual health is extremely important,
but women's sexual health is not so important. That's the cultural
attitude that I want to be sure the FDA has not, maybe unconsciously,
imported into its deliberative process." More
"Viagra for women" is backed by FDA panel (NY Times) A tablet of flibanserin, a drug to increase sexual desire in women....to inform patients of potential side effects -- like low blood pressure...
Will trade tees for pills - Libido drug for women aims to "even the score" with Viagra (Today) Libido-boosting aims to "even the score" with Viagra drug for women... "I'm like,' Oh my word, this drug is working,'" Parrish said in a segment that...Proponents say the drug addresses low sexual desire via a nightly pill that... And new safety...
- Female libido pill fires up debate about women and sex Women like Price, who see their decreasing sex drive as a problem, are...But Sprout's drug, flibanserin, takes a totally different approach than, say, Viagra....Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs.
- Concerns remain as FDA reconsiders sex drug for women (CBS News) ...Controversy surrounds a drug described as the female equivalent of Viagra....But a new review released by the Food and Drug Administration...a female equivalent to Viagra, the blockbuster drug that treats men's...But critics argue that drug development efforts like...
- Female "Viagra" could be approved today (New Scientist) ...The first drug to treat low sexual desire in women may get approved in...have drugs like Viagra, but nothing exists for women with low sexual...
Where's the sex drive drug for women? (CNN) (Jan 11, 2014)...There is no approved treatment for low female sexual desire. ...There is no treatment available in the United States for boosting the female sex drive, but women like...their new drug application, asking for more research, Goldstein said. ... for male sexual dysfunction...
It beats other options (Stivers) - FDA panel backs "pink Viagra" for sexual dysfunction in women (LA Times) ..."Pink Viagra" gets a conditional okay from an FDA advisory panel. American...Some say drugs like flibanserin could enhance women's sex lives in the same way....The story was updated throughout with new details.
- FDA panel backs a "female Viagra" (WSJ) ...Twice rejected by regulators, sex pill clears hurdle--with caveat... the FDA would approve new drugs amid accusations of gender bias....More like a quality of life issue than a serious medical issue compared to breast cancer.
- Is this "Little Pink Pill" the Viagra for Women? (NBC News) ...An outside panel will evaluate a new drug called Flibanserin seeking FDA approval that could potentially change the sex lives for millions of women....
- A pill that boosts a woman's sex drive is almost here. But do we... (Wired) ...Three months after Viagra was approved in 1998, The New York Times ran a...Every sex drug, including Viagra, has an inordinately high placebo rate....
- The Short List (top stories at scpr.org, KPCC FM)
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| Patriarchs Dick Cheney and fellow Christian Republican Dennis Hastert, D.C. (AP) |
.
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| Oops, wrong party. - Not so fast, Jeff. |
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| The gay Church fathers made me do it! |
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| Let's keep this quiet, says hypocrite Hastert |
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| Yum, yum, that's terrible! I mean, really, guys, quit it! (Rick Perry) |
- Woman's brother was sexually abused by former longest-serving Republican House speaker Dennis Hastert, who was once a children's wrestling coach
- St. Paul and Minneapolis Catholic Archdiocese charged over its handling of homosexual rapes of children by priests and Church officials Prosecutors on Friday June 5, 2015 charged the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over its handling of clergy abuse claims, saying church leaders failed to protect children from unspeakable harm and "turned a blind eye" to repeated reports of inappropriate behavior by a [homosexual] priest who was later convicted of molesting two boys. St. Paul Police Chief and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced the criminal charges.
- Top court reinstates Catholic official's conviction Pennsylvania's highest court on Monday reinstated the landmark child-endangerment conviction of a Roman Catholic monsignor William Lynn, who was the first U.S. church official ever prosecuted over his handling of sex abuse [homosexual clergy child molestation] complaints.
- Our cat do not love us: scientific study finds
- VIDEO: Christian pastor, elementary school and day care teacher accused of sexually assaulting several children
- VIDEO: Mom and step-dad arrested, accused of years of sex with their teenage daughter
- Aurora teacher accused of masturbating in class
- Police: Girl forced to run 3 hours dies; 2 charged
- VIDEO: Mother accused of sex act on her toddler
- Fear, fear, Social Security (and the sky) is falling!
- Music: Metal music fans some of the most loyal
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| But gay lovemaking with kids is all we have! |
