Archive link to story here: https://archive.ph/HVNLH
Posted here because there is no community for Absolutely Infuriating (that I know of).
Not The Onion is probably the closest because of how ridiculous this is.
Good call. Would anyone like to crosspost it? I don’t want to spam the same link myself (because I dislike it when others do).
Much appreciated!
Have they just been using that stupid blue water from the commercials this whole time?!
20% of my infuriation came from this terribly (I repeat, terribly) written title.
I imagine that its extremely hard to get the mass quantities of blood you need for actual testing.
Maybe, maybe not. Blood stocks are precious but they do go out of date and blood banks would jump at the chance to do something useful with the wastage. It would also be perfectly possible to do RCTs with actual women. At the very least, it would be possible to produce a liquid with the right sort of viscosity instead of using water or saline. It’s just so ridiculously shit.
It sounds like nobody actually wanted to test with actual blood - not that there were technical or logistical difficulties, because if this was any other industrial problem, solutions would have been found the second time the problem showed up.
I don’t understand what the concerns against using real blood were. Was it expensive? Government regulated? It could have atleast had animals blood testing or something, or are we suddenly balking at all the butchering in the food industries now too?
I don’t agree with testing with real women though. That’s pretty much the same as saying skincare should be tested on real people, right? It should be TESTED elsewhere, and USED by women.
My take is blood is a biohazard unless it’s quality is regulated, and therefore it’s a biohazard unless it’s expensive. I’ll go read the article in a bit maybe I’m wrong.
Anecdotally, when I was a child and an ad for maxi pads came on TV showing that blue liquid, I had to listen to my father bitch about how there shouldn’t be ads for menstrual products because they’re “disgusting.” And he shouldn’t “have to think of that.”
…so it’s anecdotal only but I may have a theory about why…
Every drug you take is tested on real people. They are asked to give informed consent, of course. But we don’t just decide that something looks like it might work and start prescribing it. Testing period products is a trivial ask compared to something like chemotherapy. Bless every single person who consents to participate, we’d be fucked without them.
We’ve got enough to make sausages with it.
I don’t think that would be an appropriate test either.
And bacon too
Get out.
Have you never heard of black pudding or bludwurst?
I have - but in this context the comparison made me think of sausages composed of period blood, which caused a physical reaction that prompted my response.
I meant it as a joke, but the down voters clearly didn’t find it funny. Ah well.
I’m still not satisfied because menstrual blood is much chunkier than a donated pint from your arm. Until they’re using mucus blood we’re still in the dark ages.
Absolutely. Menstrual blood is its own beast altogether. I often found that the mucus heavy days was a real blocker to actual absorbsion and often there would be a still dry but slimy tampon removed at some points.
It’s posts like these that give me sympathy for my wife and all the other women out there, reminds me to hold the door open from a little further away than I normally would.
Yes, menstrual fluid includes tissue. It’s not just simple blood.
Eh - it depends on the test.
Laboratory tests for pure absorbency makes sense for blood volume.
Functional absorbency is always going to be so much more nuanced as each woman has multiple factors in play. You’re better off calibrating pure absorbency first, then carrying those results forward to study and understand functional usage.
I guess it depends on your goal: better tampons or better healthcare. Is the problem that you can’t switch brands and have any expectation of similar absorbency? Or is the problem that your doctor asks “how many tampons do you use in a day?” and thinks it will tell him whether you really have a heavy flow, because he doesn’t believe you and doesn’t really understand how periods work? Both are real problems. Both deserve better research.
Both deserve better research.
Agreed.
But how on earth would you get period blood?
Iirc, weren’t lots of women going to send their used pads and tampons to that GOP politician something something monitor schedule to detect abortions…?
I’m post-menopause and post-hysterectomy myself so I didn’t pay complete attention, just sort of cheered them on.
Anyway you could start by doing a study based on recording the real-life experiences of a large pool of women who self-identify as having “normal” periods. To set a baseline at least, by which to judge “heavy” bleeding.
Or a smaller pool who are willing to alternate cup and tampons to better measure capacity. I think pouring from cup to tampon would be inaccurate because pressure from the vaginal wall affects tampon capacity.
Still cheaper than printer ink
zing
It’s been a while since I was actually surprised by a post. There you have it.
Testing is important. Next it should be done with adhesive bandage.
I mean there’s probably a fuck ton of additional work that would need to be done to test with real blood. Like just the paperwork and health and safety stuff would make it not worth while. Then there’s sourcing it, the ethics, the potential of protest from anti-animal testing groups etc.
4 billion people, affected 5 days a month, for 40 years.
Nah, you’re right - not worth the paperwork.
I mean, the ridiculousness of the disparity is highlighted in the article: we have a standardised measure for hot sauce, but not menstrual product absorbency.
My wife is pregnant. In her last month now. The discomfort and sacrifices woman go through… I’ve been joking that if it were men being the ones going through pregnancy, we would’ve perfected incubating the fetus in a machine or something decades ago. Also, 12 months of paid paternity leave, at the minimum. I’m not sure I’m joking…
They’re billion dollar products, they absolutely could be made to test them if anyone cared enough to make them produce accurate labelling. If we can do it with food, we can do it with sanitary products. The NHS could do it, if it wanted to. It does plenty of independent trials to check up on how badly Pharma is lying to them this time.
Yeah, of course they could but im just saying there are reasons why they don’t
Obviously. Equally obviously, the reason is profit. Tasty boots?
what the fuck??
That’s bleedin disgustin ainit.
