The making of a disease: female sexual dysfunction

Ray Moynihan's analysis of the corporate interests behind the
establishment of female sexual dysfunction as a new disorder (BMJ 2003;
326: 45-47) is an excellent exploration of the distorting influence that
profit and politics have over health care today. Research that can truly
help women who experience sexual dissatisfaction will have to look at a
wide range of socio-cultural, economic and relational factors, far beyond
the limited questions considered by drug company-funded efforts to develop
a new product that can be sold to women. Unfortunately in much of the
world, conservative political forces prevent open discussion and public
funding of a comprehensive sexuality research agenda and the
pharmaceutical industry's agenda fills the void.

A similar dynamic drives the overwhelming emphasis on long-term use
of prescription drugs for disease prevention. Decades of promoting the
unproven use of hormones to prevent disease in women at menopause have now
been shown to have been a triumph of marketing over science. But we
haven't yet learned the larger lesson. Profit-driven medical research
biases medical care toward treatments and strategies that make money for
drug companies - all too often at the expense of women's health and lives.

Until research priorities are established based on public health need
and with respect for the real experiences of women's lives, women's health
care needs will go unmet.

Competing interests:  
None declared