Toxic Shock: A Social History
Toxic Shock: A Social History
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Abstract
In 1980, young, healthy women in the United States suddenly began to get sick and even die. The unexpected link to these deaths was superabsorbent tampons. Thousands of women used them during their menstrual periods, signaling the potential for a large-scale outbreak. Toxic Shock: A Social History traces the emergence of this new illness of toxic shock syndrome (TSS) and its relationship to tampon technology. This multifaceted history engages microbiology, design and innovation, journalism and mass communication, product liability, and federal policy and regulation. The broad scope captures the various approaches that contributed to defining meaning about the emergent illness. Vostral argues that tampon-related TSS was a paradigm shift in the way that illness manifests. No longer was an infection necessarily the origin of disease, or a faulty product the direct cause of injury. Together, a new pathway to an illness formed, in which a supposedly inert tampon became interactive, and a bacterium once in equilibrium grew dominant and produced toxins. Toxic Shock: A Social History makes a case for understanding tampon-related TSS as the result of biocatalytic activity between technology and bacterium. Moreover, though women were the primary consumers of tampons, the bacterium became the unintended users. This unusual disease process challenged standard approaches to public health, required women to evaluate technological risk, and currently serves as a harbinger about other internal medical devices used and worn within the human body.
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