Let’s get one thing straight. The discovery and development of flibanserin — the so-called pink Viagra — by a German pharmaceutical company is not “disease mongering.”
The drug, which will be considered for official federal endorsement by the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee on June 18, is indicated as treatment for female sexual dysfunction, or hypoactive sexual desire dysfunction (HSDD), and it is something of an unofficial younger sister to Viagra, which Pfizer first delivered to Americans in 1998.
But Ray Moynihan, a lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia and the author of the forthcoming book “Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals,” thinks the drug’s development smacks of disease mongering, telling The Post, “People think they are sick when they are not. People become patients when they don’t need to be.”