Judith Reid-Haff and two buses full of other brave women — and some equally brave men — descended on the Food and Drug Administration’s Silver Spring, Md., campus this week with a group fighting for women’s health equity.
The group is called Even the Score, and it wants the agency take a more serious look at treatments for female sexual dysfunction. In red heels, black pumps, comfort flats and combat boots, they marched through the FDA campus.
These women want to want to have sex. But their bodies are telling them no.
You’ve heard of this, right?
Maybe the problem will sound more familiar if it’s “mansplained” — Viagra.
That pill was pushed through in a matter of months when it left a lab 16 years ago. And hallelujah, all these men could have sex again. Today, Viagra is a staple of health insurance plans, gauzy television commercials and Internet ads.
Even companies that don’t want to let insurance plans cover birth control hand out Viagra like Skittles.
And since the little blue pill hit the nation’s sex scene, more than 20 drugs to treat male sexual dysfunction have come to the market.
How many are there for women?
Zilch. Zero.
No such thing as a female Viagra.
“When I finally asked my family doctor about it, about not wanting to have sex, I couldn’t believe there was nothing I could take,” said Katherine Campbell, 30, who came from Indianapolis to testify.
“It’s in your head,” is what so many people told her. Or, “You already had kids, so that desire to procreate is gone,” others said.
It goes back to society’s maddeningly confused treatment of women, hypersexualizing every darn thing about us — from Halloween costumes to sandwich ads — but wigging out when women want to talk about their own sex lives.
“At first, it was: ‘Here, take an antidepressant,’” Campbell, the mother of two little boys, said. “I was happy, sure. But I still didn’t want to have sex.”
But there was something wrong. It’s called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and the FDA is holding its first-ever public workshop this week on patient-focused drug development for it.
“It’s important that the FDA focus on women’s needs,” said Reid-Haff, who came to Washington from Temecula, Calif., with her husband, Derek Haff.
After surviving breast cancer, Reid-Haff noticed her sexual libido drop. And it was a long road to find a doctor who would listen to her.
The treatment of women’s sexual disorders by the FDA is where the outrage in this story lives.
Susan Scanlan, a longtime women’s advocate on Capitol Hill, says there are plenty of clinical trials for drugs that could treat low sexual desire in women. But the FDA doesn’t approve the drugs because of the possible side effects, like “drowsiness, fatigue, dizziness and dry mouth.”
Earlier this year, the FDA approved Xiaflex, the 24th drug out there to treat male sexual dysfunction. The possible side effects of that puppy? “Heart attack. Sudden death. And my personal favorite, penile rupture,” Scanlan said.
The advocates arrived at the FDA that morning with a letter signed by 80 experts in men’s sexual health from across the country urging the administration to approve a treatment.
“As humans, we believe in gender equality, and while we appreciate that our understanding of women’s sexual health has lagged behind that of the male by at least two decades, we are catching up,” they wrote.
It’s about time.
Reach Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak at petula.dvorak@washpost.com.
