If you could take a drug to become aroused — not just to facilitate the hydraulics of arousal, as Viagra and other vascular sex aids do, but to actually make you horny — would you?
I ask because MSNBC is reporting today that New Jersey-based Palatin Technologies says it is developing an aid that does just that. Bremolanotide, as the wonder potion is currently known, “stimulates the brain, rather than the genitals,” or so the company says. The drug, which is a fast-acting inhalant rather than a pill, seems to work on men and women, but it’s presented as being primarily for women, as a counterpart to Viagra et al. and as a potential cure for so-called female sexual dysfunction.
Page Rockwell raises some interesting questions related to this drug and America’s screwed up attitudes about female sexuality. They’re below the fold.
…the drug could hardly come at a weirder time for women’s health and sexuality in America. The country can’t agree on such apparent no-brainers as access to emergency contraception and vaccines for sexually transmitted diseases; how will we cope with a female mojo maker? Will women have to be diagnosed as dysfunctional to get it? (Hello, hysteria.) Will it be covered by insurance? Will it be available to teenage girls? What happens when 1 million doofy teenage boys get the brilliant idea to spray girls in the face with it? (Answer: Given how inhalants work, probably nothing, but this seems like just the kind of “Saved by the Bell”-type scenario that the religious right would freak out about.) Or when Tommy swaps Susie’s albuterol inhaler with a Bremolanotide inhaler right before volleyball practice?
Rockwell’s probably right, the religious conservatives are going to freak out over this drug. They’re also going to buy it by the case.