We’ve got enough to make sausages with it.
Blamemeta@lemm.ee 10 months ago
I imagine that its extremely hard to get the mass quantities of blood you need for actual testing.
burningmatches@feddit.uk 10 months ago
onelikeandidie@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And bacon too
Byereddithellolemmy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Get out.
CurlyChopz@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Have you never heard of black pudding or bludwurst?
Byereddithellolemmy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I have - but in this context the comparison made me think of sausages composed of period blood, which caused a physical reaction that prompted my response.
I meant it as a joke, but the down voters clearly didn’t find it funny. Ah well.
Gork@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Still cheaper than printer ink
zing
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I’m still not satisfied because menstrual blood is much chunkier than a donated pint from your arm. Until they’re using mucus blood we’re still in the dark ages.
Urbanfox@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Absolutely. Menstrual blood is its own beast altogether. I often found that the mucus heavy days was a real blocker to actual absorbsion and often there would be a still dry but slimy tampon removed at some points.
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It’s posts like these that give me sympathy for my wife and all the other women out there, reminds me to hold the door open from a little further away than I normally would.
jennwiththesea@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yes, menstrual fluid includes tissue. It’s not just simple blood.
Risk@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Eh - it depends on the test.
Laboratory tests for pure absorbency makes sense for blood volume.
Functional absorbency is always going to be so much more nuanced as each woman has multiple factors in play. You’re better off calibrating pure absorbency first, then carrying those results forward to study and understand functional usage.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I guess it depends on your goal: better tampons or better healthcare. Is the problem that you can’t switch brands and have any expectation of similar absorbency? Or is the problem that your doctor asks “how many tampons do you use in a day?” and thinks it will tell him whether you really have a heavy flow, because he doesn’t believe you and doesn’t really understand how periods work? Both are real problems. Both deserve better research.
Risk@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Both deserve better research.
Agreed.
Blamemeta@lemm.ee 10 months ago
But how on earth would you get period blood?
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Iirc, weren’t lots of women going to send their used pads and tampons to that GOP politician something something monitor schedule to detect abortions…?
I’m post-menopause and post-hysterectomy myself so I didn’t pay complete attention, just sort of cheered them on.
Anyway you could start by doing a study based on recording the real-life experiences of a large pool of women who self-identify as having “normal” periods. To set a baseline at least, by which to judge “heavy” bleeding.
Or a smaller pool who are willing to alternate cup and tampons to better measure capacity. I think pouring from cup to tampon would be inaccurate because pressure from the vaginal wall affects tampon capacity.
thepianistfroggollum@lemmynsfw.com 10 months ago
If you’re using human blood, yes. Plenty of pig and cow blood out there, though.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 10 months ago
And I’m not sure about the cow stuff, but pig blood is almost completely identical to human blood down to the subatomic level, so shouldn’t present many if any aberrations when compared to real life intended use!
HeartyBeast@kbin.social 10 months ago
Steel girders, pizza and bath mats are all identical to human blood at the sub atomic level. Best to compare at the molecular level
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Good point! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna fix my comment and then resume my steel girder and bath mats breakfast! Dennys have gotten WEIRD with their grand slam combos lately!
Soggy@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Mammal blood is all pretty much the same for something like this. Terrestrial mammals anyway, I don’t want to guess at the limits of adaptation for things like whales.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Or extraterrestrial blood aka slightly more acidic Mountain Dew Citrus Blast
ursaUltra@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They use it to test washing machines!
JoBo@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Maybe, maybe not. Blood stocks are precious but they do go out of date and blood banks would jump at the chance to do something useful with the wastage. It would also be perfectly possible to do RCTs with actual women. At the very least, it would be possible to produce a liquid with the right sort of viscosity instead of using water or saline. It’s just so ridiculously shit.
Tangent5280@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It sounds like nobody actually wanted to test with actual blood - not that there were technical or logistical difficulties, because if this was any other industrial problem, solutions would have been found the second time the problem showed up.
I don’t understand what the concerns against using real blood were. Was it expensive? Government regulated? It could have atleast had animals blood testing or something, or are we suddenly balking at all the butchering in the food industries now too?
I don’t agree with testing with real women though. That’s pretty much the same as saying skincare should be tested on real people, right? It should be TESTED elsewhere, and USED by women.
bane_killgrind@kbin.social 10 months ago
My take is blood is a biohazard unless it's quality is regulated, and therefore it's a biohazard unless it's expensive. I'll go read the article in a bit maybe I'm wrong.
idiomaddict@feddit.de 10 months ago
It is a biohazard, but that’s not a good reason not to use it, just use appropriate ppe and disposal
JoBo@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Every drug you take is tested on real people. They are asked to give informed consent, of course. But we don’t just decide that something looks like it might work and start prescribing it. Testing period products is a trivial ask compared to something like chemotherapy. Bless every single person who consents to participate, we’d be fucked without them.
flicker@kbin.social 10 months ago
Anecdotally, when I was a child and an ad for maxi pads came on TV showing that blue liquid, I had to listen to my father bitch about how there shouldn't be ads for menstrual products because they're "disgusting." And he shouldn't "have to think of that."
...so it's anecdotal only but I may have a theory about why...