Archive link to story here: https://archive.ph/HVNLH

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

    • JoBo@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      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).

  • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    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

    • TheWheelMustGoOn@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Why kill animals? It’s not like menstrual products don’t work. just keep buying the stuff that works more than others if the little difference between the testing fluids and blood are really existent.

      And it’s not like the products would be better with blood testing. That’s not how capitalism works. It needs to work good enough to be bought with the biggest profit margin possible. So using blood for testing just creates suffering for animals for no reason other than you can put “tested with animal blood” on the box. I wouldn’t see that as a plus

      • Moonrise2473@feddit.it
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        1 year ago

        Who said to kill animals just for this purpose? That would be irresponsible and incredibly asshole

        The industry is already dumping too much animal blood as a waste, just take a small drop from something that otherwise goes in wastewater anyway

        • TheWheelMustGoOn@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          We need to stop using animals. Not extend it. I mean I really don’t get what’s so hard about testing if a product works on humans in the real scenario.

          • Risk@feddit.uk
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            1 year ago

            Because testing things in laboratories for healthcare requires stringent and rigorous controls. It’s a lot easier to standardise animal blood than human blood, and as the comment above highlighted - animal blood is already a waste product, whereas human blood is highly valuable for directly saving lives.

            Arguing for less animal usage is a nobler cause, but this is not the fight to pick for it.

      • Sneezycat@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        We already kill thousands of animals a day, would it be so hard to save some blood instead of throwing it away?

        I think the bigger problem is it may be unsanitary/a biohazard.

      • gowan@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        Also it is a much more expensive way of testing. Water isn’t expensive and doesn’t require special disposal.

        • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Water is comparable to blood in very very few ways. Outside of cleaning purposes I don’t want water where my blood is.

          Also menstrual fluid isn’t water.

          I want you to taste test this hamburger for me, you’re going to eat it 3 times a day 60 days a year, and you’re eating the beta version, which is actually a slice of pizza. Enjoy your hamburgers!

          • gowan@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            You don’t need blood to determine the absorbency of the products. We do in fact have a very clear idea how much more viscous blood is compared to water and adjust for that.

            The people who are complaining about this I suspect have very little experience lab sciences.

            • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’m sitting between my hplc and gcms, if you think pH and acidity (both carefully controlled for by the body) have nothing to do with absorption you might have very little experience with lab sciences.

              It’s about much more than viscosity, it’s about evaporation rate, chemical balance, and yes some absorbency. I would say just using generic human blood isn’t enough, the chemistry within the vagina is self regulated like no other part of the human body, it’s kinda the key organ to life’s continuance.

              • gowan@reddthat.com
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                1 year ago

                As the only real goal of tampons and pads is to absorb the discharged fluids and prevent their transfer to clothes and skin. Unless there is a rampant problem of menstrual products not working I fail to see how this is a problem.

                If you actually work in a lab you should know how much more expensive using biohazards to test would be.

                • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  Yes I actually work in a lab, recycling/waste disposal is something we work into our budget. You think they aren’t funded well enough to afford those expenses?

                  Question my credentials again, please, it amuses me.

  • Iceblade@lemdit.com
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    1 year ago

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

  • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

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

    • JoBo@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Tangent5280@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • bane_killgrind@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • idiomaddict@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

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

        • JoBo@feddit.ukOP
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          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.

        • flicker@kbin.social
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          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…

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Urbanfox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • Risk@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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          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.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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!

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

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            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!

        • Soggy@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

  • A_A@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

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

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Risk@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Devion@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        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…

    • JoBo@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, of course they could but im just saying there are reasons why they don’t

        • JoBo@feddit.ukOP
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          1 year ago

          Obviously. Equally obviously, the reason is profit. Tasty boots?

  • DaveDavesen@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • JoBo@feddit.ukOP
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      1 year ago

      Red blood cell capacity of modern menstrual products: considerations for assessing heavy menstrual bleeding

      No study exists comparing the capacity of currently available menstrual hygiene products using blood.

      They don’t have to explain how they know. Literature searches are standard, and done before doing research like this. Funders want to know if they’re wasting their money on a question that has already been answered, and whether the proposed methods are appropriate given what has been done, and learnt, before.

      That’s not to say that all literature searches are perfect. You can check on PubPeer for any howls of anguish from unacknowledged researchers. But the only legal requirement for testing is tampons due to toxic shock syndrome and its relationship to absorbency. It’s really unlikely that manufacturers are doing the tests without being forced to and, if they have done any, really unlikely they would fail to publish their results if they liked the results. If they are suppressing unwelcome results, the research might as well not exist.