Apparently Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH doesn't believe that women could have sexual dysfunctions the same way men do. Unlike Viagra, this German drugmaker plans to create a drug that doesn't act on women's bodies, but minds.
While VIagra targets sexual stimulation by increasing blood flow to the penis, this drug would work on the brain, helping women to improve their female libido, thanks to a compound called flibanserin. Heike Specht, a spokesman for the company, was quoted saying that an "'increasing body of evidence shows that hypoactive sexual desire disorder causes substantial emotional distress' and that the company 'has conducted late-stage clinical trials in over 5,000 women from which we hope will result the first available pharmaceutical treatment.'"
The argument for focusing on the brain of women to "fix" libido issues seems to be based on surveys and research about evolution. Since women are supposedly biologically inclined towards caring and childrearing and so their sex drive appears to be triggered by emotional factors - differing from men, who are biologically conditioned to spread their seed.
It sounds like science, but it also sounds suspicious. I've never been one to buy the notion of being evolutionarily conditioned based on one's gender - since gender is socially constructed. And though there are differences between the sexes, a lot of research has been done to suggest that male and female genes aren't that off. So this notion of sexual libido being so different for men and women seems - incomplete. Men simply need more blood flowing through them to better their libido but women need a mental health overhaul? Is there no simple "jolt" available for a woman's body?
A second question, one that I think is still being asked all the time by researchers and scientists, is what exactly constitutes female sexual dysfunction? It has generally been established that male sexual dysfunction is defined by a lacking erection, and that too feels a bit oversimplistic to me to be called a "dysfunction". But what about females? Is it considered a dysfunction for a woman's stress levels to affect her sexual desires? And if it is, how is the baseline being defined? How high should a woman's libido be exactly?
At the end of the day, female consumers will have to assess their sexual and mental health and decide if this future drug is right for them. I leave it to you readers to answer the questions above!