Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Thomas Beckett <thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

For some reason, this was picked up by overseas news organizations and 
not on the U.S. news wires.  But anyhow, it's right in our backyard.

<http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=healthNews&storyID=3897324&section=news>

Women Needed to Test Orgasm Machine
Wed 26 November, 2003 19:03

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.