First (I repeat, first) test of menstrual products using actual blood published last week (I repeat, last week)
First (I repeat, first) test of menstrual products using actual blood published last week (I repeat, last week)
After all these years I’m rarely surprised by medical misogyny, but finding out that the research from the first ever tests on period products using blood instead of water were published LAST WEEK is one of those surprises.
Archive link to story here: https://archive.ph/HVNLH
Posted here because there is no community for Absolutely Infuriating (that I know of).
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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 Blood stocks are precious but they do go out of date and blood banks would jump at the chance to do something useful with the wastage.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.
It is a biohazard, but that’s not a good reason not to use it, just use appropriate ppe and disposal
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.
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...
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.
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
If you're using human blood, yes. Plenty of pig and cow blood out there, though.
They use it to test washing machines!
And I'm not sure about the cow stuff, but pig blood is almost completely identical to human blood down to the molecular level, so shouldn't present many if any aberrations when compared to real life intended use!
Steel girders, pizza and bath mats are all identical to human blood at the sub atomic level. Best to compare at the molecular level
Good point! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna fix my comment and then resume my steel girder and bath mats breakfast! Dennys have gotten WEIRD with their grand slam combos lately!
Mammal blood is all pretty much the same for something like this. Terrestrial mammals anyway, I don't want to guess at the limits of adaptation for things like whales.
Or extraterrestrial blood aka slightly more acidic Mountain Dew Citrus Blast