Bremelanotide and flibanserin for low sexual desire in women: the fallacy of regulatory precedent.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved two drugs for 'hypoactive sexual desire disorder' in women, flibanserin (Addyi) in 2015 and bremelanotide (Vyleesi) in 2019. In this paper we examine the outcome measures and clinical trial data upon which regulatory approval was based. In clinical trials, flibanserin led to an average of only one additional enjoyable sexual experience every two months, bremelanotide to none.

Apples and Oranges: "Sexual Medicine" and the Effort to Deny That Counting and Classifying Are Political Acts.

Criticisms and controversies about scientific method are rarely just about science. As or more often, they are sociological exercises in boundary patrol, helping determine which work is in and which is out. The recent back-and-forth on the question of whether psychological treatments for sexual desire complaints are sufficiently "rigorous" is part of the effort to define the field of sexual medicine.

Missed Opportunities in the Patient-Focused Drug Development Public Meeting and Scientific Workshop on Female Sexual Dysfunction Held at the FDA, October 2014.

There were numerous missed opportunities at the October 2014 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) meeting on female sexual dysfunction (FSD).

Medicalizations and demedicalizations of sexuality therapies.

This article complicates recent discussions about the expanding zones and influences of medicalization and biomedicalization on sexuality and sex therapy by contextualizing them with competing nonmedicalizing trends. These latter developments include an escalating nonexpert commercial sexuality sector on the Internet, as well as a long history of anarchic and democratizing social politics, such as "the counterculture" and "free love movements." What these nonmedicalizing trends have in common is the view of sexual problems and solutions as far broader than sexual dysfunctions and sex therapies, a belief in the social determinants of individuals' sexual experiences, and a deep concern regarding the socially harmful consequences of medicalization.

Why medicalization? Introduction to the special issue on the medicalization of sex.

This special issue grows out of the need to bring into focus the historical and sociocultural contextualization of sex to the sexological community. The specific focus is on analyzing how medicalization is affecting many areas of sexual life and discourse, but the larger goal is to help situate sexuality studies in its broadest perspective. Articles will be of general interest to those interested in interdisciplinary scholarship; the specific articles address HIV politics, sex therapy, women's sexual health, sex and aging, the popularization of weak science, and the media's view that sexual exuberance is a central marker of recovery from cancer.

Activism on the medicalization of sex and female genital cosmetic surgery by the New View Campaign in the United States.

The New View Campaign is a grassroots initiative begun in 1999 to challenge the over-medicalization of sex in the wake of publicity following the release of Viagra. This paper describes the history of the campaign and its activities, which started with analysing the construction of female sexual dysfunction, and moved on to develop a critical understanding of sexuality as a market for the pharmaceutical industry to exploit. The campaign has also had much to say about a positive model for sexuality, sex education, treatment of sex problems, and sex research.

Female sexual dysfunction: a case study of disease mongering and activist resistance.

Tiefer highlights key steps in the "creation" of a new diagnosis, female sexual dysfunction, and of the campaign to challenge its reductionist approach to women's sexual problems.

The emerging global discourse of sexual rights.

Since 1945, United Nations (UN) conferences and documents have promoted human rights as essential to individual liberty and international peace. It took until 1994, however, for the term "sexual rights" to first appear in a UN document. Recently, other groups have also been promoting the idea of sexual rights.

Beyond dysfunction: a new view of women's sexual problems.

A new theoretical framework and classification system for women's sexual problems, written by feminist clinicians and social scientists, was released in October 2000. Part one critiques the current American Psychiatric Association nomenclature for women's sexual programs. Part two highlights international sexual rights documents.

The selling of 'female sexual dysfunction'.

This first conference on female sexual dysfunction (FSD) offers researchers and clinicians an important opportunity to add to the already sizeable literature on contemporary women's sexual problems. However, this opportunity is threatened by commercial domination and an excessively narrow biomedical focus which neglects the research and theory growing out of 30 years of feminist scholarship. More than lip service needs to be paid to the importance of interdisciplinary understanding.