this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Mildly Infuriating

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Posted here because there is no community for Absolutely Infuriating (that I know of).

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not The Onion is probably the closest because of how ridiculous this is.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Much appreciated!

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (12 children)

When I read that news I was shocked too.

How possibly nobody tested with even animal blood?

Water and blood have different consistency and fluidity

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago

Have they just been using that stupid blue water from the commercials this whole time?!

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

20% of my infuriation came from this terribly (I repeat, terribly) written title.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I imagine that its extremely hard to get the mass quantities of blood you need for actual testing.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 Blood stocks are precious but they do go out of date and blood banks would jump at the chance to do something useful with the wastage.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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

It is a biohazard, but that’s not a good reason not to use it, just use appropriate ppe and disposal

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

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...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

We’ve got enough to make sausages with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I don't think that would be an appropriate test either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

And bacon too

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Still cheaper than printer ink

zing

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yes, menstrual fluid includes tissue. It's not just simple blood.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Both deserve better research.

Agreed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But how on earth would you get period blood?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you're using human blood, yes. Plenty of pig and cow blood out there, though.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Steel girders, pizza and bath mats are all identical to human blood at the sub atomic level. Best to compare at the molecular level

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Or extraterrestrial blood aka slightly more acidic Mountain Dew Citrus Blast

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

They use it to test washing machines!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

It's been a while since I was actually surprised by a post. There you have it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

what the fuck??

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Testing is important. Next it should be done with adhesive bandage.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Sexism do be like that

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's bleedin disgustin ainit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did anyone have access to the original publication and can tell me, if they explain how they determined it being the first study and what other liquids have been used before in studies? The Guardian article only says "Manufacturers have traditionally used saline or water", but that does not tell you much, as these are not scientists with independent studies and manufacturers usually do not publish their full internal testing methods.

I only have access to its abstract and curiously it does not mention it being the first published study with actual blood, so the authors themselves did not find it very noteworthy.

I can easily imagine, that a published, standardized, reproducible (model) menstrual fluid for such an analysis does not exist yet, but I am not that involved in medical publishing. If this is the case, that would be really infuriating. It might exist as some vendors sell artificial menstrual fluid.

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