Wall Street Journal

Drug companies have sure been trying to make you think so, says researcher and journalist Ray Moynihan in his new book, “Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals.” So far, though, their efforts to get anything approved by the FDA to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder, to use industry lingo, have been for naught.

Most recently, Boehringer Ingelheim stopped the development of flibanserin, which was intended to boost sex drive in women and was originally studied as an antidepressant. An FDA advisory panel rejected the drug in June after the formal FDA review criticized data on the drug’s ability to increase libido. The German pharma company said the decision to cease development was “not made lightly,” and that it continues to believe in the benefits the drug “would have for women suffering with HSDD.”

“It’s quite significant that [Boehringer] abandoned that after so much hype,” Moynihan tells the Health Blog.

He and his co-author Barbara Mintzes argue in their book that HSDD is largely a creation of the pharma industry. They write that 1990s research claiming that about 43% of women suffer from the disorder sprang from a questionnaire that grouped all sexual desire issues together, without regard to severity, frequency or whether the source was emotional or physical.

Moynihan lambastes drug-industry-financed patient advocacy groups, medical associations and “key opinion leaders” for a global marketing strategy aimed at convincing doctors and regulators that female sexual dysfunction was a medical condition in need of a pharmaceutical treatment.

Read the rest of the article here: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/10/13/author-of-sex-lies-and-pharmaceuticals-criticizes-hypoactive-sexual-desire-disorder/

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The Independent
By Jeremy Laurance
October 1, 2010

Female sexual dysfunction – which is claimed to affect up to two thirds of women – is a disorder invented by the pharmaceutical industry to build global markets for drugs to treat it, it is claimed today.

Drug companies have invested millions in the search for a female equivalent of Viagra, so far without success. But while doing so they have stoked demand by creating a buzz around the disorder they have created, according to Ray Moynihan, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

Corporate employees worked with medical opinion leaders, ran surveys aimed at portraying the problem as widespread and helped create the diagnostic instruments to persuade women that their sexual difficulties deserved a medical label. But sex problems in women are far more complex than they are in men, encompassing lack of desire, lack of arousal and lack of orgasm and the drug industry’s narrow focus is failing them.

Mr Moynihan, who first investigated the drug industry’s role in female sexual dysfunction a decade ago, says it illustrates a wider problem about the creation of new diseases, and the widening of existing boundaries for treatment with designations such as pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension and pre-osteoporosis, for which the latest treatments are aggressively promoted.

In his new book, Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals, which is previewed in the British Medical Journal, he says: “Drug marketing is merging with medical science in a fascinating and frightening way. Perhaps it is time to reassess the way in which the medical establishment defines common conditions and recommends how to treat them.”

In 2005, Pfizer, makers of Viagra, funded a survey which showed 63 per cent of women had sexual dysfunction and that testosterone and Viagra might be helpful. In 2006, Procter and Gamble, makers of a testosterone patch for women, sponsored a survey showing one in 10 postmenopausal women had hypoactive [low] sexual desire disorder (the company sold its drug business in 2009). In 2008, Boehringer Ingelheim, makers of flibanserin which is claimed to boost the female libido, sponsored a survey which also showed one in 10 women was in need of help.

Efforts by the companies to meet the need have subsequently foundered. Pfizer pulled Viagra from the market for women after trials showed it had no greater effect than placebo. Procter and Gamble’s testosterone patch was rejected in 2004 in the US, over fears it raised the risk of cancer and heart disease and Beohringer Ingelheim’s drug, flibanserin, was rejected by the US Food and Drug Administration in June on the grounds it had failed to deliver the agreed benefits while carrying the risk of serious side effects.

Mr Moynihan warns that although the drugs have so far failed, more are in the pipeline and claims that “the drug industry shows no signs of abandoning plans to meet the unmet need it has helped to manufacture”. A spokesman for Pfizer said: “We currently have no plans to develop medicines for FSD.”

Read entire article here:  http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/female-sexual-dysfunction-was-invented-by-drugs-industry-2094578.html

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U.S. News & World Report
Deborah Kotz
May 19, 2010

Not interested in sex? Perhaps you have a condition called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, caused by a brain chemical imbalance. That’s the message conveyed in a new “educational campaign” launched last week by the Society of Women’s Health Research with actress Lisa Rinna as a celebrity spokesperson talking about “the brain’s potential role in desire.” On the campaign’s new website, you might conclude that if you’re not fantasizing about sex a lot you should definitely talk to your doctor.

You won’t, though, learn about any medications for HSDD—because there are no approved drugs for it. A new drug, called flibanserin, may be approved by the Food and Drug Administration after its advisory committee meets to discuss the drug next month. In the meantime, flibanserin manufacturer Boehringer-Ingelheim has funded an HSDD educational campaign to create demand for the drug, some experts say. And, yes, Rinna is a paid spokesperson.

“It’s like priming the market,” says Lisa Schwartz, an associate professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Lebanon, N.H. “Disease awareness is a very important part of [preparing for] an upcoming ad campaign” for any new drug—which will no doubt occur if and when flibanserin is approved. (I previously reported on the over-medicalization of low sexual desire in women.)

Unfortunately, the website doesn’t provide much useful information about the low sex drive condition, which was first identified in the 1970s and is included in the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. You wouldn’t learn from the website, for example, that certain medications—including antidepressants, birth control pills and antihypertensives—can dampen your sex drive. Nor would you learn about the usefulness of psychological treatments like psychotherapy or mindfulness training. And the website doesn’t differentiate between “situational” HSDD, caused by lifestyle factors like lack of sleep, breastfeeding, stress, and relationship issues, and “generalized” HSDD, which may arise from some sort or physiological problem, like low testosterone levels or a brain chemical imbalance. In this interview with Fox News, Rinna said she lost her sex drive soon after her second child was born, which, according to experts, means she probably had some explainable reason like excess fatigue or low sex hormones due to nursing.

Read entire article: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2010/05/19/not-in-the-mood-you-could-have-hypoactive-sexual-desire-disorder.html

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Maia Szalavitz
The Huffington Post
November 4, 2009

Are lap dances an effective therapy for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or drug addiction? It doesn’t seem like a question that should require a serious answer — but a state investigation of Oregon’s Mount Bachelor Academy (MBA) has substantiated allegations made by students and staff that such “therapy” was part of the school’s “emotional growth” curriculum and forced an emergency shutdown of the campus.

Just this June, the Supreme Court had decided in favor of a couple who sued for payment of MBA’s tuition to treat their son’s ADHD and marijuana problem. The Court determined that parents of disabled children do have the right to seek such taxpayer support from a school district, even if they haven’t tried public special education first.

While the decision didn’t specify whether MBA itself was appropriate, some districts across the country are already reimbursing parents for its current $76,000 annual tuition, despite decades of allegations of similarly inappropriate and unproven practices.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/school-using-lap-dances-t_b_345477.html

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