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Author Topic: who sez i have a disease?
ephemeral
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8881

posted 19 July 2005 02:21 PM      Profile for ephemeral     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
One Pill Makes You Horny. is Female Sexual Dysfunction a reality, or did Big Pharma make it up?

quote:
Once men were straightened out, drug companies turned to women. The first mentions of FSD were at conferences held in 1997 in Cape Cod and in 1998 in Boston, the first of many drug-company sponsored meetings to address the same problem doctors in the 1950s used to call "frigidity."

In early advertisements, calls for research participants and quotes in the media, FSD was positioned as a source of inequality with slogans like "it's time women get their fair share." Men have Viagra, went the pitch, now you can, too. With Big Pharma money in their pockets, experts talked about FSD, researchers worked to demonstrate its existence and ill effects and drug companies held clinical trials, even going so far as to design the measurement systems used to test their own drugs.


quote:
In 2004, Pfizer stopped Viagra testing on women because it just wasn't working (3,000 women were involved in trials). At that point, the dialogue around FSD abandoned arousal and shifted toward desire, for which there are no "normal" or "abnormal" standards.

quote:
.... The number comes from a 1999 survey, in which about 1,749 women answered yes or no to questions about problems ranging from lack of desire for sex to anxiety about performance. There were seven questions, and one "yes" diagnosed the woman with sexual dysfunction. The survey did not take into account political, economic or social elements of women's lives, such as work, stress, family, abuse, relationships or a natural change in sexual desire. Suddenly, being exhausted from work and looking after a family qualified as a medical disorder.

Targeting people's insecurities is such a profitable business. When people are sad, first we'll call it depression, then we'll spread the word that depression is a disease, and then we'll give people a pill to cure the disease. if a woman is in a committed relationship and does not think about having sex with male super models everyday, she must by suffering from "female sexual dysfunction". quick, let's make up a drug to solve this problem too.


From: under a bridge with a laptop | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Yst
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posted 19 July 2005 02:28 PM      Profile for Yst     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I might add that there is no female equivalent to Viagra, and never will be, because facilitating circulation of blood to the phallus in order to permit insertion does not have any direct female equivalent.

Analogising treatments for erectile dysfunction to traditional aphrodesiacs is silliness, and most people will see it as such.


From: State of Genderfuck | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 19 July 2005 02:30 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I agree with everything the article says about Big Pharma and medical quick-fixes to problems - and at times, their very invention. However, why is the article silent on the sexual problems that face many of us in perimenopause? Just like problems of sexual functioning besetting males in middle-age, they are not imaginary.

In many cases, there are no doubt lower-tech and less hazardous solutions to the sexual problems of both sexes, but I don't like the outright denial in this article.


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 19 July 2005 02:33 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, on the one hand, I am very glad to hear of this conference, and to hear that women are organizing some critical thinking about Big Pharma. They've even got Barbara Ehrenreich involved: good show.

But otherwise: God save us, eh? Proctor and Gamble were trying to push a patch that could cause breast cancer? For which breast cancer was considered a side-effect? And that was to address an imaginary disfunction that could much more easily be understood in terms of a woman's whole life?

I think that the ICC should figure out a special category of "crimes against humanity" that would apply to Big Pharma.

And just as bad: I can never get over the gullibility of doctors. It is stunning, isn't it? Someone defines a new disease, and they all follow along like sheep? There should be some serious penalty for that too.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
lagatta
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posted 19 July 2005 02:43 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
skdadl, a similar testosterone therapy is known to contribute to prostate cancer among men. This happened to a relative of mine - who fortunately - knock wood - is disease-free after several years. Indeed an example of the cure being worse than the disease - like Thalidomide!

But I don't like the denial of women's - or men's - sexual problems in the article. They do exist, though there are other solutions that are less invasive and infinitely less hazardous - though no doubt less profitable.


From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
ephemeral
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posted 19 July 2005 02:54 PM      Profile for ephemeral     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
lagatta, i don't know if it so much the outright denial of sexual dysfunctional diseases by cohen, as so much as cohen's attempt to emphasize the rather pushy role of drug companies in this field. she points out that surveys carried out by pfizer were highly lacking in that they did not take a woman's lifestyle into account when determining who might be afflicted with the disease. drug companies invest a heap of money in advertising, and we all know how sincere advertising can be because it only targets the people who need these pills, right? the advertising techniques used make women feel that they do have a disease (regardless of how healthy they are), and encourage everybody to go running to the doctor if they happen to be even slightly bored with their sexual lives.
From: under a bridge with a laptop | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 19 July 2005 02:55 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Well, lagatta, as Ehrenreich said in her remarks towards the end of the article, she recognizes the need, and furthermore the importance of not pre-judging.

This just seems to me the wrong way to go about it, though -- yet again letting Big Pharma and the doctors tell us what is wrong, rather than encouraging women to develop their own understandings of what is happening to them.

A lot of women are just plain exhausted, or depressed, for real reasons and good reasons. Maybe whipping them into having sex isn't the first thing that anyone caring for them should be thinking about.

And then, of course, there are so many who are longing for love along with the sex but aren't getting that. That can start to have an effect on the libido. And there are so many who aren't getting either love or sex (but let's not turn this into a BWAGA thread). I mean: this is all pretty obvious stuff.

Can't we just cuddle?


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
ephemeral
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posted 19 July 2005 03:25 PM      Profile for ephemeral     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Yst:
I might add that there is no female equivalent to Viagra, and never will be, because facilitating circulation of blood to the phallus in order to permit insertion does not have any direct female equivalent.

Analogising treatments for erectile dysfunction to traditional aphrodesiacs is silliness, and most people will see it as such.


i wouldn't be so naive. you would be amazed at what many people are coerced into buying. advertising works to make people think they need something, when logically speaking, the product has either zero or negative effect.

diet pills, for example... drug companies have people thinking they're better than healthy eating and exercise, claiming exercise for some people just doesn't work. people buy it. and drug companies can get away with putting dangerous products on the market because there are very few regulations.


From: under a bridge with a laptop | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
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posted 19 July 2005 05:45 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I might add that there is no female equivalent to Viagra

Absorb-shun comes close, no? It's certainly the anti-solution to a non-problem, available in convenient powder form!

And while Absorb-shun won't make your pecker huge, I'd like to see you dust a cake pan with Viagra!


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged

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