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Myth of 'female impotence' created to boost sales

by Medindia Content Team on Jan 7 2003 1:05 PM

A recent article in the British Medical Journal has suggested that pharmaceutical companies have created a disease out of female sexual disorders and are defining the condition in order to unleash new markets for their products.

Drug companies are trying to recreate the kind of market that Viagra, the drug used to treat male impotence, created during its launch in 1998.

Doctors however claim that female sexual disorders are being unduly medicalised and the coining of the term "female sexual dysfunction" makes an illness out of normal changes in women's sexual feelings which may happen after childbirth or being with the same partner for many years.

The article says that a group of researchers in close conjunction with pharma companies sponsoring meetings are defining a new category of illness to boost the sales of these companies. Doctors caution that the danger in creating such a myth is that it is likely to encourage doctors to prescribe drugs to change sexual function when attention should be paid to other aspects of a woman's life such as stress, tiredness or threatening behaviour from their partners.

However, a spokeswoman for one of the leading pharma companies denies such reports stating, "We work on unmet medical needs. There were academics who were working on this long before they came to us to ask us for support."


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