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Pills won’t fix bedroom trouble

Is sex more like dancing or digestion?

TORONTO — Is sex more like dancing or digestion?

That’s the question sex therapist and big pharma critic Leonore Tiefer posed Tuesday at the University of Guelph’s sexuality conference.

“We need to view sex as a social-cultural phenomenon. Like dancing, it involves training, talent and diversity,” said Tiefer, a professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, in a telephone interview.

“That’s a more appropriate model than the drug, health model, which says there’s a healthy way, and for everything else, you should see your doctor.”

Tiefer, 65, is a founder of the New View Campaign that promotes this broader view of sexuality and serves as a watchdog on pharmaceutical companies. “Sex for our pleasure or their profit?” reads the banner on the group’s website, newviewcampaign.org.

Last week Tiefer testified before an advisory panel of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about flibanserin, a drug that Boehringer Ingelheim claimed would restore low female sex drive.

Tiefer, who believes low sexual drive is not a disease, unfurled a petition with 652 signatures for the panel. “The company says women are clamouring for this. I don’t think that’s as true as the company wants you to think,” said Tiefer. “A lot of women are afraid of this kind of stuff and resent it.”

She and other presenters expressed concern about the drug’s efficacy and side effects, such as depression and fatigue. The panel voted 11-0 against recommending its approval.

So far, the drug is not approved in any country. Boehringer Ingelheim spokesman Derek O’Toole would not comment on whether the drug has been submitted to Health Canada for review, saying it was against company policy. Health Canada is not allowed to divulge such information.

A pill to enhance female sexual drive has been a Holy Grail of pharmaceutical companies since Viagra, the medicine for erectile dysfunction, was introduced for men in 1998.

Tiefer doesn’t believe such a pill is needed. Many of women’s medical-related sexual problems are the side effects of other medicines, possibly from diseases that could be managed differently, she said.