Damn the Big Pharma

In my Sociology class we have been watching films on the IUD, Norplant, and various forms of the pill. Pharmaceutical companies do all the testing for these on women overseas in developing countries....the women are NOT given informed consent (which is illegal!), told the drug is safe, has passed all trials and are given it. They are then watched like guinea pigs for side effects over a year. Women developed eyesight problems, became severely anemic, developed chronic fatigue syndrome and bleed for MONTHS! With no access to tampons and using rags for pads this is a serious issue when there is no clean water to wash them in. It showed women in India washing their rags in sewer water! One woman had been begging to have her IUD removed and the doctors kept telling her it would pass, shed be fine. She couldn't even get out of bed anymore she was in such pain and so severely anemic!!!!. A human rights observer/anthropologist told of a woman whose Norplant was inserted without sanitization, festered and became extremely infected. She pleaded with the doctor to have it removed due not only to the pain but to the depression it was causing her...They refused. On her fourth visit demanding they do something, they grabbed a scalpal and cut it out while she stood there and screamed in pain! They called her an "ungrateful animal" and tossed her into the streets. There was numerous examples of women given the pill as well with no informed consent causing many of the same symptoms women complain of on

/">this discussion of Birth control pills and women's health

. IT IS ALL CONNECTED LADIES! Their suffering is ours...They suffer at our expense so we can have reliable birth control. Then, we too wind up suffering the very effects that the pharmaceutical corporations over look in the name of science and profit. One of the films told of a woman here, in Toronto, who became legally blind due to complications with her Norplant insertion. Out of solidarity for the women who have suffered so much for our reproductive freedom I refuse to use hormonal based contraceptives that mess with my body and theirs. As women we need to recognize the growing patterns of globalizations complex effects on our health. The patterns are there, do not ignore them as being merely coincidences!