Sasin Tipchaia from Pixabay

The FDA has approved another drug to hype up sexual desire. The drug, bremolanotide, is injected before sex and if it becomes a big hit, could make billions for the drug company. But there are reasons to be skeptical, primary among which are that we’ve been down that road before with tragic or really stupid results.

In high school, for example, the big deal among boys was Spanish Fly. Nobody ever knew where to get it, maybe in Tijuana, but supposedly it made girls want to have sex. Evidently it did exist, but was made from the juice of a blister beetle, and worked on men at least, by burning the urethra. But you know, people peed blood and sometimes died, and so Spanish Fly got a bad reputation.

And then there were the so-called “date rape drugs,” dropped into alcoholic drinks. They didn’t make people want sex, but it did render them confused or unconscious so they couldn’t say no. But since rape is a felony, one of the side effects was 15-20 years of hard time in prison for the rapist, and a pretty horrible experience for the victim.

And then came Viagra, approved by the FDA in 1998 so that guys at least could have more fun with a prescription. Some hoped that the quest for rhinoceros horn might be over. But the pills cost $65 each, weren’t covered by insurance, and erections lasting more than four hours could pool blood in the penis and starve it of oxygen leading to – you guessed it – very bad things.

But Viagra didn’t work for the ladies, and so the men in white coats went back to work on the mother lode of drugs — what could be the biggest blockbuster drug in history.

For example, in 2010, the FDA was considering approving something dubbed “female Viagra.” The drug, flibanserin, was originally developed as an antidepressant, but it didn’t work and in fact had depression as a side effect. So with the bright idea to market it as a female aphrodisiac, Boehringer Ingelheim tried to get it approved by the FDA for that purpose. But the FDA said no two times, development stopped, and the drug was sold to Sprout Pharmaceuticals.

Sprout began a marketing campaign painting it in gender-equity colors, sponsoring studies that created “hypoactive sexual desire disorder” as a disease and invented the slogan “Even the Score.” The FDA approved the drug in 2015, and two days later, Sprout sold out to Valeant Pharmaceuticals for a cool billion dollars.

But the drug didn’t do so well, as efficacy was small compared to placebos, cost $400 per month, and had side effects of nausea, dizziness, sleepiness, depression, etc. And while flibanserin must be taken daily, it could not be taken with alcohol, which was a real buzz kill. It sold for a measly $10 million, which in the pharmaceutical game is peanuts. A total flop.

But BigPharma could sense blood in the water, and it went back to the bedroom and came up with the latest miracle aphrodisiac, bremolanotide. Early research shows little difference in effect from a placebo. And the question remains: can an expensive drug make up for something missing in the complexities of human relationships?

Sex should be pleasurable, nature intended it that way to continue the species. And marriage was instituted to protect and care for the next generation. But BigPharma looks at human beings as nothing more than meat bodies, collections of stimulus-response neurons, synapses and chemicals just waiting for the right pharmaceutical magic wand to lift life to higher levels of awareness, creativity and tenderness.

But it doesn’t work that way. Drugs, by their nature, go the other direction. And amping up sexual performance with Viagra, flibanserin or bremolanotide even if they did work, isn’t going to solve some of the biggest difficulties in society today: infidelity, broken marriages, STDs, single parent families and children in foster homes because of parents hooked on opioids or dead of overdoses. BigPharma had a role in all that too, so to expect the latest pill or needle to solve life’s complex difficulties is a bit simple-minded.