Treating the torment of obsessive romantic love isn’t the only love therapy in the offing; for people at the opposite end of the spectrum, with low libido, a treatment has emerged, as well. In August last year, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved a libido-boosting drug called Addyi, or flibanserin, that is said to increase women’s desire for sex.

Although it promises only modest benefits – and even those promises have been disputed – its existence raises serious questions for those, like me, who are asexual, or whose sexual orientation is that they do not experience sexual attraction to any gender. An improved flibanserin could be seen as an asexual equivalent of gay conversion therapy, says the Wake Forest University bioethicist Kristina Gupta, though she notes that prejudice against the asexual population has typically not been as strong as that against other members of the LGBT community.

The expansion of the love-drug market from merely treating obsession to managing all forms of difference requires an ethical discussion of much wider range. When it comes to homosexuality, for instance, the fight for acceptance has been long and difficult. The history of gay-conversion therapy, one of the abuses against this group, is horrific, and there is almost no evidence that it has ever been effective or caused anything but hardship and pain. But what if this biotechnology someday existed – if it were safe and effective? Should people have the option to use it to improve or just change their lives, even if that use hurt the community’s civil rights and set society back?