When Liz Canner was offered a job making erotic videos for women, she admitted she was interested - especially as it was all for what sounded like a good cause.
The films were for a drug company called Vivus, which was developing an 'orgasm cream' to boost women's sex lives.
They needed some female-friendly erotica to test sexual responses in women before and after treatment with their drug, to find out if it worked.
But the job didn't turn out the way Liz expected. Instead, she ended up making a shocking but hilarious film of her own, Orgasm Inc, which is causing a storm in America as it sets out to expose the drug companies and doctors who are now locked in a race to produce a 'female Viagra' - a treatment that promises women a super-charged sex life in a pill.
'The whole idea of these drugs is twisted,' she reveals.
'It's not about sexual empowerment for women, it's about exploiting women and making billions in profits for drug companies.
'They're creating a false idea of what constitutes a "good" or "normal" sex life just so we can all feel abnormal and then go and buy their products.'
Orgasm Inc follows Liz on a nine year journey as she meets CEOs of drug companies, researchers, doctors, scientists and therapists - all claiming to hold the key to the ultimate female sexual experience.
One doctor in the U.S. has invented a machine he called an ' Orgasmatron', which inserts electrodes into the spine and can be operated at the touch of a button for, so it claims, an instant climax 'in the car, while you're doing housework - anywhere you like'.
The Orgasmatron started life as a fictional device in the 1968 film Barbarella and early Woody Allen movie, Sleeper.
Other companies are developing a wide range of drug treatments that work on everything from brain chemistry to hormones, delivered in a series of pills, nasal sprays, chewing gums, patches and potions.
Key to ultimate sex? The Orgasmatron started life as a fictional device in the Woody Allen movie, Sleeper
Most of these 'treatments' turn out to be largely ineffective (a woman who tries out the Orgasmatron on screen reports that it does nothing for her except make her leg twitch) or have dangerous potential side effects, including genital mutilation, depression, insomnia and even cancer.
Ever since Viagra for men launched in 1998 and became one of the biggest-selling drugs in history - it made $1.9billion for its makers, Pfizer, in 2008 alone - the race to develop a similar treatment for women was inevitable.
'Viagra brought sexual dysfunction into the open - and not just for men,' says Alan Riley, a professor of sexual medicine and one of the UK's leading authorities on the subject.
'Doctors noticed that women were asking if they could try Viagra too - or something like it. For the first time, female sexual dysfunction was being taken seriously.'
And there is no doubt that lifting the taboo around female desire helped a lot of women, especially those who do have specific physical problems, for example following menopause or hysterectomy.
For Monica from London, who's now 58, the arrival of a pill for men was a turning point in making her realise just how little there was to help women.
'I was going through the menopause, and while my doctor was sympathetic about hot flushes and mood swings, when I tried to talk about sex he just brushed me off. It was as if I should just accept that my sex life was over.'
A year later, however, sex was one of the first things a new GP asked about.
She says: 'I sat in the surgery and cried. Sex was painful and I rarely wanted to do it at all. Sexual intimacy had always been a special part of our marriage, and I missed it terribly. He prescribed HRT and that really helped. I felt like a new woman afterwards.'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1246342/The-hunt-female-Viagra-Drug-giants-ploughing-millions-search-boost-womens-sex-lives--work-really-need-it.html#ixzz0dx3gkKsh
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