Consider the case of Mary Stone. She was 18 in 1970 when Dr. Hugh Davis, a professor of gynecology at Johns Hopkins University, gave her an intrauterine contraceptive device called a Dalkon Shield. Stone soon developed pain and heavy bleeding, which she says Davis dismissed as "normal."
More than a year later, Davis performed exploratory surgery and discovered that Mary Stone had a severe pelvic infection. His treatment did nothing to relieve her chronic pain, and finally in 1977 Stone consulted another physician. He hospitalized her immediately and performed a total hysterectomy.
Mary Stone was 25 and childless at the time. Now, 20 years since she first got her Dalkon Shield, she still experiences physical pain -- and anguished grief over a loss that can never be recovered.
The case of Mary Stone, and thousands of others like it, are indeed finally getting some long overdue consideration. On November 6 the Supreme Court ended a bitter 15-year legal battle, rejecting two appeals that had delayed settlement of cases and clearing the way for the establishment of a $2.4 billion trust fund to compensate Dalkon Shield victims.
BETWEEN 1970 AND 1974, physicians inserted 2.4 million Dalkon Shields into American women, and another two million were sent abroad. Inventor Hugh Davis promoted it as the "superior modern contraceptive" with a pregnancy rate of 1.1 percent -- equal to that of the birth control pill without the pill's risky side effects.
Davis's financial stake in the Shield was not revealed. Nor was the fact that his studies actually showed a 5 to 6 percent pregnancy rate.
Wayne Crowder, who was named quality control supervisor of the Shield in March 1971, discovered through experimentation that the multifilament string attached to the shield conducted, or "wicked," bacteria from the vagina into the uterus. Officials of the A. H. Robins Co., manufacturer of the shield, were more concerned about the "male sensitivity" issue (a safer monofilament string would be stiffer and more problematic, they argued) and rejected Crowder's urgings to change the string. Crowder was eventually fired. Roger Tuttle, then a Robins attorney, testified in court a decade later that he had been ordered to purge A.H. Robins' files of all documents relating to the "wicking effect"; those documents were incinerated.
The A.H. Robins Co.'s falsehood and greed created a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of women. Many suffered uterine perforations or contracted pelvic inflammatory disease, suffering constant hemorrhaging, pain, and eventual scarring and blockage of the Fallopian tubes. Women by the thousands suffered abnormal pregnancies, spontaneous abortions, and sterility. At least 20 deaths have been attributed to the Dalkon Shield.
An alarming number of marriages disintegrated when husbands found that their wives were unable to meet their sexual desires or bear their children. Many women were sent to psychiatrists as "chronic complainers" or hypochondriacs. Most had no idea that the source of their problems was the small, crab-shaped device inside of them that had been touted as "the Cadillac of contraception."
PHYSICIANS AROUND THE COUNTRY began to lodge complaints with A.H. Robins. The company's response was to hire a public relations firm in New York to plant favorable stories about the Shield in the media and a $500-a-day-plus-expenses consultant to promote it. Lawsuits began to pour in from Shield victims. The company's defense included using lawyers who publicly accused women in court of poor hygiene and wanton sexuality.
In June 1974, under pressure from the federal Food and Drug Administration, A.H. Robins suspended marketing of the Dalkon Shield in the United States, although it continued to sell the device in other countries. Not until October 1984 -- 10 years later -- did A. H. Robins recommend that women wearing the shield have it removed.
By August 1985 A.H. Robins and Aetna Casualty and Surety, its insurer, had paid out more than $530 million to 9,500 Dalkon Shield claimants. In a move that President E. Claiborne Robins Jr. said was necessary "to protect the company's economic vitality against those who would destroy it for the benefit of a few," A.H. Robins filed for bankruptcy in a Richmond, Virginia federal court.
Six months later, under court order, A.H. Robins used media and direct mail to notify Dalkon Shield users of procedures and deadlines for filing claims. The company expected to receive 15,000 more claims; 334,863 women responded. That number was reduced to about 197,000 by the court through culling out cases involving other IUDs and dropping Shield claimants who failed to return a detailed court questionnaire.
The otherwise profitable A.H. Robins Co. -- producer of Chap Stick, Robitussin, and Sergeant's tick and flea collars -- became a desirable takeover target. In January 1988 American Home Products Corp. won the bid. Interestingly enough, American Home Products (AHP) is currently the target of a consumer boycott because of infant-formula abuses -- and happens to be the manufacturer of the synthetic estrogen Premarin, which many Dalkon Shield victims must take to replace lost hormones following a hysterectomy.
The AHP bid includes a stock swap, so that before any money is paid out to Dalkon Shield victims, A.H. Robins stockholders will net about $30 per share for stock worth $8 when the company declared bankruptcy. Since 42 percent of the stock is owned by the Robins family, they stand to walk away from the deal with $294 million, totally free of any further liability for their crimes against thousands of women.
BUT THE ABUSES HAVEN'T stopped there. Judge Robert Merhige Jr., in whose hands lies the future of the Dalkon Shield cases, has manipulated control of the trust fund, locating it in his town of Richmond, naming his court clerk, Michael Sheppard, as director, and undercutting the independent nature of the trust by dismissing the three trustees named by the claimants.
Lawyers, seeing a potential bonanza, have moved in to reap a large share of the claimants' benefits. Michael Pretl, a Baltimore attorney representing 1,500 Shield cases, has become infamous among claimants for his comment, "They tell you they've gone through hell for years, but often it's pain and bleeding and nothing more."
In December 1988 A.H. Robins sent a letter to all the active claimants, inviting them to accept a settlement of $125 to $725 for their injuries. According to Karen Hicks of the Dalkon Shield Information Network -- a self-described "kitchen table movement" of women who set out to educate themselves and other Shield victims about its dangers -- the letter was cynically mailed just before Christmas to Shield victims, many of whom were shouldering serious financial burdens, and implied that women who refused the money might receive nothing. Eighty-two thousand women accepted the paltry offer.
The way is now clear for the settlement of the remainder of the claims. Of the active claimants, 94 percent voted to approve the complicated, 287-page AHP buyout plan. The November 6 Supreme Court decision rejected a challenge from 500 of the most seriously injured women, who argued that there should be no ceiling on the trust fund and that A.H. Robins executives and Aetna should continue to face liability for their negligence.
The good news is that, after many long years of waiting, Dalkon Shield claimants will finally receive compensation. But those who are responsible for their misery have so far not only gone unpunished, they have made a profit from their crimes. And Dalkon Shields continue to be put into women around the globe, especially in the Third World.
Many victims will never receive a penny, particularly poor women, thousands of whom were given Dalkon Shields at inner-city clinics that either have not kept the necessary documentation or have since gone out of business. And even for those women who will receive compensation, there is little sense of justice.
Says Gloria Manago, who suffered two spontaneous abortions and gave birth to two stillborn children and another who lived for only one hour: "I just wish A.H. Robins would say, 'We're sorry.' All the money in the world isn't going to bring back my babies."
Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.
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