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"Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 744028
11/7/2009 2:12 PM
Report abusive post | "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease
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""Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease
By Terry J. Allen, In These Times. Posted November 3, 2009.
[link to www.alternet.org]
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."
But the big swinging dicks of global FSD marketing (and off-label marketing) are Pfizer -- whose stop-gap strategy is selling women Viagra based on the fact that it works for men, and Procter & Gamble (P&G), which, using the same logic, has put its money on testosterone.
Viagra’s failure in trial after trial to work on women has not stopped doctors from writing 1.4 million off-label prescriptions. FSD is "a classic example of starting with some preconceived, and non-evidence based diagnostic categorization for women’s sexual dysfunctions, based on the male model," said John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute, in an interview with BMJ (British Medical Journal).
No drug follows the male model more literally than testosterone. Despite FDA refusal to approve P&G’s testosterone patch Intrinsa, U.S. doctors wrote 2 million off-label testosterone prescriptions in 2007. Like Pfizer’s little blue pill, the Intrinsa patch doesn’t really work for women. No wonder: Researchers don’t even know what constitutes a "normal" female testosterone level, and women with low levels of the hormone are as likely as those with high levels to be happy with their sex lives. And as filmmaker Liz Canner shows in her excellent new documentary Orgasm, Inc., (www.orgasminc.org), testosterone is usually teamed with estrogen, which increases risks for stroke, cancers and dementia.
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.  |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 790031
11/7/2009 2:23 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
Sounds like something Francine Fishpaw should try.
A pill for every ill... |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 810653
11/7/2009 2:28 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
Its a easy fix, and it's free!   |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 691836
11/7/2009 2:32 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
If they can bottle a vacation, a glass of wine and a back rub, I'll take the shit...
That's all a woman really needs. |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 810358
11/7/2009 2:34 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
I think the Pharma's have a problem ..
Its called not being able to stop being a drug dealer .. |
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ttowngrl
User ID: 763732
11/7/2009 2:37 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
do i need a pill like that , if i think a good massage is better than sex? |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 763552
11/7/2009 2:38 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
do i need a pill like that , if i think a good massage is better than sex? Quoting: ttowngrl
I'm one of the few guys on the planet that would agree with that. Nothing like a back massage from the person you love. |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 806478
11/7/2009 2:42 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
do i need a pill like that , if i think a good massage is better than sex? Quoting: ttowngrl
You must be doing it wrong. |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 769657
11/7/2009 2:43 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
You dont' need a pill for that, do you? |
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ttowngrl
User ID: 763732
11/7/2009 2:45 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
do i need a pill like that , if i think a good massage is better than sex?
I'm one of the few guys on the planet that would agree with that. Nothing like a back massage from the person you love.
wow thats a surprise coming from a man |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 806478
11/7/2009 2:46 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
do i need a pill like that , if i think a good massage is better than sex?
I'm one of the few guys on the planet that would agree with that. Nothing like a back massage from the person you love.
NewsFlash, you've both been doing it wrong. |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 513207
11/7/2009 2:47 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
Go the herbal route, ladies. |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 812676
11/7/2009 2:47 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
I have some petercillan that will cure all. |
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The Boss
User ID: 779228
11/7/2009 2:48 PM
 | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
wow thats a surprise coming from a man Quoting: ttowngrl
Wow appears someone's vagina is a bit restless today.
Pardon me for interrupting your premature celebration, but I thought it only fair to give you a sporting chance as you are new to this game. |
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Hillcrest 
Secretary From Hell
User ID: 392015
11/7/2009 2:49 PM
 | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
there are times when food is better than sex though
french pastry |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 786291
11/7/2009 3:14 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
gosh I need a restless pussy so bad |
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Anonymous Coward
User ID: 802800
11/7/2009 3:49 PM | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
I think what happened is women complained about men and viagra. I remember hearing about this a while back. So they had to come out with some crap for women. |
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Angelseverywhere
~Fire & Ice~
User ID: 763245
11/7/2009 3:52 PM
 | | Re: "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease | Quote |
Restless Vagina Syndrome! lmao
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God alone. ~William Blake
An integral being knows without knowing, sees without looking, and accomplishes without doing. ~Lao-Tzu
An angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision. ~St Thomas Aquina
Angels descending, bring from above,
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
~Fanny J. Crosby |
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