06. The Contraceptive (Dalkon Shield)

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Environment is all of America and its problems.

It's the rats in the ghetto.

It's a hungry child in a land of affluence.

It is housing that's not worthy of the name and neighborhoods not fit to inhabit.

Environment is a problem perpetuated by expenditures of tens of billions of dollars a year on the Vietnam War instead of on our decaying, crowded, congested, polluted urban areas that are in human traps for millions of people.

That's Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson giving a speech on April 22nd, 1970, the very first Earth Day, a holiday which he had founded to help spread awareness about environmental protection.

He's primarily remembered for his environmental efforts and his outspoken criticism of the Vietnam War.

But Gaylord Nelson was a strong supporter of consumer and civil rights as well.

A few weeks before that speech, Senator Nelson had called for a congressional hearing to discuss the safety of oral contraceptives or the birth control pill, which had been approved for sale to the general public by the Food and Drug Administration about a decade earlier.

The pill was heralded as an important milestone for women who had spent generations battling for their reproductive rights.

The pill demonstrated a significant advancement in women's social independence as it separated sex from reproduction.

But the pill was far from perfect.

Early versions of the birth control pill contained roughly five times the amount of hormones found in today's prescriptions, leading to widespread side effects such as nausea, depression, weight gain, blood clots, and strokes, all of which came as a surprise to the unsuspecting women who were using the contraceptive because at the time, They were not privy to enough information about the pill to make an informed decision about what it was they were actually putting into their bodies.

None of the possible side effects were listed on the package, nor mentioned in conversations with their prescribing doctors.

The Nelson Pill hearings, as they became known, were in response to a book titled The Doctor's Case Against the Pill, written by a woman appropriately named Barbara Seaman.

The book contained sensationalized accounts from hundreds of women who had experienced adverse reactions to the oral contraceptive.

During the hearings, leading medical experts and pharmaceutical companies were all given time to discuss the credibility of Barbara Seaman's attack on the pill.

But surprisingly absent from the testimony were women.

Not a single woman was called on to speak about their experiences, resulting in multiple protests and outbursts by activists, including one by Alice Wolfson, who chided Senator Nelson by shouting from the audience, quote,

Why are there 10 million women being used as guinea pigs?

Why had you assured the drug companies that they could testify?

Why have you told them that they could get top priority?

They're not taking the pills.

We are.

Ultimately, the Nelson Pill hearings produced two important results.

One, in order to better inform consumers, a law was passed requiring every packet of birth control pills to include a pamphlet outlining its risk and side effects.

And two, a pill scarce swept across the nation and women everywhere avoided oral contraceptives and their potential complications in favor of other forms of birth control.

Senator Nelson's lead speaker was partly responsible for the scare.

Dr.

Hugh Davis, a Baltimore-based gynecologist who was the head of the family planning clinic at the renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital at the time, testified that women would be safer using an intrauterine device instead of the pill.

Intrauterine devices, or IUDs, are small pieces of plastic that are inserted into the uterus that physically prevent the fertilization process from occurring.

They are highly effective, long-lasting, and easily reversible, without the hormonal effects associated with the pill.

Legend has it that this method of contraception was discovered by nomadic traders in the Middle Ages, who would insert small stones into the uteri of camels to prevent them from becoming pregnant during long treks across the desert.

Dr.

Davis, who had confirmed Barbara Seaman's claim that the side effects of the pill were vastly vastly underreported, was so enthusiastic about IUDs that one of the committee members felt compelled to ask him if he owned a patent on any of the intrauterine devices that were currently on the market.

The doctor mentioned that he had co-invented an IUD about a decade earlier, but it was never sold to the public.

The committee member followed up with, quote, then you, Dr.

Davis, have no particular commercial interest in any of the intrauterine devices.

To which Dr.

Davis responded, that is correct.

But Dr.

Davis was lying.

Not only had he invented a more recent IUD, he had just sold that IUD to a giant pharmaceutical company named A.H.

Robbins merely weeks before his testimony.

And if that conflict of interest weren't obvious enough, Dr.

Davis was set to receive a percentage of the profits for every IUD the Robbins company sold for as long as it remained on the market.

But does any of this really come as a surprise?

History features a long list of dishonest men and corporations profiteering from assuming the control of women's bodies and inflicting destruction.

Dr.

Hugh Davis and the Robbins Company would prove to be no different.

A revolutionary contraceptive device endangers the lives of millions of women while corporate executives put their fingers in their ears and look the other way.

This is the story of the Dalkin

on this episode of Swindled.

They bribed government officials

to clear violations of decades state law and clearly unethical pay to plagiarism.

Now we have picked books and records in the high ballot.

And records responsible for the collapse of the entire system.

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A woman that used to work for Dr.

Hugh Davis once described him as the most efficient man she had ever met.

There's a story about him preemptively having his appendix removed so that he'd never get appendicitis and be forced to miss work.

Dr.

Davis was passionate about his work and family planning.

He, like many others at the time, viewed pregnancy as a quote, social evil and claimed that overpopulation was contributing to poverty, unhappiness, and unrest.

Davis spent his days and nights trying to prevent the unavoidable apocalyptic global famine famine that was sure to occur because of the astronomical birth rate of the early 1960s.

After a full workday at his Baltimore clinic, Davis would stay up until 4 in the morning designing and inventing new tools for the job.

In 1967, Davis and his friend and former electrical engineer Erwin Lerner began developing a new version of the IUD.

The devices currently on the market had major downfalls.

They either didn't work at all, wouldn't stay in place, or they caused pain and cramps and bleeding.

Davis and Lerner were confident that they could solve these issues by designing a better, more effective, and more comfortable intrauterine contraceptive device.

By August of that year, the partners had completed a prototype of their reimagined IUD.

The device was a round shape and made of flexible plastic.

It featured little spine-like protrusions lining the outer area to prevent the dislodging issue the other IUDs were experiencing.

And to facilitate removal, the IUD contained a durable multi-filament tailstring called Supramid,

which was made up of hundreds of nylon fibers encased in an outer shell.

Supramid was typically used to repair torn tendons on horses.

The device seemed promising in theory, but was it actually effective in its primary purpose of preventing pregnancy?

There was only one way to find out.

At his clinic, Dr.

Davis began inserting his version of the IED into patients and recording the results.

A year and 640 patients later, Davis had accumulated enough data to conclude that his and Learner's creation was remarkable, resulting in a pregnancy rate of 1.1%,

a rate lower than any of its competitors.

Dr.

Davis published the results of his research in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

And by 1969, word about the new IUD and the impressive Johns Hopkins statistics supporting it had spread quickly to other doctors around the country.

A practitioner and energetic salesman from Ohio named Dr.

Thad Earle was one of them.

Dr.

Earle had been inserting the new IUD into patients at his clinic and had become so thrilled with the results that he contacted Davis and Lerner and their lawyer, Robert Cohn, to offer his sales experience and a $50,000 investment in exchange for a small ownership stake in the company.

Realizing that a salesman would be needed in order to drum up publicity and to secure a sizable share of the growing contraceptive market, Davis and Lerner agreed to partner with Dr.

Earle.

Together, the four men, Davis, Lerner, Earle, and Cohn formed the Dowkin Corporation, and they would call their revolutionary IUD the Dalkin Shield.

Selling the Dalkin Shield was easy.

Dr.

Earle would set up demonstration booths at medical conventions all around the country where he would tout the device's impressive test results and pass out free samples to every passerby.

At the time, the strict FDA regulations that applied to medications were not required of medical devices, meaning there was zero oversight when it came to selling items such as IUDs or dentures, contact lenses, pacemakers, and even artificial heart valves.

These devices went to market without being tested by an independent agency, straight into the hands or hearts of the consumers who were none the wiser.

It wasn't long before the Dowcan Shield had many suitors to choose from.

By 1970, multiple large pharmaceutical companies had approached the Dowkin Corporation about purchasing the rights to the IUD, including a Richmond, Virginia-based Fortune 500 company called A.H.

Robbins.

Over its 100-year history, The Robbins Company had created or acquired a line of tremendously successful products.

Chapstick brand lip balm, Robotussin cough syrup, a flea collar that Forbes magazine had one time accused of killing pets, and other various cosmetics.

What Robbins wasn't selling at the time was a contraceptive product.

After multiple meetings and three days of negotiating, The Dowkin Corporation sold the Dalkin Shield to the A.H.

Robbins Company for $750,000.

In addition, the agreement entitled the four members of the Dowkin Corporation to 10% of all gross sales of the product in the U.S.

and Canada.

Thad Earl, Hugh Davis, and Urban Lerner, would also serve as consultants to the company, earning up to $30,000 a year.

It was only a few months later that Hugh Davis would testify at the Nelson Peel hearings that he had no financial interest in any intrauterine device.

In 1971, the Robbins company launched an aggressive marketing campaign in support of the Dalkin Shield, including a two-page magazine spread that became known as the Flying Uterus.

The ad boast of the device's 1.1% pregnancy rate and suggests that it's the ideal contraceptive for those women who have not yet had children and for those who are too disorganized to remember to take their daily pill.

Nowhere on the copy is it mentioned that Dr.

Hugh Davis is financially involved with the product, but his name is included as a researcher in the footnotes of the statistics.

If you want to see it, the whole ad is available for viewing on the swindled Facebook and Instagram pages.

The marketing campaign was effective.

Over the next three years, the Dalkin Shields sold more than 2.2 million units in the United States alone, capturing 60% of the IUD market.

An additional 1.7 million shields had been sold overseas.

The product had proved to be incredibly successful and incredibly profitable.

It cost the A.H.

Robbins about 35 cents to manufacture a single Dakin shield, which it then sold for more than $4 to physicians, who then sold it to patients for $12.

The Dowkin Shield's profitability may explain why the Robbins company was in no hurry to address the initial complaints it received early in the product's launch.

One physician wrote to the company with concerns regarding the IUD's painful and difficult required method of insertion, stating,

I have found the procedure to be the most traumatic manipulation ever perpetrated on womanhood, and I have inserted thousands of other varieties.

And maybe Robbins' executives were too busy counting profits to care that their company had been promoting a product using faulty data.

Dr.

Davis's 1.1% pregnancy rate claim that was the basis of the Shields' entire marketing campaign was discovered to have been derived from tests that lasted an average of five and a half months per test subject.

Not exactly an adequate amount of time to arrive at a reliable pregnancy figure.

Even worse, several of the test subjects alleged that Dr.

Davis had recommended that they use a spermicidal foam in addition to the IUD, making it impossible to determine the true effectiveness of the device.

Davis's tests were worthless, and A.H.

Robbins suspected as much before the acquisition of the shield was even finalized.

Before the purchase, a company official named Dr.

Fred Clark had traveled to Baltimore to observe Dr.

Davis' procedure.

When Fred Clark returned to company headquarters in Richmond, he dictated the notes from his trip to an assistant.

The typed version of the notes stated that 26 of 832 patients had become pregnant while wearing the Dahlkin shield, which if you do the math, calculates to a pregnancy rate of 3.1%.

A far cry from the purported 1.1% rate that was published in medical journals and advertisements.

Robbins' lawyers would later claim that the assistant made a typo while transcribing Dr.

Clark's notes.

According to them, instead of 26 pregnancies, the note should have read an additional six pregnancies.

The Robbins company eventually performed their own tests on the Dowken Shield and observed a pregnancy rate closer to 2%.

But even this number seemed dubious because similar tests performed by Kaiser Medical Center in Sacramento and Beth Israel Hospital in Boston resulted in rates of 5.6% and 10.1%,

respectively.

The results of those tests went ignored, and the Robbins company continued selling the shield with the deceptive statistics.

During a deposition hearing, Dr.

Clark would attempt to distance himself from the acquisition of the Dalkin Shield and redefine his involvement.

And

were you involved

at that time with the acquisition of any products for the H.

Robbins Company?

I was not.

So you had no involvement with respect to the acquisition of any products in June of 1970, correct?

Maybe I better ask you to clarify for me

what you're thinking about when you use the expression any involvement.

That covers a multitude of

activities and is a question apart from

the matter of responsibility for acquisition.

If you would clarify what you're saying or asking about, I can try to respond more.

I'm glad to do that, Doctor.

What do you understand any involvement to be with respect to an acquisition?

Well, it's not me that originated the question or the phrase any involvement, and I'm not quibbling with whatever it is you have in mind when you use it.

I'm just trying to respond appropriately to your question, and I do not want to mislead you by misinterpreting what you mean by any involvement.

And that's what I'm asking you to do.

Okay, well, then if you...

I don't want to play games, my secretary who sharpens a pencil to make a note for somebody who is looking up a telephone number for a company to call to see where they might be available could be said to have some involvement in the acquisition.

That's ridiculous and silly and I would trust you would agree with me.

Now how far along the pathway of such silly definition

to the extent of final responsibility for the acquisition.

Do you have in mind when you say any involvement?

That's.

I don't know what I have in mind.

It would depend on the question.

Okay.

So

apparently, your definition of any involvement with the acquisition of a given product goes from a secretary who sharpens a pencil and gives it to his or her superior up to the person who writes the check and says let's go ahead and buy the property.

No, no, I'll object to that question.

That's an improper characterization of the record.

Not only had Dr.

Fred Clark been heavily involved in the acquisition process of the Dowkin shield, it was later discovered that he had ignored an internal memo prepared by Robbins company doctors Ellen Preston and Daniel French.

six months before the product went to market.

The memo expressed concern that the tailstring attached to the shield could pose significant danger to women who wore the IUD.

Preston and French described how the multiple threads of the string could enable bacteria from outside the vagina to enter the uterus by essentially climbing the rope, similar to the wick of a candle or lamp.

A scenario that could lead to an increased risk of massive infections.

And that's exactly what happened.

The FDA was soon flooded with reports from Dalkin Shield users who had suffered from pelvic inflammatory inflammatory disease and blood poisoning.

Women like Linda Tao, a 20-year-old secretary from Baltimore who was planning to wait a few years before having kids.

She had the Dalkin Shield inserted in 1970 by Dr.

Hugh Davis himself.

For months after the procedure, Linda experienced debilitating pain and near constant bleeding.

In multiple phone calls and follow-up visits, Dr.

Davis assured Linda that she was fine.

But the pain never subsided, and she dealt with it for another year or so before deciding to have the IUD removed.

Linda's health seemed to immediately improve, and her outward appearance, which had changed dramatically since the initial procedure, began to return to normal.

But the inside of Linda's body would never be normal again.

Five years since removing the shield, Linda Tao began experiencing excruciating stomach pains.

While on vacation in New York, her body temperature rose dramatically dramatically and she was overcome with chills.

She was rushed to the emergency room where doctors discovered that her uterus was covered in adhesions and had become almost completely enveloped by scar tissue.

Doctors diagnosed Linda with pelvic inflammatory disease and over the next four years, she would undergo eight additional operations.

Her fallopian tubes had to be completely reconstructed, and she was told that if she was still interested in having children, she would have to consider adoption.

Linda Tao moved on with her life, but every now and then the bitterness and anger and sadness that she felt about her sterility would come rushing back.

If I could get my hands on Dr.

Davis, I would wring his neck, she told a friend.

Linda even went so far as to schedule an appointment with Dr.

Davis years later, where she planned to look him in the eye, slap him in the face, and ask him why he ruined her life.

She called his office one morning to set up the appointment and, through tears, explained to the nurse who answered the phone that she had trusted Dr.

Davis when she was a younger girl and that she had faith in him.

But he put an IUD inside of her, and now she was unable to have a baby.

The nurse on the other end paused briefly before saying, I'm sorry.

I'm really sorry.

Linda hung up the phone because she had finally gotten what she had always wanted, an apology.

Unfortunately, Linda would never receive an apology from the men truly responsible for her situation.

And neither would the 327,000 other women who had reported similar horror stories related to their experience with the Dalcon Shield.

A.H.

Robbins denied that there was any proven correlation between their product and the reported health issues.

The company felt it had no responsibility to warn its customers about them.

One of the standard defenses used by the Robbins executives and their legal team suggested that the victim's poor hygiene and multiple sex partners could be just as much responsible for the infections as the device itself.

Here's A.H.

Robbins chairman of the board, E.

Clairbourne Robbins Sr., defending his company's position not to warn consumers about the Dalcon Shield's potential hazards.

As a matter of fact, Mr.

Robbins, as chairman of the board of the A.H.

Robbins Company,

is it your testimony here today that the company has absolutely no intent whatsoever

to warn Delcon Shield wearers

that they have a higher risk of pelvic inflammatory disease with the Delcon shield

than with other IUDs.

Those things have not been proven.

I don't see how we can warn about something we don't believe is there.

There are so many causes of pelvic infection

that there are innumerable causes which can occur whether or not any IUD has been used that it's impossible for me to judge or for anybody else without concern.

Where did you learn that i have been told this i i am not an authority obviously but i have been told that by whom by our doctors that uh inflammatory conditions can occur from any one of several hundred causes like uh i've been told that uh uh frequent sex partners can cause it I've been told that gonorrhea can cause it.

I've been told that other things can cause

Pelvic infections and blood poisoning, as awful as they may be, were only the tip of the horrible side effect iceberg.

There were medical reports from doctors who had found the Dalcon shield floating freely in the abdominal cavities of patients because it had ripped through the walls of the uterus.

Some women who became pregnant while still wearing the shield had suffered from spontaneous and often late-term abortions, while others gave birth to deformed or brain-damaged babies.

And at least 20 women had died because of complications resulting from wearing the Dalkin Shield.

20 women that we know about, anyway.

The true number of deaths is almost certainly much higher.

Because at the same time these reports of disease and death were pouring into the FDA from 1971 to 1974, A.H.

Robbins had made a deal with the federal government's Agency for International Development Department to send hundreds of thousands of Dalcon Shields to third world countries.

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The shields were sold to the government at a discount, and to offset the reduced profit margin, the Robbins company cut costs by providing unsterilized versions of the device.

It doesn't take a doctor to realize that combining undeveloped countries with an unsterile product that features an inherent design flaw that already leads to an elevated risk of infections is a recipe for disaster.

And yet, plenty of medical doctors employed by A.H.

Robbins at the time did not see a problem with the practice.

If 20 women died in the United States because of the Dowkin Shield, how many died in Malaysia or Ethiopia?

We'll never truly know.

The statistics weren't available or just weren't recorded at the time.

The federal government didn't issue a recall on the shields that had sent overseas until the FDA ruled the IUD unsafe in 1976, two years after sales in America had ceased.

Out of the 769,000 shields that had been distributed in foreign countries, fewer than half were returned.

Foreign aid workers have reported that you can walk into medical facilities in some small African villages today and find Dalkin shields sitting in drawers next to operating tables, waiting to be inserted.

The accusations levied against the Dalkin Shield did not sit well with its inventor, Dr.

Hugh Davis.

He was convinced that all of the hysteria was part of some well-orchestrated smear campaign by the Shield's competing organizations, alleging, quote, the whole thing has been blown out of proportion by a certain amount of deliberate design.

There are large commercial forces that are quite interested in selling new IUDs.

This conspiracy theory might be the first sign of the paranoia that would eventually consume the rest of Dr.

Davis's life.

This important announcement from A.H.

Robbins concerns the use of the Dalkon Shield IUD, a birth control device.

Whether or not you know of any injury resulting from this product, you must act now or you will lose your right to ever make a claim.

Buckling under the pressure of an outraged citizenry and a pending recall by the FDA, the Robbins company suspended sale of the Dalkin Shield in 1974.

And the company quickly found itself to be the target.

of thousands of pending lawsuits.

But they weren't planning to go down without a fight.

The first case was settled in 1975, and the Robbins company had lost, and they were not happy about it.

Their in-house lawyer, Roger Tuttle, who had handled the case himself, was dismissed, and Robbins hired a high-powered and experienced law firm to defend them in its upcoming cases.

One strategy adopted by the new legal team was to prolong the legal process.

Most of the plaintiffs wouldn't be able to afford the battle and probably settle for cheaper or drop it entirely.

And if the case did make it to court, the defense required plaintiffs to answer intimate questions about their private lives in a very public and embarrassing manner in an attempt to deter any future plaintiffs.

It turns out that one of the wives of one of the lawyers defending A.H.

Robbins, named William Forrest Jr., had actually been a user of the Dalcon Shield.

To prove a point about the personal and humiliating nature of the questions asked of the plaintiffs, a lawyer representing a a victim asked Forrest similar questions about his wife.

Did you ever discuss with your wife

what information she received from her gynecologist at the time she had the Dalcon shield inserted?

I don't recall that I did.

No, sir.

Did you...

Ask her whether her gynecologist inquired as to how many sex partners she had at the time the Delcon shield was inserted?

I didn't ask her that.

I don't know whether her gynecologist inquired or not.

That, again, is something between my wife and her gynecologist.

Did you ask her whether or not the gynecologist inquired into the frequency of sex that she had?

Again, I don't know whether he made that inquiry.

I don't know what inquiries were made.

I'm sure he made the inquiries he felt were appropriate.

Did you ask her whether her gynecologist inquired into whether or not she engaged in anal anal or oral sex at the time the Delcon shield was inserted?

Again, I don't know what

my wife's gynecologist may have discussed with her.

I think it's the type of thing that

is between the gynecologist and my wife as his patient.

You're aware that all of those questions are asked of women who bring claim against the Robbins Company.

as a result of injuries they have sustained while wearing the Delcon shield, aren't you?

That's correct.

Okay.

Then I think they're appropriate questions to be asked.

And if my rifle

might fail to be asked those questions, I think in terms of litigation.

Forrest was also asked, using a hypothetical situation, if he would like to know if a medical product had reported dangers before using it.

Forrest hesitates, but finally admits his desire to know.

exposing the hypocrisy between protecting his individual life versus defending a company who consciously misinformed and endangered millions of others.

You got your choice between this multi-filament one that can wick bacteria up the interior, may result in the loss of your penis or scrotum, and the other one is a monofilament.

It's a solid.

Obviously, I'm interested in

a suture

which does not entail my getting a disease or getting injured by it, yes, sir.

And you would want to know what the manufacturer knew with respect to the fact that that multi-filament string might wick, might cause bacteria to get into your reproductive organs and may result in the loss of them.

That's a risk factor you'd want to know about, correct?

If it would cause disease, in fact, cause disease, yes, sir.

Yes.

And it wouldn't make any difference to you if it caused disease in one man who lost his penis or a hundred or a thousand, would it, sir?

In terms of one person, I'm not sure I would be interested in it as an individual, yes, sir.

Sure, I'm sure you would, sir.

The 1980s arrived, and the legal battle was just getting started.

Thousands of other plaintiffs joined the case against A.H.

Robbins, resulting in one of the largest personal injury cases in U.S.

history.

And believe it or not, there were still women wearing the Daucin shield because the Robbins company still hadn't taken the responsibility to notify its customers.

But with public pressure mounting and pending lawsuits exploding, that was about to change.

In 1984, A.H.

Robbins announced a program to warn women about the risk of the Dalkon Shield and offered to pay the cost of removal for any women still using one.

it should be removed.

If you're still using the Dalkon Shield, its maker, A.H.

Robbins Company, will pay your doctor or clinic to remove it.

It's that important.

Call your doctor or clinic for an appointment or call Robbins, toll-free, 1-800-000-0.

Talk about too little, too late.

The court cases continued, and Judge Miles Lord from Minnesota was overseeing about 20 of these cases.

Judge Lord had an almost open disdain for the executives from A.H.

Robbins and their lawyers, accusing them of selling an instrument of death, mutilation, and disease.

You could tell he didn't trust them.

If you're bumping him, I'm going to ask a judge down here.

I didn't touch him right now.

No.

No, no, I hadn't touched him.

I did not touch him.

Your elbow was pushed over.

On the contrary, you moved his arm.

On the contrary,

please do.

Let's proceed.

Okay.

I said,

move your feet over, too.

I don't like

him.

The witness at all.

I moved back.

Two or three feet apart.

I will move as far as you say, Judge.

You're all right now.

Proceed.

In one ruling, Judge Lord lambasted A.H.

Robbins in his prepared remarks, saying,

Your company, without warning to women, invaded their bodies by the millions and caused them injuries by the thousands.

Your company, in the face of overwhelming evidence, denies its guilt.

and continues its monstrous mischief.

This is corporate irresponsibility at its meanest.

Robin's lawyers accused Judge Lord of being impartial and eventually were able to remove him from overseeing the future Dowkin cases, but not before their entire cover-up was exposed.

Roger Lewis Tuttle.

Could you spell your last name, Mr.

Tuttle?

T-U-T-T.

Remember Roger Tuttle?

He was A.H.

Robin's internal lawyer who was dismissed after losing the first Dalcon Shield case.

But he was back, and he had a score to settle with his former employer.

Yes, sir.

You're aware of documents that have been destroyed by the Robbins Company concerning the Delcon Shield?

Yes, sir.

Did you catch that?

After hearing Tuttle's whistleblowing testimony that he was instructed by Robbins executives to destroy incriminating internal documents, one of the victims' lawyers leans over to his partner and whispers in disbelief, Can you fucking believe this?

That moment was the beginning of the end for A.H.

Robbins.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 1985 in an attempt to avoid compensating any future plaintiffs.

Thousands of women would never get their day in court.

$2.5 billion of the company's assets were set aside as a trust fund for current litigation.

On average, most women involved in the lawsuit took home less than $1,000.

Meanwhile, free of its future litigation liabilities, the stock price of A.H.

Robbins increased dramatically, and the company was sold to American Home Products in 1989 for $3 billion,

with the owners of the Robbins company pocketing $385 million tax-free.

One of the more surprising aspects of the case is that although their actions were horrific and highly unethical, none of the A.H.

Robbins officials had technically broken any laws.

There were no punishments levied against the company or anyone else involved, not even against Dr.

Hugh Davis, who had actually broken the law.

He perjured himself during the Nelson Peel hearings by lying about not being financially involved with IUDs.

But Davis never faced any charges for doing that, nor did he receive any disciplinary action from his employer, Johns Hopkins.

But that didn't stop the Dalcon Shield scandal from ruining his life.

In the aftermath of the scandal, Hugh Davis's paranoia became uncontrollable.

He barricaded himself in his home, fearing retribution from the plaintiffs, and he wouldn't go anywhere without a hired bodyguard.

He spent hours upon hours inventing new devices that he thought would redeem redeem his reputation before he was eventually committed to a psychiatric center where he remained for 10 years.

According to Hugh Davis' son, Brian, it wasn't guilt or remorse that drove his father mad.

It was that he was wrong.

Hugh Davis couldn't believe he had been wrong.

And he stood by his design until the day he died from pancreatic cancer in 1996.

As a result of the Dalcon Shield case, the Food Food and Drug Administration changed their policies to incorporate medical device regulations.

Transparency regarding conflicts of interests and research methodologies were strengthened, and the popularity of intra-uterine devices in America plummeted.

In the immediate years to follow, IUDs remained the most popular form of contraceptive worldwide, with over 90 million women wearing them, but fewer than 500,000 women in America were using them.

Companies didn't want to manufacture them and opened themselves up to the litigious nightmare that had just happened with Robbins.

Doctors stopped recommending them, even the safe versions.

The IUD scare lasted for years, and only in the last decade or so have IUDs become rediscovered in the States as an effective and safe form of contraception.

In one of his rulings against A.H.

Robbins, Judge Miles Lord put it best, saying,

The accumulation of corporate wrongs is, in my mind, a manifestation of individual sin.

You have taken the bottom line as your guiding beacon and the low road as your route.

But you are the corporate conscience.

Please, in the name of humanity, lift your eyes above the bottom line.

Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen.

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Amazon, das tamenos sonriemas.