Disordered? Dysfunctional?
or Plain Delusional?
Excerpt By, Toni Clarke, Reuters Health

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Women: Turned off by your partner's eating habits, dirty clothes, beer-swilling football buddies?

You're probably sexually dysfunctional.

That, at least, is what a growing number of researchers would have you believe. Over the past three years, a new consensus has begun to emerge on what constitutes female sexual dysfunction: everything from pain to boredom to bad dates.

Critics of the pharmaceutical industry claim drugmakers are seizing on such loose definitions to unnecessarily "medicalize" an ever-widening range of human behavior in the hope of selling more drugs.

Personal characteristics are increasingly being recast as pathologies: Restlessness is attention deficit disorder. Shyness is social phobia. Excessive shopping, fast driving or an overly sweet tooth now warrant psychiatric analysis.

"There are some conditions, such as 'sick building syndrome,' that we are totally perplexed by," said Mark Beers, editor in chief of the Merck Manual, the world's most widely used general medical textbook.

Sick building syndrome is a term used to describe symptoms such as runny nose, headache or cough suffered by people inside a particular building. It is difficult to decide whether to include such conditions in the Manual, Beers said.

"There is no single agency or entity that defines these evolving conditions," he said. "Disease definition comes from a consensus that evolves over time."

Most of that consensus is developed within the medical community. But other factors also come into play, including pressure from patient lobbying groups, drug companies and medical associations.

After complaints from patients, doctors changed the name of a condition known as benign intercranial hypertension--a disorder that leads to pressure in the brain, visual loss and headaches, but is not caused by a tumor--to pseudotumor cerebri.

"Patients wanted it," Beers said. "They thought the term benign implied their condition wasn't serious."

Pharmaceutical companies are keen to spread the concept of illness to as broad a population as possible, critics say.

"Once we define something as a medical disorder, we prescribe drugs for it, so the pharmaceutical companies have a strong interest in doing that," said Allan Horwitz, professor of sociology at Rutgers University and author of the book "Creating Mental Illness." "They are actively going out and creating disease."

Drug companies argue they are simply developing treatments for unmet medical needs. Trevor Jones, director general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said that, while drug companies spend most of their money on big diseases such as cancer, "there is no reason why we shouldn't ... treat real conditions like sexual dysfunction as well."

Eli Lilly and Co.'s antidepressant Prozac recently won US approval for treating children ages seven to 17 for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The new indication could boost sales for a drug now threatened by competition from cheaper generics.

This month a new study will begin to evaluate the effects of Ritalin, a treatment for attention deficit disorder, in girls aged 12 to 17. The study will focus on improvements in girls' relationships with family members and friends, self-esteem, mood and academic performance.

A survey sponsored by Novartis AG, the maker of Ritalin, found last year that girls face greater "impairment" in these areas than boys.

Many experts have questioned the validity of attention deficit disorder as a medical condition.

"We, as a society, should recognize that there are pressures coming from pharmaceutical companies," said Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal. "Whether or not you have a disease is not easily defined."

Pfizer Inc., which developed the male impotence pill Viagra, is one of numerous drug companies eager to find an equivalent for women.

"The positive thing is the issue of women's sexual problems is now on the table and I'm optimistic that good will come of this," said John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. "But I'm not sure the good will be dependent on giving women drugs."

According to Horwitz, the biggest predictor of sexual dysfunction is simple: a bad relationship.

Reference Source 89

For more information on how to prevent other diseases, use
PreventDisease.com's "Quick Prevention Resources".