COMING?: Stuart Meloy’s 15-year-old orgasm device is still awaiting market penetration.© CHRISTOPHER BERNARD
Viagra didn’t start out as a treatment for erectile dysfunction; it was originally developed to treat hypertension. In a similar twist of medical fate, Stuart Meloy, an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist now at the Advanced Interventional Pain Management clinic in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, stumbled on an unintended solution for female orgasmic disorder. Although he had designed an implantable device to alleviate back pain, when testing the equipment, he found that it helped some female patients achieve climax. That was 15 years ago, and he’s been trying to get his accidental orgasm machine to market ever since.
To help manage back pain, Meloy often implants electrodes in his patients’ spinal canals to electrically stimulate nerves and prevent pain signals from getting through. The patients have ...
