Adam's Rib?; May 1999; Scientific American Magazine; by Ezzell; 2 Page(s)

No sooner had the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Viagra for sale last year for male erectile dysfunction than women began asking themselves and their doctors, "Will it work for me, too?"

Women are already experimenting with Viagra on their own, and reports of the drug's success are surfacing in women's magazines and on the Internet. But the question of whether the drug really alleviates female sexual dysfunction will not be answered definitively until Viagra's developer, Pfizer in New York City, completes its clinical tests of the drug in women. One thing is clear, however: Viagra has prompted women as well as men to think and talk about sexual dysfunction. Perhaps most important, Pfizer's efforts to prove that the drug works in women are beginning to add money and mainstream respectability to the field of female sexuality-an area of investigation that historically has suffered from a lack of funding as well as from thinly veiled snickers. (Men's sexuality is only marginally better understood.)