Friday, March 27, 2015

Call your doctor if symptoms last longer than four hours after reading this ;)

I am certifiable. I should be locked up by myself and not allowed to mix with people.  Oh, wait, I already live that way!  I say ashram, you say asylum ;)

Allow me to present today's evidence for that mental certification.

I decided that I needed to find out what were some of the interesting historical events that occurred on March 27th.  (So, this is what happens when the friend leaves me alone in the ashram?)  How difficult such a question would have been in the old days before the web!  Now, you ask questions, the web has answers. The problem is that we don't know how to ask questions; but, enough about that one.

Anyway, of the few that were listed here, this one caught my attention:
1998: The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Viagra, made by Pfizer, to fight male impotence.
I suppose the first "Vigara" spam email went out on March 28, 1998 ;)


But, seriously, 17 years of the famous blue pill?  There could be young people who were a result of Viagra-triggered fertilizations?

Back when it was new, everybody from stand-up comedians to the humor-challenged like me were making jokes with Viagra as the punchline.  Now, nobody cares to even joke about it.  Remember how Bob Dole served up ads for Viagra?  You forgot already?



Only in America--one day a presidential candidate to become the most powerful person on the planet, and the next day selling Viagra.  God bless the country and its multi-faceted entertainment theatre! ;)

And, of course, the "Puritanical" political party--you know, the one Bob Dole belongs to--had no problems with insurance companies paying for Viagra.  I suppose it is one thing to get the penis all pumped up, but another should the penis impregnate an unmarried woman who couldn't pay for birth control pills.  Remember the kerfufle when yet another Republican Senate old man ran for the presidency?  You forgot already?

So, back to Viagra.  We live in a world where we demand equality.  Well, how about equality in remedies for sexual dysfunction, too?
“Aren’t women’s sexual needs as important as erectile dysfunction in men?”
Where is that damn female Viagra pill, right?  Well, it has been around for years already.  You surprised?  You know it exists--it is called the headache pill.  Get the joke?  ;)

Ok, seriously though, it is not as simple as that.
Viagra, for example, doesn’t cause a man to want sex. The drug only works if a man already feels aroused, by helping blood flow into the erectile tissue of his penis.
The brain, my friend, is the biggest sexual organ. If the brain doesn't care, well, no awesome plumbing will do the trick.  If so, then how about for women?
On October 27, the Food and Drug Administration invited women to a public summit on female sexual dysfunction—and what the medical community should do about it. The FDA heard directly from women about losing their desire for sex and the daily experience of living with, according to the agency’s invitation, the most common form of sexual dysfunction for women: female sexual interest/arousal disorder, or FSIAD. The following day, the FDA held a scientific workshop on the challenges of diagnosing and measuring FSIAD, reigniting a public debate about whether there’s a need for female dysfunction drugs in the first place.
While ED is so simple an abbreviation, even that is so complex for women--FSIAD.  I guess everything about women gets damn complicated! ;)

So, the latest on the "female Viagra" is that it is a no-go:
Flibanserin is not "female Viagra." Viagra is a drug for men whose spirit is willing but whose flesh is weak. "Female sexual dysfunction," however, is usually not a matter of ability to get aroused but a lack of interest in having sex in the first place. As Daniel Bergner explained in 2013 in the New York Times, the prevailing research suggests that much of what gets labeled as female sexual dysfunction is actually more just a reluctance to have sex with your particular husband. "But for many women, the cause of their sexual malaise appears to be monogamy itself," he writes. 
Women! ;)


So, there you have it folks.  It has been 17 years since the blue pill was introduced, which has since caused millions and millions of erections, and yet no pill for women.

And to think that such a post was triggered by a simple curiosity about some of the interesting historical events that occurred on March 27th.

ps: the cartoons are from here

4 comments:

Ramesh said...

Good Lord. Today is Ramanavami. And you write this post.

Abishtu Abishtu :):):)

Sriram Khé said...

Hey, if they can schedule a cricket match final on Ramanavami, and devout Hindus--Rajalakshmis and Ramamrithams included--can waste away six hours of the holy day on bowlers scratching their groin with the ball, and spitting on it, and ... "abhachaaram!!!" ;)

Anne in Salem said...

In today's paper there was a picture from Bangalore of an artist helping his son with a costume of Hanuman (monkey god?) for Ramanavami. No mention of cricket.

Sriram Khé said...

There was no mention of cricket because it had not been invented during Hanuman's time ... muahahahahaha ;)