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The Gift That Keeps On Giving

The Birthday Present - 2000

There it was, on the screen, a 50th birthday present from my body. Growing inside. Quietly. Sneakily. Like some forgotten science experiment an 11 year old left in an uninvited corner of the garage. Little did I know, it would be just another chapter in my life after my Dalkon Shield.

Thirty-some years ago, we thought the Dalkon Shield was our protector. Those were the days. It was the end of the 60's – heady days for the pharmaceuticals. You'd think that after the Thalidomide scares they would've been more careful. But, their motto was, and still is, if there's a buck to be made, never look back. There were big bucks to be made off women's bodies and on our beliefs that we had the right to make it through college without getting pregnant.

Young women were in college in huge numbers – the world was our oyster. We were breaking barriers – the first woman to become president of this or that, the first women into the mines, into fire departments, the first woman jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby, Billie Jean King demanding that women in tennis be paid as much as the men. Patsy Takomoto Mink became the first Asian American woman in Congress, followed by Shirley Chisholm as the first African American woman in Congress. The Equal Pay Amendment had been passed and it was illegal to discriminate in hiring on the basis of race or sex for the first time in our history. In 1971, Gloria Steinem and others launched Ms. Magazine.

Women were everywhere they'd rarely been and we did not want to have babies until we were ready. Yet, we were trusting and naive in our own way. Even as we marched against our lying cheating genocidal government, we somehow trusted that the FDA was vigilantly protecting our health – like some beacon of pure light on oil stained beaches. Of course, it wasn't true.

First, there was The Pill. A godsend. The answer to our prayers. Little plastic circular cases that you set to your schedule and voila! you wouldn't get pregnant. Of course, they did not tell us we were guinea pigs – one of the world's largest science experiments ever – uncontrolled, no check-ups, no evaluation, no follow-up. Huge doses of serious hormones. Ten times more than they use today. And, of course, some women couldn't handle them; and if you couldn't, it was you. You were a wimp, a ninny. Gigundo headaches at the same time every day? Learn to deal with stress. Breasts feel that they are attached to your nerve endings with alligator clips? Perhaps you're drinking too much water. Rage that overtakes you, ready to fillet any human being within the sound of your voice? Perhaps you're not college material after all.

I remember my boyfriend, Jerry -- one of the sweetest men I've ever known – begging me to get off The Pill. "Please, we don't have to have sex," he would say. "You're a raving lunatic for four days. I'm afraid you're going to hurt someone." This from a man who became crabby and sullen if he didn't eat every 2 hours. But I knew he was right. If a demonstration against the war in Vietnam came right before my period, I was worried I might try to take out the cops. Something had to be done.

And oh, lucky me. The A.H. Robins Pharmaceutical Company had the answer to my prayers. One thing you have to remember about my generation, we were raised on the slogan, "Better Living Through Chemistry". If you went to the chiropractor, you hid it from your Doctor. Most of us weren't even breast-fed. Our mothers were knocked out to deliver us and then talked out of anything so barbaric and un-modern as breast-feeding. We were the children of condescending, paternalistic doctoring. Yet, as giddy as we were about challenging authority, we could barely keep up with everything that needed to be challenged.

As the decade was ending, there was all this talk about being "natural". It made sense. Back to the land. No harmful chemicals. Then in came the Intra-uterine Devices, IUD's. A chemical free way to not get pregnant. A.H. Robins made Robitussin. How could you not trust a company that made Robitussin?

I can still see the glossy advertisements. Time Magazine, Newsweek. In fact, they were in all the magazines that might be seen by any woman, any time, everywhere. According to them, IUD's worked on a principle that was thousands of years old – rocks in the vaginas of camels. It was natural. No harmful chemicals in your body. Again, we failed to notice that these claims were being made by huge corporations with millions to gain. It was our health after all. The FDA was guarding us, weren't they? We were targeted, like deer at the end of a scope. Many of us, hundreds of thousands of us, fell. And when we got sick – chills, fever, horrendous pain -- it wasn't your IUD, it was you.

It was 1971, 3 days before I turned 21. In doctor lingo, I was a "nullipara", never been pregnant. Wasn't that the point? And so they gave me a Dalkon Shield, small size, a nullip. I was relieved. No more messing with my hormones, it was natural technology. A little plastic bug with little plastic legs.

It felt horrible as the little bug was jammed up through my cervix and into my uterus. My body was not happy. I was shaky and had this horrible pain in my gut. The protocol was to have you lie there for 15 minutes and if you felt okay, give you vitamin C and send you home. Vitamin C – like getting a band-aid in case you cut your arm off.

It hit me on the way home, driving. Like a gigantic cramp, only different. Gut wrenching. I doubled over against the steering wheel. I had about a mile to go, over the Mississippi to Dinkytown, near the University of Minnesota. Please let me make it. The next 6 hours are a blur. Somehow, I got to the house and in the door. I remember the violent contractions as my uterus tried to push the IUD out. They would come fast and close together for a while and then stop. Pain pills, I've got to have some pain pills. But no one was home. My roommates were all at school. There were no cell phones.

I hadn't told anyone what I was doing, it didn't seem like a big deal. When I made the appointment, no one suggested I bring a friend, they sent me home with Vitamin C. How bad could it be? It must just be me, having a weird reaction.

In my pain induced fog I remember thinking, they said I might have some cramping, but it will go away. I lay on a mattress on the floor in our little stereo room by the stairs. Writhing. Delirious. The reverse contractions came steady at times, one after the other – then they would feel like rapid fire. I was delirious, sweating, then chills.

At times the pain would stop for a minute and I would snap out of it – make a few phone calls, trying desperately to find someone who was home, who might have a pain pill. No Luck. No one had answering machines in those days, so I would have to call back in my more lucid moments. And then the cramping would ratchet up.

Maybe it was like having a baby in reverse, I thought, as my uterus tried to push out the invader. In and out of consciousness, I remember thinking, you'll probably have some cramping, here's some Vitamin C, over and over and over, almost like a mantra. And still, no one came home.

The hours went by and somehow I just lay there, waiting for it to stop. I got through 2 hours, 3 hours, 4, 5, 6. The cramping contractions were becoming fewer, they were farther apart, they weren't so violent. My uterus was giving up, accepting the spiked invader. That was good, I thought, good.

But I was wrong.

The Evil Doctor

For the next three months, I didn't even think about the little interloper in my body . Protests against the war were heating up. At Christmas time, 15 Vietnam Vets against the War occupied the Statue of Liberty for 2 days. 1972 was an election year and we were all hopeful. Joan Baez and Noam Chomsky and thousands of others were refusing to pay their income taxes and the excise taxes on their phone bills. "1, 2, 3 4", we would chant, "we don't want your f***ing war". And, "Make love, not war!"

It was my last year of college. I could have finished up early, but I'd missed some requirement I was going to have to take spring quarter. I was working, I was protesting. I was making love and not war. And I was not getting pregnant. So far so good.

Around the end of February I started feeling really lousy. I had this spasm right under where my ribcage came together. Every time I ate, it hurt. That was easy, don't eat. Mid-quarters were happening anyway and I was cramming.

Not eating was getting to be a bummer. I was really hungry. If someone bumped me, I'd scream. My stomach was so tender, I could barely pull my pants up. I went to the student health center and the gastro doc said he thought it might be an ulcer. You know, college can be very stressful. I'd lost 12 pounds I didn't need to lose in 3 weeks and that made sense to me. I took his drugs and went home.

That night there was a party and the combination of the tummie drugs and alcohol put me into a daze. I had a dream about an alien life form that had invaded my body and was taking me over. Too much Star Trek I thought.

The next day I could barely walk. I called my mom. Drastic. I knew she'd freak when she saw me. Can you bring me over to the student health center? I'm sick and I just don't think I can walk the six blocks. I saw the look on her face when she picked me up. Later she told me she thought I was dying, but, wonderful woman that she is, she didn't say anything. Bent over, I hobbled in to see the doctor again.

He was perplexed. Maybe I'll have the gynecologist look at you, he said. Sure. I was in no mood to argue. Dr. Diefenbach was the resident abusive gyno, but I didn't know that. He ushered me into his office and shut the door. There were no nurses in the rooms in those days, which was a real bonus for him. In the middle of this huge office was an examination table. Weird I thought. He threw me a gown. Take all your clothes off and put this on. I looked around. Nowhere to change. He was sitting at his desk. I was in such pain that I couldn't think straight. I took my clothes off and put on the gown. Hop up on the table. I did. Feet in the stirrups, one of my favorites. He put in the speculum and said, "disgusting". Then he took out the speculum and shoved his hand inside me as hard as he could. As I screamed, he said in a vicious, evil voice, "Does that hurt? You probably have gonorrhea."

My head started to swim. Where the heck could I have gotten that? It wasn't like I was a prude, but I was picky.

He gave me a ton of antibiotics and told me to call "all my boyfriends". Nice guy. You have to remember, these were the days before anybody talked much about abuse. Doctors were gods. I remember when I first tried to get The Pill and this woman doctor lectured me for 40 minutes about not being married, and then refused to give it to me. Humiliation was a key strategy for docs in those days.

I was so sick I could barely walk. I looked like one of the burn-out panhandlers who haunted the streets of Dinkytown near the U. I took my sick self back to the house and collapsed. I thought about what a jerk Diefenbach was – and isn't that a potted plant?

Gonorrhea. Good grief. I called my boyfriend. He was dismissive. You don't have gonorrhea. I don't have gonorrhea, so you can't. His logic was impeccable, but what was it? It would be many months before I found out.

The antibiotics did their magic. My stomach would still spasm at times, but I could touch my gut without screaming. That was nice. The last time I went to see Dr. Potted Plant was the bomb. I was standing near his table, which, since I was better now, I noticed was not just set up in the middle of the room, it was on a platform, like some kind of shrine.

He came up behind me and pressed me up against him. He put his hands on my stomach and pulled me backwards towards him. But I was feeling better now. "What are you doing?" I said, and pulled away from him. "Just checking to see how your abdomen is." I wanted to smack him. What kind of creepy dude was he anyway? I went over to the chair by his desk and sat down.

A year later I heard that a nurse had gone in to see Dr. Potted Plant and he had asked her to bend over and shake her breasts as part of an exam. She was a nurse, not some naive college student. She reported him and it came out that the health service had been receiving complaints about him for years. But that's another story. In those days, docs had carte blanche.

Anyway, Dr. D told me that it turned out I didn't have gonorrhea. So what was it? "PID," he said, "pelvic inflammatory disease." I had no idea what that was, but I would soon become an expert.

Antibiotics Are My Friend

Spring came in, as it always does in Minnesota, with a bang. All of a sudden there were flowers and green grass. People in shorts the minute it got above 35 degrees. Ah Minnesota, no weather wimps here.

At the end of March, the Nixon government staged a boycott of the Paris peace talks. We were livid. He'd just pulled the 101st airborne out of Vietnam and then he pulls this stupid stunt. The war was heating up. In mid-April, Nixon bombed Hanoi and Haiphong harbor. We went nuts. There were protests everywhere.

I was still weak and hadn't put my weight back on, but I felt good enough to go to the protests on campus where at least 3,000 of us blocked the streets and marched on the armory. The right-wing mayor of Minneapolis sent out his Tactical Squad who we'd done battle with before. People were hurt and arrested and the actions went on for days. Of course the paper said there were only 6 of us protesting, but don't get me started on that.

Spasms became a fact of life. Get one, don't eat. It'll go away. Who knows what it is. Maybe it's your duodenum. Maybe you're just stressed. I went to a counselor I knew at the U and talked to him. "I'm just feeling so tired and maybe I'm depressed?" "No," he said, "you're not depressed, you're sick. Go back and see the doctor." It took me a couple days, but I was glad I did, since it turned out the PID was back.

What was this PID? Pelvic inflammatory disease is a catch-all for an infection in the peritoneal cavity – the abdomen. What causes it? All sorts of things. Bugs. Venereal disease. Sex with someone with bugs. It's an infection that starts in the vagina and moves into the uterus and other places where it shouldn't go. Fine. I had an infection. More antibiotics. Which also killed all the flora and fauna in my stomach and intestines. Maybe that's enough information, but let's just say, it wasn't pleasant.

I was finishing up the one class I needed, but I also had 3 incompletes from when we shut down the University and took over part of Dinkytown to protest a development project that would take away the flavor of our little community.

I was working full time. And protesting as much as I could. It was urgent. Our friends were being drafted. Country Joe and the Fish were singing:

And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, the next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates.
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die.

It had been a long haul. We were sure that the protests were having an effect. It had become almost a mainstream position to be against the war. We were sure that if we just kept marching and chanting and singing, it would end.

I was dragging myself to class and to my job. Sleeping more than I ever had. What was wrong with me? Must just be protesting and partying too much. Maybe working too hard.
In June, the South Vietnamese accidentally dropped napalm on a bunch of civilians and a haunting picture of a little naked girl with her body on fire hit the TV screens and newspapers. We were raw. It was too much. Nixon had to go and we had to do everything in our power to make it happen.

My energy had come back, but then I started to have pain again, and fatigue. Back to the health service. Another round of antibiotics. Another two weeks of wacked out bowels and non-stop spasms. But we had a lot to do.

In June, five burglars were arrested in the Watergate in Washington, trying to plant bugs in the Democratic Headquarters. No one could figure out who they were.

I was done with school. It was an anti-climax. I couldn't graduate until I finished those incompletes, but I didn't have the energy. I was working full time. There was protesting to be done. We had to party to keep our spirits up. And once again, the damn infection was coming back. Why wouldn't it go away? Try a different antibiotic.

The Good Doctor

1972 continues on. The election is heating up. Nixon is in a rage and on a roll. We didn't know the half of what he was doing. George McGovern is the Democratic candidate for president and he calls for "an immediate and complete withdrawal" from Vietnam. We're stoked. How can we lose?

In August, the last ground troops are pulled out of Vietnam. I'm hoping that my two cousins come home alive. The body bags returning home have slowed down. All the draft eligible guys are relieved. Their moms and dads and girlfriends are relieved.

But it's not over. Kissinger is trying to end the war before the election in November, so the US Air Force is bombing the daylights out of the country while he tries to talk the Vietnamese into a peace plan.

Almost 200,000 North and South Vietnamese are killed in a short time. The protests continue and McGovern keeps campaigning. But it's a losing cause.

A week before the election, Kissinger makes an announcement: "We believe peace is at hand. We believe an agreement is in sight." Nixon is a hero and is re-elected in a landslide. It will be another two and a half years before the war is actually over.

I'm at my wit's end. The infection is back. Any pressure on my stomach causes me unbearable pain. I'm frantic. I don't know what to do. I'm working at the U and that's where I get my health care. My mom offers to send me to a doctor she's heard about from the McCormick's, our next door neighbors. One of the girls had a lot of problems and this doc saved part of one ovary so she could have twins, then took it out. He's a mensch. Ernie Goodman.

I go. Dr. Goodman is a very nice older Jewish man. Familiar. He's sitting at his desk asking me questions. I tell him the gory details. First I had the infection in February, then the antibiotics, then another infection, on and on. He listens intently until I finish. "So", he says, "when did they take out your Dalkon Shield?" I'm puzzled. "They didn't." "What?" he roars. He jumps out from behind his desk and runs over to me and drags me out of my chair. "Nurse," he bellows, "get this young lady a gown." Within 10 minutes I have the invader yanked out through my cervix and I'm back sitting in his office. "Well," he says gently, "one more round of antibiotics and you should be okay. But I have to tell you that I can't promise you you'll ever have children. Too much infection for too long." I'm stunned. I didn't want to get pregnant yet, but I wasn't planning on making it permanent.

Dr. Goodman goes on to tell me that the Dalkon Shield is a menace. It shouldn't even be on the market. He's seen so many infections in young women he's furious. And the stupid drug companies are saying that the IUD's have nothing to do with infection, so leave them in. How can doctors believe them? You can't leave an IUD in when someone has an infection. He's sputtering now. He's really mad.

I take the antibiotics and am finally cured. Except for the spasm. At least once a month it arrives dressed to kill. The only thing that will touch it is codeine. And then I can't eat. Or think straight. A little reminder of my Dalkon Shield, the gift that keeps on giving.

The Truth Comes Out

Over the next couple years I start to read stories about how some doctors are saying the Dalkon Shield is a health hazard. There are reports of how hundreds of women have been showing up with raging infections, many of them ending up with hysterectomies.

A.H. Robins denies that the Dalkon Shield is a problem. It's the doctors. They didn't put it in right. It's the women. They're sexually active, what do they expect? It's the bugs they get from men and spread around with their promiscuous habits. It's the bugs' fault.

As I read more about it, I learn that all of the IUD's have problems, but it's the string on the Dalkon Shield that makes it the worst. The string is attached to the Shield and hangs down through the cervix into the vagina. I remember how I'd been told to check for the string to make sure the Shield was still in place.

Instead of being solid, like the other IUD's strings, this string is made up of hundreds of nylon filaments and then covered with a thin nylon sheath. They didn't seal the end. The sheath deteriorated as time went on. What was happening was that bacteria from our vaginas was climbing up the string – laddering, they called it – inside the nylon sheath, up through our cervixes and getting into our uteruses, which are supposed to be sterile. How could they not have known?

It was a nightmare. Then information came out about one of the inventors of the Dalkon Shield, Hugh Davis, who also did the so-called independent research. Davis' research was crappy, it didn't follow the women long enough to know what had happened to them. And surprise, he had a huge financial interest in getting it approved. A.H. Robins bought the rights to the Shield and marketed it like gangbusters. They cornered the market on IUD's.

Early on, Irwin Lerner, the other inventor, had written a memo about about a possible problem with the string wicking bacteria up into the uterus. Robins squelched his report and the employees who wanted to make it public.

A.H. Robins had desk drawers full of letters from concerned doctors that they ignored. Women were having spontaneous miscarriages from infections and raging PID. What was going on, they wanted to know? The Robins' people wrote back and said, don't worry about the Shield, it's not related.

It wasn't me. It wasn't stress. It wasn't my inferior immune system. It wasn't a bug from my boyfriend. It was a gift from A.H. Robins' Dalkon Shield, the gift that truly keeps on giving.

I wasn't the only one. It was nice to know, in a sick sort of way. At first I felt vindicated and then angry. I was glad that Hugh Davis was on the East Coast and not in town – I'm not sure I could have controlled myself.

In 1974, the FDA made Robins pull the Dalkon Shield off the market in the US. The bastards continued to sell it overseas for years afterwards.

Women sued A.H. Robins, and as they did, more and more information came out. There were women in third world countries who died because they couldn't get antibiotics to cure their infections. There were hundreds of us, maybe thousands, who wouldn't be having any kids.

By 1975, there were already hundreds of lawsuits against Robins and the number was growing. There were trials in Wichita, in Seattle.

A.H. Robins' trial strategy was, first, to denigrate the women. Basically, it was the slut strategy. You want to sue us? Answer our questions. How many men have you slept with? Did you have anal sex? How many times? Oral? With who? Which way do you wipe?

Robins settled many of the suits for peanuts because women didn't think they could stand seeing their sex lives in the newspapers.

The first trial in Minnesota wasn't until 1981 and it took over three months to try. I worked on the case with the lawyers and it only made me madder. My personal hero, Dr. Ernie Goodman, was a witness against A.H. Robins. Brenda Strempke, from a small town in northern Minnesota, won her case and got punitive damages from Robins. I interviewed the jury. They were disgusted at Robins' behavior.

A bunch of cases were brought to Federal Judge Miles Lord, who was already famous for his rulings in other cases. He ordered Robins' executives to give new depositions and cough up more evidence. Previous judges all over the country had let them get away with murder. Judge Lord took 23 cases and combined them into one – which made it hard for Robins to use the slut defense. Robins promptly settled the cases for decent money.

The nerve of a company which made millions on providing women with a way to have sex without risking pregnancy trashing them for having sex. Very very ugly. But, ours was a generation raised on protest. We believed that wrongs could be righted. It took strong women to stand up to the insults. And it took brave lawyers to go up against a multi-zillion dollar corporation and their high priced, evil legal teams. The cases cost a fortune to try – A.H. Robins had lawyers working around the clock. But a small coterie of individual lawyers from small law firms banded together and kept at them until they got the information they needed. And then the big law firms got into the act and Robins had met their match.

While all these things were working their way through the courts, I was trying to figure out how to deal with my spasm. When it happened, I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't stand, couldn't sit. It was interfering with my life. I went to regular doctors. No luck. They didn't know what it was. I tried different drugs, and always ended up back with the codeine, which wasn't always an option if I needed to be awake. I went to a chiropractor.

I went to a hypnotist where I floated in space and then, at his suggestion, visualized the problem as a bloody lump inside me and pushed out huge droplets of blood through every pore in my body. It was like a cartoon. Gigantic drops of blood flying away from me in all directions. When I came out of the trance I was so tired I had to go home and sleep for hours. It helped for a while, but then the spasm came back. So much for mind over matter.

Anything anybody suggested was fair game. I tried acupuncture, acupressure. I kept track of ovulating. I kept track of everything I ate for a month. I had three hours of surgery in 1987 to remove scar tissue. Nobody could figure out what it was.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

I suppose you are wondering what all of this has to do with the present I got from myself for my 50th birthday. It was a fibroid the size of a small grapefruit that was living in my uterus. My poor uterus – which had never really recovered from the onslaught of all that infection all those years ago – was not happy. It had to come out. All of it. Not just the fibroid. I thought, I'll miss my uterus. It hasn't ever done me any harm.

And now you are wondering, what did that have to do with the Dalkon Shield? Or the Vietnam war for that matter? Well, usually when you have a fibroid, the doctor just opens you up and takes it out. Sometimes they even can go up through your vagina and don't have to cut you open. It's fairly quick surgery. Forty-five minutes to an hour. Even if you have to have a hysterectomy, the doc can usually just cut your belly open, reach in and gently move your intestines aside, snip snip and take out your uterus, ovary, tubes, whatever. Then she sews you back up and within a day or so you're back to eating and drinking like a normal person. Don't get me wrong, it's never a picnic. You're not back to your old self, sans various and sundry parts, for 6 weeks or so. Of course, you also go into hyper-menopause because all your parts related to estrogen production are gone, but I don't have time to go into all that. Suffice it to say that it's a bit like being hit by a hormone truck.

The problem is that there is nothing usual about a person's innards after she has a serious, Dalkon Shield induced infection. I was lucky, I had Dr. Diane Peterson to usher me through this ordeal. All of that infection had created a mass of scar tissue inside my belly, and even though I'd had one surgery to try to remove the scar tissue, it wasn't enough. Everything was still stuck to everything else. Fat layers had scar tissue growing through them attaching them to other parts that should have been on their own. It took Dr. P over five hours to make her way, slowly but surely, through my intestines. They were practically a solid block. The risk was that if, as she cut through the scar tissue that was attaching all those intestines to each other, if she made a slip and cut my intestine, I would be in deep doo doo. And not just figuratively, which is very dangerous. But Dr. P is an artist. She cut and cut and cut and finally got to my uterus.

I lost a ton of blood. Dr. P told me later that she wasn't sure if she even got all of one ovary, it was so buried in guck. Finally, she just had to sew me up and hope that she got everything.

Waking up after major surgery is never any fun. I was a total mess. My intestines were traumatized. They didn't work for five days. I couldn't eat and had to have a tube down my throat the entire time. My vocal cords were shot – they did not like that tube one bit. It would have wrecked my singing career if I'd had one.

The best part about the whole thing was that the mystery of the spasm was solved. While Dr. P was rummaging around inside of me, she figured out that the scar tissue was pulling on my upper intestine and sometimes it was pinching shut, which is what causes all the pain. It's always nice to know what is causing something, even if it can't be fixed.

So that's the relationship. The gift that keeps on giving. I still have my spasm. I don't have my parts. Jane Fonda is still being trashed for going to Hanoi. Richard Nixon got impeached. The Watergate burglars are long out of jail and writing their memoirs or proselytizing the masses. 52,000 mostly young men of my generation came home in body bags, if they aren't lying in some desolate rice paddy. Others are psychologically damaged. I didn't buy Robitussin for years. A.H. Robins eventually declared bankruptcy to avoid paying any more punitive damages and pillaged the company for the benefit of the executives. Women were able to settle, but not for much.

My generation tried to speak truth to power, but then some of us became the power. Some of us are still trying to speak that truth. Now we have global warming and war in Iraq. I intend to do whatever I can, in my own small way, to stop them.

This is all true. At least it's what I remember, and isn't that the same? Thanks for listening. I feel better now.

________

Thanks to The History Place at historyplace.com for making it possible for me to check my memories about Vietnam. And to Richard B. Sobol, Bending the Law 4 (1991), for the same in relation to the Dalkon Shield. Thanks to Mia and Gail Otteson for encouraging and reading and suggesting.

Copyright © 2007 Diane Wiley