Drug companies are creating a new medical disorder known as "female sexual dysfunction" in order to build markets for drugs among women, despite controversy surrounding the medicalization of sexual problems, said an article in the BMJ (formerly, the British Medical Journal).

Over the past six years, researchers with close ties to the pharmaceutical industry have been developing and defining the new disorder at company sponsored meetings, wrote journalist, Ray Moynihan.

One of the milestones in the making of the new disorder was a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) article in February 1999, which suggested that 43% of women aged 18-59 have female sexual dysfunction. However, leading researchers have raised serious concerns about this figure, describing it as misleading and potentially dangerous.

Many researchers believe that portraying sexual difficulties as a dysfunction will encourage doctors to prescribe drugs that change sexual function, when attention should be paid to other aspects of a woman's life. It's also likely to make women think they have a malfunction when they do not. But perhaps the greatest concern is the ever-narrowing definitions of "normal" that help turn the complaints of the healthy into the conditions of the sick, Moynihan warned.

Although corporate-sponsored creation of a disease is not a new phenomenon, the role of drug companies in the construction and promotion of new conditions needs more public scrutiny, he concluded.

The problem was exposed last year by Dr. Madeline Behrendt, a practicing chiropractor and chair of the Council on Women's Health of the World Chiropractic Alliance. The trend to categorize normal female body functions as diseases has generated billions of dollars for the medical and pharmaceutical industries, but has done little to solve women's health problems, according to Dr. Behrendt's findings, published in the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research.

Her paper examined the biases towards women's health in the male-dominated research world and asserted that there is a growing resentment by women whose health problems are disregarded by researchers -- even as they are being exploited by the drug and medical industries.

"Drugs are now utilized to interfere with the multiple bodily experiences unique to womanhood such as menstruation," Behrendt stated. The creation of medical specialties such as female sexual dysfunction, PMS, fertility and menopause are further evidence of this growing problem, she added. Currently, more than 300 drugs geared specifically to women are being researched.

SOURCES: "The making of a disease: female sexual dysfunction," BMJ, January 4, 2003.

"The Role and Relationship of Chiropractic and Women's Health Issues - A Call for Research," Madeline Behrendt, D.C., Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, October 2000.