"Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



"Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease

By Terry J. Allen, In These Times. Posted November 3, 2009.

The pharmaceutical industry wants you to think that if you don't have sex like a porn star, you're in need of their drugs.




It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.

You are among the "43 percent of American women (who) experience some degree of impaired sexual function," according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties -- but only if the woman feels "personal distress" about it.

So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.

By promoting the belief that "normal" women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch the disease. However, the FDA has yet to approve a treatment for women who fall short. Until then, they could try the Orgasmatron: a dial-a-delight spinal implant that rarely works -- and risks infection and paralysis. Or, for $60/month, pop LexaFem pills -- containing (how-could-it-not-work) "horny goat weed extract" in order to "feel like a real woman today." Its website promises, "You won’t ever feel unhappy again with LexaFem in your arsenal." .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/sex/143682/%22restless_vagina_syndrome%22%3A_big_pharma%27s_newest_fake_disease

[TwilightGardener]

1. Well, all those old dudes who are buying Viagra and Cialis

need someone to use it on--convince the wimmens that they need sexual-dysfunction drugs too, and now you've doubled your sales.

[Skittles]

34. TWILIGHT NAILS IT

[Captain Hilts]

2. Women fall for this stuff hook, line and sinker. Even I did not realise that

women don't need to take extra iron. The folks at Walter Reed told me it's unnecessary for the vast majority of women, but iron supplements are a regular part of many women's diets. ugh!

[pipi_k]

18. I remember falling for the "You are stinky" meme back in the 70s

When feminine hygiene sprays were being sold left and right after advertisers convinced us that we needed to spray our rancid crotches every day because people could smell them from 20 paces.

[Captain Hilts]

23. Yeah, I remember that stuff. Weird. nt

[DainBramaged]

27. rancid crotches

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:


I remember that time like it was yesterday. God do they think women are stupid???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jkmczxipcps

[TwilightGardener]

28. ...

:rofl:

[specialed]

41. LMAO!!!

Sorry...too funny.

[wolfgangmo]

30. Yes, most women do take some kind of iron supplement and they don't need to.

What they don't have to worry about as much as men is a surplus of iron due to their monthly cycle. Neither do people who donate blood monthly.

[katty]

43. Big Pharma crackpots whipping up more problems to SELL

[hobbit709]

3. The new disease of the month designed to sell more drugs

I can't wait for the ads on Radio and TV. As if the Viagra, Enzyte, etc. aren't bad enough
:puke:

[Hannah Bell]

4. enzyte commercials (smiling bob) are actually pretty funny. viva viagra just stupid.

unless they're going to be funny, i don't want to hear about people's 'e.d.'.

[hobbit709]

5. They stop being funny after about 1000 viewings

[Hannah Bell]

9. well, that;s true of everything. 100, or even 10.

but the ed ones are disgusting even the very first time.

[HereSince1628]

13. Some ED ads really are stupid. and we really should laugh

And it always seems like pharma is searching for a market because they ARE. I totally agree that the enzyte commercial is a joke, but then it isn't meant to be educational.

But, I'm ok with the not funny commercials, too. I don't mind men hearing about things like high blood pressure or diabetes. Both conditions can cause erectile dysfunction. There has been some effort in the advertising to move away from the concept of four hour woodies and to see Viagra, Cialis, Levitra etc as treating symptoms associated with potentially life shortening conditions and quality of life destroying psychological conditions.

I'm sure that pharma does this to get around the snickering about penile intumesence, but, remember that men seek help medical care 7 times less than women, and psychological care much less often than that. If the dream of a 4 hour boner will get their concern about their little heads to lead them to a doc when their big heads won't, the commercials are not all bad, even if they aren't funny.

And speaking of not funny, any idea why that couple are in separate bathtubs? I don't get that image at all.

[juno jones]

19. Just as the Brady Bunch pioneered the concept of

a man and a woman sharing a king-size bed, we need something just as daring and edgy to break the proverbial ice and show a frightened populace that co-ed bathing is a perfectly safe and all-american activity for couples.

MMMM, now two people who love each other very much in one of those Taft-sized victorian suckers, MMMMM.

[BobTheSubgenius]

45. Did you know that the Brady Bunch bathroom didn't have a toilet?

Fred and Wilma were the first to share a bed, though. ;)

[Grinchie]

32. Only funny, in a weird way, if you don't watch TV more than once a year

Which is about the maximum exposure of TV I can handle.

How people can tolerate paying 80 a month for thousands of channels of shit they made up to fill the thousands of channels is beyond me.

[sarge43]

15. Yeah. That 'restless' vagina ad -- poor Vee prowling seedy dives,

looking for love in all wrong places. Then she meets Enzyte's Smiling Bob. Hilarity ensues.

Good God woman, if your vajay isn't home by curfew, get a turbo charged vibrator instead of popping some overpriced possibly dangerous pill.

[iamjoy]

6. Thank You Big Pharma (Not Sarcasm)

No, I sincerely and I mean truly want to thank big pharma. For years as couples who grew old together they may have noticed that the sex wasn't what it used to be - a result of the natural affects of aging and hormonal changes taking their toll. Then in the 1990s the men got the "little blue pill" to help with their sexual dysfunction. Meanwhile, all women could get was horse piss. Sexy - not.

So, I would like to thank big pharma for finally getting around to thinking of the ladies and recognizing that just like men some of us would like a vibrant sex life if only our poor old bodies would cooperate. Thank you for acknowledging that women can and should enjoy sex, because in the not too distant past women were told that they weren't supposed to enjoy sex, it was a duty to their husband. Now you've even provided the drugs to help us with it. We've come a long way baby, eh?

OK - I guess I am being a little snarky.

[truedelphi]

36. Do you know the real story behind Viagra?

It was origianlly intended to be a heart improvement drug. The thought was that the pill would lessen the likelihood of the person taking it in having a heart attack.

Midway through the study, they realized that the drug did not prevent heart attacks. SO they wrote to everyone who had gotten Viagra and asked them to return it.

No one did.

So then they called people, and still people did not return the pills.

Lastly they sent out personal reps from the Pharmaceutical company, to plead with people to give the pills back. That is when people finally shyly admitted that although they were aware from all the company's attempts to get them to give up the drugthat the drugs wouldn't prevent heart attacks, but HEY it did do something else -- and no, they still won't give the drugs back!

[iamjoy]

39. Yeah, I Know

Originally Viagra was marketed for hypertension and angina - then they discovered an interesting side effect. I guess they aren't all bad ;)

However, since the 1990s, it has been marketed (and quite aggressively) as a drug that treats erectile dysfunction

[joeycola]

7. Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them,

ah spot on.!!!






http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5016/restless_vagina_syndrome/


.....The companies and clinics that narrow the range of sexual normality to porn industry standards suffer their own disease. Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them, and vice versa. Either way, the syndrome is typically accompanied by a rash of conflicts of interest.

A Pfizer survey in Malaysia found that Malay women are even more diseased than their American counterparts, with “69.6 percent experiencing some form of FSD,” according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, which also published an industry-supported supplement on FSD. Journal editor and urologist Irwin Goldstein denies a conflict of interest. “Science is science,” he says. “It comes down to the bottom line. What the data shows, the data shows.” Actually, no. Drug company-funded studies are more likely than independent studies to find the new drug superior to the old. Perhaps the bottom line Dr. Goldstein refers to is his income as a paid consultant for drug companies, including P&G and Pfizer.

Goldstein established an FSD clinic with Dr. Jennifer Berman, who now heads a Beverly Hills clinic and appears on Oprah. As one of the health professionals on a 1998 panel that received financial sponsorship from eight pharmaceutical companies, she helped define female sexual dysfunction. Some 22 drug companies, including Pfizer, had financial ties to 18 of the 19 authors of that panel’s report, the BMJ revealed.

“Maybe the best approach is not ineffective, over-hyped drugs with nasty side effects, but an end to disease mongering and a strong dose of comprehensive sex education,” says filmmaker Canner. Her film hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone. 

[bulloney]

22. That's just a coincidence that SIXTY NINE percent of Malaysian women have a form of FSD, right?

[Joe Chi Minh]

26. Apparently, its clinical name is Munchausen-Pfizer syndrome by proxy.

[Vinnie From Indy]

8. Women have orgasms? Who knew?

Just teasin'!

It is sad that women are already being bombarded with unrealistic and impossible messages of what is a healthy in our mass media and now this. I hope that Big Pharma fails with this. The pressure for women to strive for Madison Avenue ideas of beauty and success are already having a terrible effect.

[Pool Hall Ace]

10. This is from The Onion, right?

Or is this November Fools' Day?

[madrchsod]

11. the pharma boys have been watching youporn and redtube.....

they think those women are actually cum`n.....

[mn9driver]

12. Darn. I thought this was about something else.

:silly:

[woodsprite]

14. Actually, if you're a young woman who has to have a total

hysterectomy and oopherectomy due to cancer or something else, Pharma acknowledging this is a good thing if they really take it seriously. I guess only time will tell with that.

Nobody who is happily married or looking for an active sex life should be exiled to looking at a prospective partner and feeling like you should have physical feelings, but you don't - you don't know where they went and when (or if) they'll ever return. You can do it and have some fun, but the drive and desire is just not there.

Not fun, People! Drs. have found that sometimes low dose testosterone can help, but if you've had a hormone-based cancer they advise against even that. Testosterone can convert to estrogen. Drs. need to acknowledge that this is a real physical issue. Most don't want to be bothered after a surgery.

[mopinko]

16. to the people who have these sorts of troubles, it is not funny.

and people here are assholes for thinking that this is all "made up". real people have actual trouble with this kind of thing, and look for help. having a loving physical relationship is an important part of being human. if it is a joke to you, maybe you should think about having yours taken away.

[av8rdave]

29. I have to agree that there will be some people to whom this medication will be applicable

It could be a good thing in those cases!

[mopinko]

31. the fun that gets made here about people who just want a normal sex life

in a place where people are obsessed with their own sex lives- :crazy:

[Grinchie]

33. The "People that have these sorts of Troubles"

Are usually suffering from a lot more than Sexual Dysfunction, but that's not part of this discussion. It's part of a Discussion regarding the creation of a new market for a dubious drug being peddled to millions of women, who may or may not have a problem.

Unless you want to discuss the thousands of ways Children are mistreated and trained by Socially accepted dogma on "Raising a Child", then you really shouldn't be trying to imply that people are inherantly heartless and think it's a big joke.

The true substory to this post is the fact that Americans are trained from birth to think of Nature as something only seen rarely, without any need to understand it. Americans are the most Sexually frustrated people in the world. A breast flopping out of a costume yields 225,000 fines, and a fascist application of absurd censorship rules, while at the same time, the multi billion dollar Pornography industry thrives, many times under subsidiaries of Viacom and AOL/Time Warner.

You can sometimes see a breast or two, but thats about the limits of what is allowed in America, even though it is widely available on the internet for free.

The Europeans laugh at US, and I don't blame them. They won't be laughing when the frustrated men and woment that have severe neurosis due to unhealthy sex life explode in war and anarchy.

[pipi_k]

40. Exactly....and the end result of it is...

everything gets turned into a "disorder" or "disease".

Menstruation. Childbirth. Menopause.


And it's not even new. I remember being told I was "foolish" (!!!) by a nurse following the birth of my second child in 1972 because I didn't want (or need) painkilling drugs during delivery. I didn't cry...I didn't scream...I did my job and out came the baby.

I wasn't experiencing some disease...I was giving birth, for crissakes, and I know what my pain tolerance is.


Doctors often deny drugs to people who need them (as with my second husband who was dying of throat/head cancer) but try to push them off on people under the guise of treating some mysterious "disease".

Outrageous!

[rurallib]

17. yet again, reality beats the Onion.

I don't know how the Onion can stay in business if reality continues to out do the Onion in craziness.

[juno jones]

20. I think the Onion

just eggs Reality on. Reality must always go one better.

[raccoon]

21. Truth is stranger than fiction.... nt

[whatchamacallit]

24. With LexaFem *up* your arsenal. (nt)

[Arkana]

25. I just...wait, what?

[niyad]

35. apart from the drugs that cure the "disease" of menopause (hey, you morans, it's a phase of life,

not a disease) my personal favourite was some cream that was supposed to give a woman an orgasm--so that her partner wouldn't have to do all that tedious, onerous foreplay stuff. can't remember the name, but always figured c batteries were a lot cheaper.

[TexasObserver]

37. Anything that replaces the nonstop Viagra and Abilify commercials is good.

I hate the catchy names they have to come up with for every condition and every pill. You know some dipshit like Frank Luntz (or maybe even Frank Luntz) is testing the words on focus groups and coming up with these word arrangements.



I don't care for the name they've given for this condition, and don't care for the practice of giving such a name to a bundle of symptoms that may not need the same drug.

[Prophet 451]

38. Um, some people need this

FSD has been acknowledged here (Britain) for years as a complete inability to reach orgasm (even while masturbating) and/or an utterly nonexistant libido. It's usually due to a side-effect from another medication (SSRI anti-depressents are notorious for it) or a hormone problem (often due to menopause).

I'm actually all for this. If us guys get the blue pill to deal with our sexual problems, it's only fair that the ladies get their version too (although I will scream if it ends up being pink).

[BakedAtAMileHigh]

42. Do You Mean To Say

that "drugs" can actually improve people's sex lives? Who knew???

I feel sorry for the person who wrote: "By promoting the belief that "normal" women have explosive sex all the time..." Sex is supposed to be highly enjoyable for both parties. Pleasure is biological mechanism that reproduces the species! There is nothing wrong with using drugs to maximize pleasure.

Fuck neo-puritanism, from the left and the right.

[babylonsister]

44. Jeeze! What a trip. This must go out to all women I know! Thanks! nt