Of course I’m not surprised that Pfizer is now trying to market Viagra to women, but it is still pretty sickening.

When headlines from 500 news sources screamed Women Need Viagra Too! on the basis of a new JAMA study this month, it looked like more Viagra huckstering as usual.

The study boasted that 72 percent of its participants — women with antidepressant-associated sexual dysfunction (AASD) who had previously had normal sexual function and whose depression had lifted — responded favorably to Viagra. That’s an impressive claim until you see that the study size was only 98 — or that Pfizer, the blue pill’s manufacturer, paid for it.

The real push for Viagra for women appears to be this however:

But the JAMA article might have less to do with opening new Viagra markets than with keeping the nation’s 150 million antidepressant users — 16 percent of all women between the ages of 20 and 44, according to one estimate — from going off their meds because of sexual dysfunction side effects. Especially since Pfizer also makes the antidepressant Zoloft.

About half of all people taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Zoloft experience sexual dysfunction such as loss of libido or anorgasmia, and as many as 90 percent go off their meds because of it, say researchers. That’s a lot of lost patients.

Then here’s the closer:

The Zoloft page on the Pfizer Web site hucksters — “If you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder you experience severe changes in your mood and body around the time of your period. Those changes can get in the way of day-to-day living” — and the Viagra page is just a mouse click away.

Technorati : pfizer