The Next Bedroom Cure: Pink Viagra?

May 19, 2009

Will the little blue pill's pink companion do the trick?

The pharmaceutical companies are working on a new “Viagra” for women. Is it destined to be the new Holy Grail in the pharmacological invasion of the American bedroom? Perhaps.

It seems hard to believe that it was just eleven years ago that the Federal Drug Administration, FDA, approved the first male impotence drug. Since then drugs such as Viagra, followed by Cialis, and Levitra, have fueled billions of dollars in pharmaceutical sales. Not long after Pfizer’s Viagra became an overnight success, entrepreneurs, researchers and many women, became intrigued by the idea of a “pink” version of ”the little blue pill,” Viagra.

Work began in earnest in 2000 on such a product and to date, as drug company researchers will tell you, unraveling the mysteries of female sexual arousal has confounded them. Not for lack of trying, of course.

In certain specific applications, diminished estrogen and testosterone levels in post-menopausal women for example, progress is being made. Diminished female libido, now labeled as hypoactive sexual desire disorder, is what most so called pink Viagra drugs have focused in on. The effectiveness of these drugs is defined by the number of “satisfactory sexual events” women in study groups report during a three to six months. It is essential to note, that unlike an erection, satisfactory intimacy from cuddling to intercourse is defined strictly by the individual woman’s reaction.

For many of the critics to this new pursuit for a drug-based solution, the problem is not whether a female Viagra will work, but how the marketplace and women in general will react when it does. For one thing, the critics point out that “female sexual dysfunction,” is not an actual medical condition. Rather it is a creation of the pharmaceutical industry.

On the other hand, while surveys indicate that as many as 40 percent of all women describe themselves as lacking interest in sex, only about a quarter of these women identify that issue as a problem. It’s hard to call something a disorder, some sex researchers argue, if the people who experience it don’t commonly see it as such.

Undoubtedly the drug companies will argue that in a pre-feminist world, mothers never taught their daughters that a full and rewarding sex life would or should include regular orgasms. Running counter to this thought, many therapists point out that a pill is not a satisfactory substitute for romance and that the real root of a woman’s general interest in a more rewarding sexual experience only comes about when the romantic side of her life has not been engaged by either her partner or a suitor, real or imagined.

Just as we have a difficult time finding the line between nurture and nature in understanding gender differences, the barely distinguishable line between physiology and psychology often troubles us. As researchers into the development of so-called pink Viagra point out, improved sexual performance, the physiology of intimacy, can in itself be a significant mood enhancer and therefore positively affects our psychology.

At this story continues to unfold, you can be sure of two things: One this debate will continue, particularly when a pink Viagra comes into existence and two, where the big pharmaceutical companies see a potentially huge market, in the form of a solution that can come in the form of a pill, the pursuit of a pink Viagra will continue to move forward.

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