Despite its rep as a female Viagra, flibanserin really isn't. Viagra exerts mechanical actions, increasing blood flow to the genitalia without increasing desire while flibanserin does the opposite -- increasing desire not blood flow.
But the bigger difference is dosage: while Viagra is taken as needed and even impulsively, flibanserin is taken all the time for the 4.5 or 3.7 times a month sexual activity occurs.
While the push to take daily drugs for occasional occurrences like antidepressants for anxiety and "prevention" drugs for disease "risks" certainly turbo charges pharma sales, some wonder if women will want to alter their chemistry for a few enchanted nights. Sure women take birth control pills all month long but when women were offered the chance to treat painful periods by taking a repurposed Prozac called Sarafem every day, there were few takers.
Of course to be covered by insurance, women who take flibanserin need to suffer from hypoactive sexual desire disorder or HSDD which is where the controversy about the Pink Viagra starts.
HSDD, is defined in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as "the persistent or recurrent lack (or absence) of sexual fantasies or desire for any form of sexual activity" causing "marked distress or interpersonal difficulty."
In light of the fact that many women have low sexual desire and are okay with it and other women have low sexual desire because of very real things their partner (or partners) is doing or not doing, do women really want to be told there's something wrong with them?
"I have long had a problem with the tendency of the healthcare system, aided and abetted by the pharmaceutical industry, to diagnose as a problem a symptom or sign experienced by the majority of people," wrote Ingrid Nygaard, M.D. in a 2008 Obstetrics & Gynecology editorial, adding that the diagnosis might be driven by grants, stock shares and providers' need for income.
Nor was sex researcher Petra Boynton, PhD, at University College, London impressed with Boehringer Ingelheim's efforts to presell flibanserin in 2008 and 2009 before it was developed or approved.
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