As we approach Viagra’s 10th birthday, let us not forget FSD, or female sexual dysfunction, an equally intriguing affliction, at least according to some. Pills and gels are being tested. Big money is at stake. Love lives may hang in the balance.

Yet a modest-size but fervent group of psychologists, academics and public health advocates contend that FSD isn’t an authentic medical condition, or at least not the sort of problem that should be treated with drugs, The Washington Post writes. The anti-FSD crowd is mostly women, many of them self-described feminists. The most prominent is Leonore Tiefer, a psychotherapist and clinical associate professor at New York University, who has long decried what she calls “the medicalization of women’s sexuality.”

“Drug companies want to say to women, ‘You don’t need to know anything; you can have the satisfying sex life that you seek - people dancing on TV, the whole bit - without knowing anything. Just ask your doctor,’ ” she says. “I resent that, because there are specific harms that come from being ignorant and dependent in the world we live in. There may be lots of people who aren’t interested in sex, but is there a medical reason for that, and do we diagnose that?”

Tiefer’s critique centers, in part, on the way that ‘pink Viagra’ is sure to be marketed - with ads day and night, suggesting women who aren’t feeling frisky have a medical problem, the paper writes. She and her allies - known as the New View Campaign - are also galled that so much money and media attention are heaped on the so-called lust drug, even before it exists, when for many women the solution to their libido problems isn’t that exotic.

Maybe they have a partner who hasn’t a clue about technique. Maybe they’re stressed out. Maybe they can’t possibly get in the mood because they’re so busy raising children. Therapy, counseling, even free day care, says the New View Campaign, might do more for women’s sex lives than any drug company ever could.

Interested now? Want to learn more about arousal? How about drug development? Then please click here to read the rest.