The New York Times breaking news headline last night was “Expert Panel Backs a Drug to Increase Women’s Sex Drive.” The new drug, flibanserin, is only intended to impact the 7% of premenopausal women who have a diminished interest in sexual activity.
In the spirit of full disclosure, several thoughts crossed my somewhat already tortured mind regarding this announcement, but most of those considerations were either politically incorrect or simply the work of an unyielding libido typically found in the brain of a 14 year old boy. The only difference is that this boy happens to be trapped in an old dude’s body.
The advisory committee voted 18 to 6 in favor of this little pink pill manufactured by Sprout Pharmaceutical. (Maybe not so coincidentally, my thesaurus provided the words bud, new growth, young branch or leaf as the synonym for sprout?)
Those individuals who were opposed to approving this drug may have been members of the Shaker religion, a religion so steeped in celibacy practices that the result was a thinning of its membership. The collateral damage of that practice or lack of practice almost put them out of business.
The other thought that I had about the no votes was that they may have been married to or living with old fat guys who frequently skipped showers, had beer bellies the size of the famous mound in Moundsville, West Virginia, and embraced the release of methane as an Olympic sport.
Conversely, the folks who voted positively did so with the caveat that this pharmaceutical product could only go to market if several side effect risks factors could be ameliorated. These risks were not delineated in the breaking news headline, but if they were typical of some other sexually related drugs, they might include things like the loss of a significant other through the chance of developing roving eye syndrome.
The suggested time for consumption of said little pink pill was immediately prior to bedtime. Once again, this suggestion may relate to the fact that handsome, six pack bellied meter readers, and FED Ex, UPS, or USPS personnel in form fitting blue, brown, or grey shorts don’t typically stop by at that time of the evening, thus removing one of the potential side effects. (This concept gives a whole new meaning to the advertising question “What can Brown do for you?”)
It was very interesting to me that, unlike Cialis, Viagra, or other male oriented sexual dysfunction drugs which are potentially useful to probably 98% of men over 55 (or at least for every man working in the adult film industry), flibanserin is only directed toward 7% of the female population.
I’m sure we’ve all known someone who falls into that 7% category, but, unless they were our personal roommate, were the topic of discussion from an overindulged buddy at a Friday night poker outing, or were written up in People Magazine, we just haven’t known who they are and why they are part of that mystical group.
One of my fondest memories relating to this general subject area occurred during a speech that I made at a senior citizen conference in San Diego regarding wellness, fitness and the lifestyle facility that we had just built at our hospital. The speaker before me gave an elaborate description of how it was determined that Viagra had more than the one single use for which it was originally developed, to control high blood pressure. After the drug trials were over, none of the participants involved returned any of the sample drugs, a sure sign of the unexplored multiple benefits.
At the end of the speaker’s description of this discovery of renewed manhood by the participants, one of the attendees, a little, elderly lady in the back of the room stood up and yelled into the microphone, “The heck with Viagra. I want a pill that will make my husband dance!”
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