Viagra turns 10 today, and didn't time just fly? It seems like only yesterday we started guffawing at the Symbolism for Dummies ads on TV for the little blue pill and its "erectile dysfunction" rivals -- footballs tossed through tires, faucets erupting. The spots ended with a list of potential side effects that sounded like a satire of potential side effects. "More than four hours?" we winced. "Ouch."

However discomfiting the commercials, the Food and Drug Administration's approval of Viagra -- on March 27, 1998 -- is a landmark day in the history of sex. It seemed at the time like a biomedical revolution was upon us all, and about five minutes after word of the magical med went global, the question first was asked: Where is the women's version of Viagra?

The short answer: They're still working on it. Many companies have tried and failed to create "pink Viagra," as it's often called. Other companies have drugs in late stages of clinical testing, including a gel that recently began a make-or-break nationwide study with several thousand women. Give us five years, maybe less, say the most optimistic researchers and doctors. Though it's unclear exactly how many women would ask for a prescription, no one doubts that the first company that gets to market a remedy for female sexual dysfunction (FSD), as it's formally known, will earn a fortune.

But as this race reaches what could be its final lap, not all of the spectators are cheering. Some, in fact, are booing as loudly as they can.

A modest-size but fervent group of psychologists, academics and public health advocates contend that FSD isn't an authentic medical condition, or at least not the sort of problem that should be treated with drugs. These aren't the obtuse male physicians who for decades have been telling women distressed by their lack of libido that "it's all in your head." The anti-FSD crowd is mostly women, many of them self-described feminists. The most prominent is Leonore Tiefer, a psychotherapist and clinical associate professor at New York University, who has long decried what she calls "the medicalization of women's sexuality."

"Drug companies want to say to women, 'You don't need to know anything; you can have the satisfying sex life that you seek -- people dancing on TV, the whole bit -- without knowing anything. Just ask your doctor,'" she says. "I resent that, because there are specific harms that come from being ignorant and dependent in the world we live in. There may be lots of people who aren't interested in sex, but is there a medical reason for that, and do we diagnose that?"

Tiefer's critique centers, in part, on the way that pink Viagra is sure to be marketed -- with ads day and night, suggesting that women who aren't feeling frisky have a medical problem. She and her allies -- organized as the New View Campaign -- are also galled that so much money and media attention are heaped on the lust drug, even before it exists, when for many women the solution to their libido problems isn't that exotic. Maybe they have a partner who hasn't a clue about technique. Maybe they're stressed out. Maybe they can't possibly get in the mood because they're so busy raising children. Therapy, counseling, even free day care, says the New View Campaign, might do more for women's sex lives than any drug company ever could.

"People walk out of their doctors' offices with a prescription in hand 85 percent of the time," says Meika Loe, the author of "The Rise of Viagra" and a New View endorser. "But health insurers won't pay if you want to talk to a counselor or if you need advice about how to communicate your sexual desires. We've got a health-care system that is almost entirely focused on medical solutions."

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