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As I’ve written here, and here, flibanserin, colloquially called “Female Viagra has smelled wrong from the beginning but now it is a day worse.
Here is a brief history that shows why this whole thing stinks:
- Prior to 2010, Boehringer-Ingleheim was trying to develop a drug called flibanserin as an antidepressant
- It didn’t work, but showed some signs of increasing libido in older women
- Boehringer-Ingleheim changed direction, and tried to develop it as a therapy for hyposexual disorder in women
- In 2010, the FDA voted it down unanimously, citing marginal efficacy coupled with side effects including low blood pressure, fainting, nausea, and fatigue
- Boehringer-Ingleheim gave up and sold flibanserin to Sprout Pharmaceuticals, a startup that was formed from what used to be Slate Pharmaceuticals—a company that had been chastised down by the FDA for improper advertising and generally sleazy tactics
Here’s where it gets strange. Sprout CEO Cindy Whitehead began to claim that the FDA rejections were due to sexism at the agency, rather than deficiencies in the drug.
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She convened a newly-formed women’s’ right group called Even The Score (ETS) to lobby Congress and the FDA to approve the drug for women under the umbrella of reducing this sexism. ETS even lied about the “imbalance” between the number of drugs to treat male sexual dysfunction vs. the number for women. They claimed “24-0,” which was misleading, because they double counted the same drugs using different names.
The real number of drugs to treat men was four, but it was still irrelevant because male and female sexual dysfunction have nothing in common except the name.
Read full, original post: Female Viagra Stinks a Little More Every Day
