Archive link to story here: https://archive.ph/HVNLH
Posted here because there is no community for Absolutely Infuriating (that I know of).
20% of my infuriation came from this terribly (I repeat, terribly) written title.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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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water”, but that does not tell you much, as these are not scientists with independent studies and manufacturers usually do not publish their full internal testing methods.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.
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.
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.
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.
But how on earth would you get period 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.