21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: FDA Advisers Consider Flibanserin, Pill Known as ‘Female Viagra.’
Witness after witness stepped up Thursday to beg the Food and Drug Administration to approve a “little pink pill” that promises to restore sexual desire to women who have lost it.
“My desire for sex has left the building like Elvis’s blue suede shoes,” Amanda Parrish, a mother of four from Nashville who’s been an outspoken supporter of the drug, told a meeting of FDA advisers who are considering approval.
The pill, known by its generic name, flibanserin, is commonly called the female Viagra. But unlike Viagra, it works on the brain. Viagra affects blood flow to the genitals.
Parrish says flibanserin helped her when she tried it. “As if a light switch had been turned on, so was I,” she said.
Feminists are torn, since the drug helps women reclaim their sexuality, but on the downside might also get men laid more.