Word: tampons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...speed, progressing in a matter of hours from fever and dizziness to a strange, sunburn-like rash and a drop in blood pressure so severe that the victim might go into shock. For about 4% of patients, TSS proved fatal. Scientists quickly linked the disease to the use of tampons, particularly the "superabsorbent" variety, but the reasons for the tampon connection remained obscure. Last week a team of Harvard scientists finally offered an explanation...
...secret yearnings, humiliating flaws? What habits, fetishes, addictions, inclinations? What solitary acts, behavioral ruts? I found crayon drawings of a figure with full breasts and male genitals. There was a long piece of twine that contained a series of knots and loops. I found a banana skin with a tampon inside. Was this the dark underside of consumer consciousness...
...took turns raping her and stuffed snowflake-shaped earrings into her vagina. "My whole life flashed before me," she recalls. "I thought how I really wanted my mom to know I cared about her, and I concentrated on breathing. I was on my period and had a tampon embedded deep inside. I had to sit and talk to a policeman with dried semen all over my face...
When Procter & Gamble put its first tampon product into national distribution, the ads boasted, "It even absorbs the worry." But Rely tampons soon provoked frantic worry. In 1980 the federal Centers for Disease Control tied tampons to an outbreak of rare-sometimes fatal-toxic-shock syndrome. One study of a group of TSS sufferers found that 71% of them used Rely. Though the product had captured 20% of the market, the company recalled it. Then came the lawsuits-400 against Procter & Gamble, 100 or so against four other manufacturers. Last week plaintiffs and defendants in those cases were watching closely...
...figures strengthen but do not prove suspicions that Rely was the leading cause of TSS. Other tampon brands have also been implicated. The percentage of menstruating women using tampons exclusively has dropped from 70% to 55%. Although the apparent easing of the TSS threat is welcome news, puzzled scientists still do not know how the insertion of a mass of absorbent material could create an encouraging environment for mischievous microbes...