- LONDON (Reuters) - Wanted:
women to test new orgasm machine.
-
- No, really. An American surgeon who has patented a device
that triggers an orgasm has begun a clinical trial approved by the Food
and Drug Administration in the United States and is looking for female
volunteers.
-
- "I thought people would be beating my door down
to become part of the trial," pain specialist Dr Stuart Meloy told
New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.
-
- But so far only one woman has completed the first stage
of the trial, with apparently breathtaking results, and a second has agreed
to take part.
-
- Meloy, of Piedmont Anesthesia and Pain Consultants in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is hoping to find eight more volunteers
willing to have electrodes inserted in their spine and be connected to
a pacemaker-size machine implanted under the skin to heighten their sexual
pleasure.
-
- The married woman who tested the machine, dubbed an orgasmatron,
had not had an orgasm for four years. But during the nine days she used
it, she had several.
-
- "She even told me she had the first multiple orgasm
of her life using the device," said Meloy.
-
- He stumbled on the unexpected side-effect while using
a spinal cord stimulator a few years ago to treat a patient suffering with
severe back pain. The woman had already had back surgery for degenerative
disk disease and fusion surgery.
-
- When Meloy placed the electrodes into a specific spot
on her spine to find nerve bundles carrying pain signals to the brain,
she moaned with delight.
-
- "You're going to have to teach my husband how to
do that," he quoted her as saying.
-
- The tiny impulses of electricity applied to the electrodes
seemed to have turned on the patient's orgasm button.
-
- Although the device has been compared to the orgasmatron
featured in the 1973 Woody Allen film "Sleeper," Meloy envisions
patients using it temporarily to retrain their sexual response.
-
- The women in the trial described it as "really excellent
foreplay."
-
- Although some medical experts are skeptical about the
procedure and say a vibrator can produce the same results, Meloy believes
it could help to improve sexual response in women who cannot have orgasms
and might even help men as well.
-
- A full implant of the device would cost about 13,000
pounds ($22,000).
-
- "I don't see it any differently from procedures
such as breast implants," Meloy told the magazine.
-
-
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