---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 08:50:54 -0800
Subject: NPR.org Text-Only : Female Libido Pill Fires Up Debate About
Women And Sex
To: Blind Democracy Discussion List <blind-democracy@octothorp.org>
Sometimes I wonder if I'm out in left field. I do know that
politically I have to look over my right shoulder to see where the
Liberals are. But am I out of it when it comes to Sex? Listen, I
am fast approaching 80 years of age. I've had prostrate issues and
"getting it up" takes a great deal of effort. But back in the
day...there were some fun times. But that was back in the day. Back
then I could run several miles and then head off to my job hauling
freight around a warehouse. I could eat a lunch consisting of three
sandwiches, a rack of cookies and a couple of oranges, and never gain
an ounce. Usually on my way home I would stop and have a slice of
chocolate cream pie with a side of soft ice-cream. Back in the day, I
admit that I could not get enough sex. I hung out in bars, wandered
about the college campus, and made myself available to every woman who
seemed remotely interested. But that was then. That was when I could
drink and make love all night long and crawl out of the sack come
morning, and head off for a day's labor.
Now I hit the sack around 9:00 PM. and rise up at 5:00 A.m. wondering
if maybe I should stay in bed another hour or two. "Sex", for me, is
cuddling. And if were not a mutually agreed thing, I'd do what I
needed to do in order to show my love.
But this over fascination with sex is pushing us down a wrong road, in
my humble opinion. When we reach an age where our sex organs don't
perform any longer. Shouldn't we take that as a sign that it's time
to let them rest? We're allowing our Masters to play with us, forcing
us to focus on the sex act rather than on our ability to love. Love
is not screwing. Love is the respect we show for one another. But
our Corporate Bosses can't figure out how to reap profit from Love.
So they turn to sex. Sex can be packaged and sold. Pills to get it
up. Pills to get it down. Pills to get it on after menopause. On
and on it goes. And just listen to the potential side effects!
"Enjoy your new found youth". But don't forget, you may die for all
your effort. Probably I should remind you all that this ramble is
coming from an older man whose lahbeto is on half empty. And I'm
just fine with it.
Carl Jarvis
On 2/16/15, ted chittenden <tchittenden@cox.net> wrote:
> Hi to all.
>
> I'm sending this NPR story for two reasons. First, we have been discussing
> sexuality and the disabled which is somewhat related to this story. Second,
> while NPR covered the controversy okay, it didn't present enough factual
> information for me to make a good judgment on this new approach.
> Specifically, in what percentage of males was Viagra effective before it was
> approved. In what percentage of women was RU486 effective before it was
> approved. And what is the percentage of women who have side effects after
> taking this pill versus the percentages of people who expierenced negative
> side effects after taking Viagra or RU486.
>
> Finally, there interwoven links within the text material that can only be
> seen if one looks at the story through the provided link instead of inside
> this email.
> --
> Ted Chittenden
>
> Every story has at least two sides if not more.
> --
> http://thin.npr.org/s.php?sId=384043661&rId=2&x=1
> By Rob Stein
>
> All Things Considered, · For 15 years, Carla Price and her husband's sex
> life was great. But then things began to change.
>
> "Before, I would want to have sex," says Price, who is 50 and lives in
> central Missouri. "But over the years my sexual desire has just dwindled to
> nothing."
>
> Price has no idea why. She's healthy. She's not really stressed out about
> anything. And she's still totally crazy about her husband.
>
> "It's not that our relationship got boring," Price says. "Because it's
> actually the opposite -- we became closer as we got older together."
>
> But her lack of interest in sex almost wrecked their marriage.
>
> "It did get to the point where my husband thought that perhaps we just
> needed to divorce," she says.
>
> Women like Price, who see their decreasing sex drive as a problem, are at
> the center of an intense, emotional debate that's been raging for years over
> whether the Food and Drug Administration should approve the first drug that
> claims to boost a woman's libido.
>
> NPR reached Price through Sprout Pharmaceuticals Inc., the company that
> makes the drug.
>
> "Men have a number of treatment options for sexual dysfunction, says Cindy
> Whitehead, Sprout's CEO. "We haven't yet gotten to one for women's most
> common dysfunction."
>
> "Up until now," she says, "the treatment paradigm for women with sexual
> dysfunction has essentially been: Let's take a drug that works in men and
> let's see if it works in women."
>
> None of them did. But Sprout's drug, flibanserin, takes a totally different
> approach than, say, Viagra. Instead of increasing blood flow to the
> genitals, flibanserin affects a different part of the body: the brain.
>
> Flibanserin shifts the balance of three key brain chemicals, Whitehead says.
> The drug, she says, increases "excitatory factors for sex" -- dopamine and
> norepinephrine -- and decreases serotonin, which can dampen the sex drive.
>
> But there's a lot of skepticism about flibanserin. The FDA has rejected it
> twice, saying there wasn't much evidence it works. The agency also
> questioned the drug's safety, especially with long-term, daily use.
>
> "The combination of ... not very robust effectiveness, and the fact that the
> safety profile had not been really characterized very well at all made us
> reach that conclusion, that it really wasn't ready for approval," says
> Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs.
>
> The company acknowledges flibanserin can have side effects, including
> sleepiness, nausea and dizziness. And there are no results yet, Sprout says,
> on whether the drug might interfere with the helpful action of Zoloft,
> Prozac or other SSRI antidepressants, which are thought to work primarily by
> boosting levels of serotonin in the brain.
>
> But Whitehead argues that flibanserin is safe and says the company's studies
> show it can help many women.
>
> "We increase their desire by 53 percent," she says of study participants.
> "We decrease their distress by 29 percent, and then they doubled their
> number of satisfying sexual events."
>
> Whitehead argues the FDA is holding flibanserin to a higher standard than it
> uses to evaluate drugs for men. And some women's rights advocates worry that
> might be true.
>
> "We live in a culture that has historically discounted the importance of
> sexual pleasure and sexual desire for women," says Terry O'Neill, president
> of the National Organization for Women. "And I fear that it's that cultural
> attitude that men's sexual health is extremely important, but women's sexual
> health is not so important. That's the cultural attitude that I want to be
> sure the FDA has not, maybe unconsciously, imported into its deliberative
> process."
>
> The FDA denies any bias.
>
> "We have taken those concerns very seriously and we think the accusation is
> truly misplaced," Kweder says.
>
> Many other women's health advocates agree with the agency's caution.
>
> "It doesn't seem to work very well, if at all, and it's got some safety
> concerns that are troubling and haven't been fully explored," says Cindy
> Pearson of the National Women's Health Network. "So we felt very comfortable
> saying to the FDA, 'You know, women want attention, but they want drugs that
> work. And this doesn't seem to be one of them.' "
>
> Others argue that the campaign for flibanserin is oversimplifying female
> sexuality. And many women (and men) who experience a waning libido at
> midlife don't see it as a problem.
>
> "The misrepresentation that everybody should be having it -- needs to have
> it, wants to have it, has a problem if they don't have it -- is to change,
> really, what sexuality is into more of a medical thing," says Leonore
> Tiefer, a psychologist at New York University. "I think that's a terrible
> direction for knowledge, for understanding, for society."
>
> Some say Sprout's campaign is part of a bigger trend by the pharmaceutical
> industry to turn everything into a disease that needs a pill.
>
> "There's really been a move toward medicalizing normal human experience,"
> says Adriane Fugh-Berman, who studies drug companies at Georgetown
> University. "And while there are certainly some women who have very
> troublesome symptoms of low libido, it's not at all clear that medication is
> a good answer for them."
>
> A low libido may be a symptom of fluctuating hormones or of some health
> problem that needs attention. Some women may just be in a bad relationship.
> For others, therapy might be the answer.
>
> Carla Price says she would like to try flibanserin. Marriage counseling and
> a hormonal cream have helped, she says. But not enough.
>
> "Even though it's better, it's not perfect," she says. "I would gladly take
> risks of side effects to keep my marriage and my relationship."
>
> Sprout says the company plans to submit some new studies soon that it hopes
> will finally convince the FDA to approve the first drug to boost a woman's
> libido
>
>
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