http://www.vocativ.com/news/228760/women-revolt-against-the-fda
Later this month, 35-year-old Angela Desa-Lynch plans to go camping—at the Food and Drug Administration. She will pitch a tent and roll out a sleeping bag in front of the FDA’s Washington D.C. headquarters, along with a couple dozen other pillow-toting friends. There, they will be conducting a hunger strike. The goal is to get the agency to remove from the market Essure, a medical device that they believe is hurting and even killing women…
Recently, a peer-reviewed study recruited more than 1,000 women from the Essure Problems Facebook group to try out an app for reporting “adverse events” to the FDA. Nearly 78 percent reported “serious events,” including hospitalization and disability. The most frequent reported experiences were fatigue, back pain, pelvic pain, mental impairment, “device dislocation,” meaning the coil moved from its intended place in the fallopian tube, and salpingectomy, the surgical removal of the fallopian tube. Also of note: lost libido, metal allergies (the coils contain nickel) and hair loss. The researchers also found suicidal ideation among 14 of the women and two suicide attempts…
“The only safe way to take out these Essures is hysterectomy,” he says, explaining that coils can easily break into pieces during removal, “and that’s a major problem.” …
The Essure activists will be joined during the meeting by activists fighting the FDA over two other women’s health issues: transvaginal mesh and power morcellators…
Desa-Lynch also argues that they have sexism in common. “In any one of those three different fights, a woman goes to the doctor and tells them what their problem is, we’re automatically written off as hormonal. We’re not listened to,” she says. “If this was happening to a man, if they had made this product for a man and 20,000 men came out and said, ‘We can no longer have sex anymore,’ I guarantee it would no longer be on the market.” …
All Things Chronic 