Doctor Stumbles Onto Orgasm Machine

Wednesday November 26, 2003

Women Needed to Test Orgasm Machine

LONDON (Reuter) - 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.

Wednesday February 7, 2001 3:26 PM ET
Doctor Stumbles Onto Orgasm Machine

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuter) - All he was trying to do was ease her chronic back pain, but when Dr. Stuart Meloy placed an electrode into one patient's back, she groaned.

Not in pain, but in delight.

"This is a direct quote -- she said, 'You're going to have to teach my husband how to do that','' Meloy, an anesthesiologist and pain specialist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said in a telephone interview.

Meloy had stumbled onto an unexpected side-effect of the pain device he was using -- an ability to cause orgasm.

He has just patented this unexpected use of the device, a spinal cord stimulator made by device company Medtronic. Now he is trying to talk Minneapolis-based Medtronic into marketing the device for this use.

It all started with a relatively routine operation for Meloy, who was trying to help a patient with severe and untreatable back pain.

"She had had a number of back surgeries for degenerative disk disease and fusion surgery,'' Meloy said.

He was testing out Medtronic's spinal cord stimulator to see if it might work in her case. ``These people are either suffering a lot or there is certainly a place for narcotics to be used.''

The surgeon has to place an electrode very precisely in the patient's spine. The idea is to find the specific nerve bundle that is carrying his or her pain signals to the brain.

It requires some trial and error and sometimes, Meloy said, the surgeon hurts a patient, who will groan or cry out.

At first he thought this had happened with this patient.

She Made A "Different'' Sound

"But the sound that she made was a little bit different. I asked her what it was,'' he said. That was when she recommended he teach her husband the technique.

"The next day in the operating room, the nurses were all asking me how one gets that,'' Meloy deadpanned.

Meloy said he repositioned the electrode and was able to help the patient's pain. "We able to reduce her narcotics usage by about a half,'' he said.

He was not able to offer her a dual use of the pacemaker-sized device, which is implanted under the skin.

The device works not to block pain but to change the way the patient perceives it. "Instead of feeling pain, they feel what most people describe as a buzzing sensation in the affected area,'' Meloy said.

``It's not so much a distraction as a change in perception. You are altering what they feel.''

This seemed to work the same way in pushing the a patient's orgasm button. "Yes, she literally got a buzz,'' Meloy sighed. ''Yes, we turned her on. The puns can go on and on.''

But he hopes to turn this to a serious use.

"Once you get past the giggles and smirks, as far as orgasmic dysfunction goes, it a very real problem. People don't like to talk about it. But if we are going to utilize a device like this, it would be to allow people to have more of a normal life than some sort of supernormal life.''

In other words, no "Orgasmatron'' as featured in the 1973 Woody Allen movie "Sleeper.''

Meloy hopes he could develop the device for temporary use, to retrain a patient's sexual response. "You could just get them back in the groove or whatever.'' Then the device could be used outside the body via a catheter.

But Meloy stressed it was no toy.

"Even for pain management patients we certainly exhaust all other possibilities before we start utilizing this type of technique,'' he said.

Will it work on all kinds of people, men as well as women? ''I observed it twice,'' Meloy said. "Is it reproducible? I sure hope so.''