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JAMA Editorial Says 'Little Pink Pill' May Do More Harm Than Good

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A tablet of flibanserin sits on a brochure for Sprout Pharmaceuticals in the company's Raleigh, N.C., headquarters. (Allen G. Breed/AP)
A tablet of flibanserin sits on a brochure for Sprout Pharmaceuticals in the company's Raleigh, N.C., headquarters. (Allen G. Breed/AP)

Remember the "little pink pill"? That’s the catchphrase people were using last year when there was a lot of buzz around the so-called "female Viagra." The drug — it's called Flibanserin, brand name Addyi, is supposed to increase sexual desire in women with low libidos.

It went on the market in October, but there's a new meta-analysis on the drug out in JAMA Internal Medicine, along with a biting editorial by two professors of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute.

Guest

Carey Goldberg, she runs WBUR's CommonHealth blog, which tweets @commonhealth.

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STAT: FDA Explains Why It Approved Addyi Female Sex Pill

  • "Should the Food and Drug Administration have approved the Addyi pill for female sexual dysfunction?"

Bloomberg Businessweek: The Female Libido Pill Is No Viagra

  • "More than half a million men got prescriptions for Viagra in its first month on the market in 1998. The number of prescriptions for Addyi, the women’s libido-boosting pill, in its first few weeks? 227."

STAT: New Pill For Boosting Female Libidos Off To A Slow Start

  • "The new pill for female sexual dysfunction may be one of the most talked-about new drugs of the year, but it is not getting off to such a hot start."

This segment aired on March 2, 2016.

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