A few weeks ago “pink Viagra”, more properly known as Addyi, got a green light from the FDA. The drug purports to treat “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” in women. The day after the approval, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, a small company with the patent, was sold for US$1 billion in cash to Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. Valeant obviously thought it had a winner. 

It turns out that it has backed the wrong horse. In the first few weeks, only 227 prescriptions have been filled. “I thought there was going to be this huge onslaught,” the director of the Women’s Health Clinic at the Mayo Clinic told Bloomberg Business. 

Addyi has a lot of drawbacks; it has potentially deadly side effects, women can’t drink alcohol while using it; it costs US$780 a month; and it must be taken daily. But the biggest problem might be that Valeant believed Sprout’s canny public relations campaign which promoted sex as “a basic human right” and one of the FDA’s “priority areas of unmet medical need”. Perhaps women are more interested in commitment than a Viagra they can call their own. 

Michael Cook
Only 227 prescriptions have been filled.
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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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