WEBVTT - Part One: The Worst Birth Control Device Ever Invented 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:05.760 Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that is only 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:09.280 ever introduced properly once, and it's this time. So you've 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.000 got your one. Yeah, thank you. This is the only time, Sovie. 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:14.280 Next time I'm going to be back to just shouting 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.279 the name of a dead dictator or screaming incoherently. I 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:19.919 wouldn't have it any other way, Robert. This is our one. 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:22.479 This is our one. And that good introduction was to 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:26.640 celebrate our very special guest for today's episode, Samantha McVeigh 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.960 of stuff Mom never told you. Oh, I feel so 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.680 special thing. Thank you. Thank you, Samantha uh not related 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:36.879 to friend of the pod to McVeigh had to do it. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:39.960 I knew it was coming. I was really really scared. 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:42.839 Spelled differently, I'm adopted. Let's just go and put those 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:45.920 two caveats in there. Yeah, I mean, you know, we 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:48.360 always bring up we always bring up old cousin Timmy 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:54.520 when we can't. Who doesn't Cousin Timmy and Uncle Ted 0:00:54.840 --> 0:00:59.279 um are our north stars. No, Um, you know we're 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.600 not talking of out terrorists today, Um, But in a 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:07.440 way we kind of are. We're talking about a bunch 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:10.360 of people who thought that they were doing good things 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:13.280 and wound up having a larger negative impact than any 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:16.800 single terrorist I've ever heard of. And that's always a story. Yeah, 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.319 mostly yeah, actually absolutely yeah. Well and white women and 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:24.800 white women. There's a white woman who's factors pretty centrally 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:27.800 into this story as well. But yes, mostly white men. 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:34.040 Um yeah, so um have you ever heard Samantha of 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:39.480 the Dalkon Shield? I have not to me. Oh this 0:01:39.560 --> 0:01:44.040 is a bad story. Oh no, break our friendship. That's 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:48.000 just beginning. Yeah, no, it's gonna shatter everything. Hell, here 0:01:48.000 --> 0:01:49.960 we go. None of this is going to be good, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.640 so obviously, Samantha. The The I U D or intrauterine 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:56.560 device is a very popular form of birth control, at 0:01:56.600 --> 0:01:59.560 least from like a user satisfaction. Yeah yeah, most people 0:01:59.560 --> 0:02:01.800 who get them tend to be happy with them. Um. 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.360 Gynecologists emphasize that the devices are extremely safe and effective, 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.760 and in fact, by some counts, the basic idea behind 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:10.040 an i U D, which is a device you insert 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:12.200 into the uterus in order to like, you know, stop 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.120 pregnancy from happening, goes back. It could go back as 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.560 far as a thousand years. People have been doing versions 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:19.480 of this for a long time. Can I just say 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.520 I'm so excited that you have me on for this episode. Yeah, 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:24.440 I don't know if it could be more fitting. Sophie 0:02:24.440 --> 0:02:27.799 could job Robert, great job. Sophie nailed it on this one. 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.560 All I did was read about a horrible, horrible tragedy 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:35.520 for three days. So obviously, modern i U d s 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:37.840 tend to be hormone based, which works better with the 0:02:37.880 --> 0:02:40.640 caveat that it can cause some health issues. Um. The 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:42.880 Marina would be the best modern example of that. There's 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.960 currently a big class action lawsuit brewing against Bear Pharmaceuticals. Um. 0:02:47.000 --> 0:02:49.320 The device has kind of a nasty tendency to perforate 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:51.839 the uterus of its wearer, which keep that in mind. 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.720 We'll be talking more about that in a minute. Um. Yeah, 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:58.280 there's also issues with the synthetic hormone the Marina releases, progestin. 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.080 There's another set of lawsuits that argues this can cause 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:07.000 idiopathic intercranial hypertension UM and basically things that mimic tumors UM, 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.240 which you know has happened to someone pretty close to me. 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.960 And yeah, it's it's it's it's it's messed up, um, 0:03:13.000 --> 0:03:15.800 but also still kind of being litigated. We don't know 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:18.680 exactly that it's the I D that caused it, but obviously, 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.720 like you know, any kind of medical device, there's issues, 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.360 and I don't think, um, you know, it's possible bears 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.040 culpable to some extent in you know, hiding aspects of it. 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.120 But it's also possible that they did nothing wrong, and 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:32.520 that just just you know, when you have a device 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:34.760 out like this that's hormonal, over the course of years 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:37.080 you start to realize their side effects. That's a pretty 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:39.480 normal part of medicine. There's always like at least five 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:44.320 percent or less chance that you hear that extra warning. Yeah, exactly, 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.080 So I don't like, I certainly you know what whatever 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:49.200 is actually happening with the Marina. We don't really know 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:51.760 the full extent or the full case of it yet, 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:53.720 and it doesn't seem like a case where people were 0:03:53.760 --> 0:03:56.400 just going off whole hog and doing something they knew 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.840 we're going to hurt people. The story of the Dalkon 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:01.720 Shield is a very different tail. This might be one 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.560 of the darkest stories in the history of contraception. A 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.440 sci fi name for a bad weapon. Yeah, it sounds 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.960 like it sounds kind of like a spaceship actually like, yeah, yeah, 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:15.560 I expected to be on star trucks. Someone tell me, yeah, 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:21.080 I think it'd be a Romulan vessel maybe yeah, maybe Cardassian. Um, 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:25.239 but yeah, Samath and I went. There was a moment 0:04:25.279 --> 0:04:28.480 of boss, Yeah, what have I got myself into? Okay, 0:04:28.520 --> 0:04:30.760 keep going. So the first modern i u D was 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.400 invented in nineteen o nine by a German guy. It 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:35.279 was made out of silkworm gut, and it was not 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.000 very popular. Um probably not hard to see why. Um, 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:40.599 I don't know that it was a bad i U D. 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:42.920 But silkworm gut doesn't seem like something you would want 0:04:42.920 --> 0:04:47.200 to put in your body. Um, I don't know. Uh. Yeah. 0:04:47.400 --> 0:04:50.520 Ernst Graffenberg, who was another German, invented the ring i 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:53.480 U D not long after. He's also Graffenberg is the 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.279 namesake for the g spot um. Yeah. And as a result, 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.760 he was very unpopular in Nazi Germany, both because he 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.120 was yeah, focused on like the fact that women could 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:07.880 feel pleasure and on stopping you yeah. Yeah. The Nazis 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:11.080 also weren't a big on the concept of contraception um, 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:15.200 because that meant less German babies, which was not not 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:19.200 not there not there. Yeah, yeah, there there were, of 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:25.479 course exactly specific genocides. Um an anti genocide for one 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:29.200 group of people. I guess so not that probably shouldn't 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:33.760 even go down that so relatively decent. I U D 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.280 started being invented in the early sixties, and the device 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.200 has gained rapid popularity among people with uterus is in 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.520 a desire to avoid getting babies and said, uterus is um? 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:46.920 You do? I don't know this state of affair, you do? 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.600 I m hmm, I don't know. I'll allow it, but 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:54.680 I don't think. I think it's uterus is um. I've 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.400 never had to say the plural. So this state of 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.000 affairs continued until nineteen seventy one, when of parmaceutical Giant 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:05.479 named A. H. Robbin's debut, the Dalkon Shield. The Dalkon 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:10.720 Shield featured a revolutionary design and like it, like, hmm, 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:18.120 what's a bad revolution? Um, they're all pretty great. Imagine 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.800 a bad revolution. It was not. It's not a good revolution. 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.560 It looks like Yeah, I'm trying to picture one. Keep going. Yeah, 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.760 I'm trying to get this word picture in my head 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:30.840 so I can follow along. I'm gonna actually suggest Sophie 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:32.560 finds a picture and sends it to you. While I 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.160 describe it, some people, most people will describe it as 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:37.320 looking like a crab, I actually think it looks more 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.360 like a trilobyte. Um. It's a tiny piece of plastic 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.320 with like five spiky legs, and the legs are meant 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:46.760 to stop it from coming free um once it's once 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:48.920 it's inside of you. Um. But it kind of looks 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.080 like the trilobite, the silhouette of a trilobite. Like you 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:54.039 look at it and it immediately looks like something that 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.680 shouldn't be inside a person. Okay, so I'm thinking of 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:01.360 the Matrix, that thing that comes out like absolutely, yes, 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:03.440 it does look like the thing that comes out of 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:10.920 Neo's stomach in the Matrix. You're going like, I don't 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:12.840 have a uterus. But as soon as I saw it, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:14.640 I was like, that should not be in a person. 0:07:14.680 --> 0:07:19.080 Oh no, it crawled and it's going to it looks 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:24.880 like a monster. Okay. I love that story honestly, which 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.680 is yeah, as much like a space invader as it 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:31.600 does like a crap um. So yeah, the legs were 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:33.520 kind of meant a hooking place inside of your uterus, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:35.160 and it also had a string, which was how it 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:37.960 could be removed later, and we'll talk more about the 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:39.920 string later. Like obviously a lot of I U d 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.320 s have strings, they tend to do them differently than 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:44.840 the Dalkon shield did for a very good reason. Did 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:47.000 you just did you just open the image because you 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:54.400 just made a face? Oh yeah, what do you think 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.960 of that? That looks like like a shoehorn with like 0:07:59.000 --> 0:08:03.480 an old school what is happening? We can debate on 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:06.080 what it looks like, but it definitely looks like something 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:11.400 that should not go in a person. I think, Yeah, 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:16.880 it's you don't put that in yourself. You're really bored. 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:18.720 I mean, if that's the thing, you do you but yeah, 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:20.760 I mean yeah, I not no, no shame, but like 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.360 if that is your thing, you're probably going to the doctor. 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.520 Yeah yeah, so um yeah. As I stated, the legs 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:30.080 were kind of meant a hooking in place inside of 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.800 your uterus and had a string um and most importantly 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.160 for what's going to come next, the shield was invented 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:39.719 by two male doctors, Hugh Davis and Erwin Learner. Uh 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.559 Davis was the gynecologist, and he was a major opponent 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:45.040 of the pill which was new at the time and 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:46.760 at the time had a lot of problems. They've just 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.880 been like a big like congressional trial over it because 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:52.760 it had been the company's selling it had misrepresented the 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:55.280 side effects UM and I think they make like that 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:57.720 it's better now, but obviously there's still side effects to 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.240 the pill. UM. So there was a big back lash 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:02.640 against the pill because the companies that has been like 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.080 this thing, it's just consequence free birth control, and it 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.079 absolutely is not. And so people were there was a 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:11.120 big backlash against the pill. And Davis, this guy in 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:15.320 ecologist who makes the Dalkon Shield, is both like doesn't 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.000 like the pill and also sees an opportunity in the 0:09:18.000 --> 0:09:20.880 backlash against it. UM and so he and this guy 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.480 Learner form a company called the Dalkon Company, and they 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.920 start marketing their shield as an alternative to the pill 0:09:28.240 --> 0:09:32.120 without any side effects UM, unlike the pill, which had 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.280 side effects. Let me guess that that's factually incorrect. Yeah, 0:09:36.320 --> 0:09:39.400 it didn't wind up being true. So I just really 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.880 hung on the back that's called the shield itself, like 0:09:42.960 --> 0:09:46.120 the name of the naming of it altogether, the whole thing. 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:47.520 I mean, to be fair, it kind of looks like 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:51.440 a shield. It does kind of look like a shield. 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:59.600 Weird cooking crab shield, key chain shield. Yeah, horrible, horrible, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.559 definitely horrible. So yeah, the pharmaceutical giant Age Robbins, though, 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.160 buys into dal cons like marketing scheme and purchases the 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:10.040 shields because they want the rights to sell it and 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:14.079 manufacture and stuff. Um. And they launched like an unprecedented 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.320 ad blitz, the biggest ad campaign that had ever preceded 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.360 a contraceptives release onto the market in the United States 0:10:20.440 --> 0:10:23.360 is launched by a Age Robbins to sell the Dalkon shield. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:25.640 And I'm gonna quote from the Embryo Project now to 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.440 talk about that. In nineteen seventy one, the Age Robbins company, 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:32.040 producers of the cough medicine robotus and bought the device 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:34.040 from Davis and put it on the market. The Age 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.720 Robbin's company began selling the shields in the US and 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.840 Puerto Rico and launched a large marketing campaign for the device. 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.480 The campaign emphasized the safety of the i U D 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:46.640 compared to traditional contraceptive pills. According to reporter Robert Thomas, 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:49.520 prior to government regulation of birth control, many Americans were 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.240 concerned with the safety of birth control pills and sought 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:56.520 safer alternatives. The manufacturers of the Dalkon Shield capitalized on that, 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.160 claiming that the device was safer than existing methods of 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:04.120 birth control. So that's you know, kind of including method. Yeah, 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.680 I'm just that's the safest method obviously. The only method 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:11.319 with no consequences is the pullout method of the time, 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.880 as long as you pull out fast enough, right behind 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:19.240 the bastards is sponsored by the pullout method. I'm glad 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:22.440 to be a part of this. You know, fake sponsor 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:27.560 we've had. Well, the pullout method is like heavily sponsored 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:32.600 by raytheon, raytheon. The more kids you have, accidentally, the 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:36.760 more targets we have for missiles. Um, yeah, sorry, good, 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:43.439 you're so good at this. The ad reads alone, fake 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.760 or real said, I don't know what it can't stop advertising, 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:53.280 So yeah, the big ablets comes out and the shield's inventus. Like. 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:55.640 The guys who actually made the Dalkon Shield had conducted 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:58.080 an internal study before they sold it to Age Robbins, 0:11:58.120 --> 0:11:59.800 and their studies showed that the device had a failure 0:11:59.880 --> 0:12:01.920 rate about one point one percent, and other i U 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:03.480 D s on the market had a failure rate of 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:05.439 two to three percent, so they were they advertised of 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:07.920 like effective better than all the other I U D 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.000 s um That was another big part of their of 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:15.359 their claim to fame. It was billed as completely safe, reliable, 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.040 in consequence free, and since it was mostly plastic, it 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.200 was made in the same factory as Chapstick, another Age 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.240 Robin's product. It retailed for four dollars and thirty five cents, 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:26.080 which made it one of the most affordable methods of 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:28.520 long term birth control on the market. So that all 0:12:28.559 --> 0:12:32.840 sounds fine. One point one percent failure rate, cheap, affordable, 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:36.559 made with the chapstick people. How do they give the 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.600 chapsticks that help you to load that up with chapstick 0:12:39.640 --> 0:12:42.560 it yourself? Yeah, chapsticks. You get a discount if you 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:47.440 use if if they let you, if you use a chapstick. Still, yeah, 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.800 that would be better than every time you say, I 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:53.880 keep thinking of the Radish, the dikeon Radish, Oh, the 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:58.000 dikeon Radish, Yes, and like it kind of has sprouts 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.400 like that. Yeah, it would be a say for a 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:02.920 method of birth control than the Dalcan shield for sure. 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.320 So in nineteen seventy one, the f d A was 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:09.960 not the all powerful entity that it is today. Drug 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:11.960 laws were looser, and since the shield was not a 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:16.000 method of hormonal birth control, it wasn't regulated as a drug, 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:18.800 so we got to skip the testing process normally required 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:21.880 for medical devices that go inside a human body. Uh. 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.760 And it kind of turns out, unfortunately, that giant pharmaceutical 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:29.000 company Age Robbin's lied to everybody about a number of 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:33.480 you know, my minor minor things. For example, they lied 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:35.960 about the rate at which the device worked because the 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:38.280 first study into the Shield's efficacy was flawed. It had 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:41.240 been done by two scientists over a period of eight months, 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.680 with just a handful of it with two people, and 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:46.440 be like, oh, you didn't get fined in three months? 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:48.679 Were good? Yeah, it was a tiny number of people 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:51.600 and it was a short period of time. Um, and 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.120 further study wasn't required by the f d A, so 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:58.000 Age Robbin's just didn't do any further study. Every time 0:13:58.000 --> 0:13:59.520 you say his name, I do think of like a 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:03.440 bondvill Like every time you say his name, H. Robbins 0:14:03.520 --> 0:14:08.040 or yeah, the Probins, like the H. Holmes, Like it's 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:11.440 it's like you there it is, Yeah, Age Robbins winds 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:14.680 up racking up a body count similar to HH Holmes. 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:21.040 Actually the story yeah so, um so H Robbins like 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:23.680 these two scientists who invent this thing, you know, study 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:25.880 a couple of dozen people over a few months and 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:28.480 are like, this is the failure rate, and age Robbins 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:31.240 sells it to millions of people without doing any further 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:34.360 research on it because they don't have to, and companies 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.080 don't do anything they don't have to. Um. And this 0:14:37.160 --> 0:14:40.760 is a problem because the first year's sales suggests the 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:42.880 failure rate was actually something like five and a half 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:45.720 percent UM, which makes it twice what other products on 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:47.800 the market wore, and it would wind up actually being 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:51.200 much higher than that. UM. So they pretty immediately know 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:53.800 that it fails a lot more often than they're advertising, 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.120 but they don't change their advertisements because that helps them 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:59.960 make money now, H Robbins. Yeah, of course H. Robin 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.160 also chose to keep on the d l the fact 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.040 that the shield contained copper salts. Uh, those were an 0:15:05.080 --> 0:15:09.520 active ingredient in the Dalkon shield. Um, no big, no big, 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.080 because if they told people about that, then it would 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:14.200 have to be regulated as a drug and they would 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.320 have had to go through FDA testing. So they just lied, 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:20.720 you know, just you know, just slightly, just the book 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.720 a little bit, just a little bit. Mhm. Why would 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:27.800 you you know? This is a very dangerous grift. Yeah, 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.120 it's getting it's getting dangerous. Here. To obscure the fact 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:35.280 that it included medical like it did include drugs without 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.160 technically lying, sales people were instructed to tell clients that 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:42.640 the Dalkon shield contained a confidential blending of ingredients, because 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:47.560 if you say it's a secret O medient, it's the 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:50.080 family recipe and please tell me. These people came around 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:53.240 these sells people with like briefcases to show off their 0:15:53.360 --> 0:15:56.640 dynamic key chain. Oh yeah, no, I've actually seen some 0:15:56.680 --> 0:15:58.640 of the packaging for that. You just got a Dalkon 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.880 shield at home? We would love a novel um. Yeah. 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.360 In three years, more than two point two million Dalkon 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:09.560 shields were sold in the United States, making it the 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:11.880 top selling I U D in the nation. Throughout the 0:16:11.880 --> 0:16:15.520 early nineteen seventies, A. H. Robbins and the devices inventors 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.800 pocketed massive amounts of money, and all was well, except 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.080 all was not well. That was a lie because the 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.120 pharmaceutical giant knew from the beginning that things were horribly 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:26.320 wrong with the Dalkon Shield. And I'm gonna quote here 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:29.520 from a contemporary rite up in mother Jones. Only a 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:31.600 few months after the Dalkon Shield went on sale in 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.720 nineteen seventy one, reports of adverse reactions began pouring into 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.080 the headquarters of the manufacturer H. Robbins. There were cases 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.800 of pelvic inflammatory disease and infection of the uterus that 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:44.080 can require weeks of bed rest and antibiotic treatment, sept semia, 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:49.000 blood poisoning, pregnancies resulting from spontaneous abortions at topic, tubal pregnancies, 0:16:49.120 --> 0:16:51.760 and perforations of the uterus. In a number of cases 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.960 the damage was so severe as to require hysterectomy. There 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.000 were even medical reports of Dalkon shields ripping their way 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:00.280 through the walls of the uterus and being found voting 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:04.399 free in the abdominal cavity far from the uterus. So 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:09.760 that's not ideal. Yeah, So this went on for how long? 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:16.480 How many and of associated this I mean, we'll get 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.399 to the end numbers. But you know, they they sell 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:22.840 millions of these before anything really blows up in the 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:26.200 media about it. And when I say sell millions of these. 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:32.680 I mean millions of these were put into people's bodies. Um. Yeah, yeah, 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:36.560 didn't have a clue that this was going to be problematic. Well, no, 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:39.439 some of them did. Actually, there were doctors who noticed 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:43.760 the shields flaws almost immediately and planned parenthood. Advocates of 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:46.000 Arizona made this note in a write up quote, not 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:48.080 everyone who laid eyes on the Dalkon shield got a 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.440 warm and fuzzy feeling from it. Those feet gave many 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:53.159 people The HEB. Gbs Dorothy Lansing and O. B. G. 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.240 Y In from Pennsylvania to right at the shield in 0:17:55.320 --> 0:17:59.040 nineteen seventy four, calling it a veritable instrument of torture. 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.719 Grouse looking little device with vicious spikes that made removal 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:05.160 very difficult for the doctor and painful for the user. 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.840 She refused to offer shields to her patients, of course, 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.120 a female doctor. Female doctor. Yeah, there's a fe male 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:14.720 doctor in here. But yeah, you suspect most of the 0:18:14.760 --> 0:18:17.359 first people to recognize it were the the lady O. B. 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.919 G ns. Um. Now, those vicious spikes were not the 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:24.199 worst part of the shield's design. Unfortunately, that would be 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:26.240 the string. So, like I said, most I e d 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.240 s have a string attached to them makes it easier 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.040 to remove. Uh. The normally those strings are made out 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:36.840 of a very particular kind of material that cannot transfer bacteria, right, 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:41.480 because the uterus is is sterile, right, and you want 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:49.360 to keep use that material. No. Um, they use nylon um, 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:53.160 which is like they use Yeah, they use nylon wrapped 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.639 in a sheath that deteriorated inside the body. Uh. And 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.840 the string was not at each end and so not sealed. Um. 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.520 Irwin Learner, who was the Dalcon Company's president, thought that 0:19:03.560 --> 0:19:05.600 the knot would be enough to keep bacteria from getting 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.560 into the string. Uh. And it was not. Uh. And 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.679 you know there were Yeah, there were a lot of 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:15.000 people did a lot of people warned them that like 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.639 this not like bacteria will get inside, it will travel 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:22.080 up the string into the uterus. And they said, that's 0:19:22.119 --> 0:19:24.840 never gonna happen. It's fine, it's fine. They'll never know. 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.440 It's fine. We have to figure we'd have to change 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:29.760 the product, and that will cost money. By the time 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.760 they figured out, I'll have their money. It's all good, 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.560 all good now. One of the reasons Learner thought that 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:36.600 the shield he'd helped design was safe was the fact 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:38.600 that the uterus is again a sterile environment, which is 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:42.640 why so many people use uterus as to clean their kitchens. Unfortunately. Yeah, 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:48.960 of course, yeah, it's just the right tool for the job. Um. Yeah, 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:54.520 it gets nature's bleach to say it. So, the nylon 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:56.600 in the string was not sterile, as I said, and 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.719 bacteria were able to enter through that unsealed knot and 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:02.879 apple up from the vagina into the uterus, crawling up 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.199 the dalkon shield strings like Rapunzel's hair ladder, and the 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.600 fact that there was actually a sheath around the string 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.040 protected the traveling bacteria from cervical mucus, which is normally 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:15.720 a barrier to bacteria. So that Planned Parenthood write up 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.080 I found described the string on the dalkon shield as 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:22.639 a bacterial expressway. In other words, they couldn't have designed 0:20:22.640 --> 0:20:25.919 a better device to transfer dangerous bacteria into the womb 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:29.000 if they had tried, Like it's made for that. It 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:33.479 really upgraded themselves, Like watch this hole, my beer, virus, 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:35.920 this hole my beer. Yeah. No, we made you guys, 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.280 your own little road and it's just for women. We 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:43.560 love you so much. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:46.199 first publicized failures of the Dalkon shield came in nineteen 0:20:46.240 --> 0:20:48.720 seventy three, when the device had already been inserted into 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:52.200 nearly two million women. Doctors with the University of Arizona 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:55.040 Medical Center inserted a shield into a patient who wound 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.520 up getting pregnant. Anyway, at this point in medical history, UM, 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:01.960 it was standard procedure to leave the I U D 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:06.200 in the uterus during a pregnancy. I think that's different now, um, 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:10.200 but that's the way things were at that point. Um. 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:12.399 And at this point, data was suggesting that that the 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.119 Dalkon shields failure rate was closer to ten than to 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.639 five percent. Again, the company had not updated any of 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:21.680 their their marketing material. Now, unfortunately, this patient who got 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:25.840 pregnant on the shield, UM the bacteria highway thing in her. 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:29.840 The string introduced a bunch of deadly bacteria into her womb, 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:32.800 and she started presenting with flu like symptoms, and three 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:35.679 days later she miscarried her nineteen week old fetus and 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:41.560 died from a massive bacterial infection. Uh. Yeah, So the 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:43.880 head of obstetrics at the medical center where that woman 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:45.720 died was a an O B G y N named 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.280 doctor Donald Christian Um. He began screaming as loud as 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:51.320 he could to anyone who would listen about the dangers 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:52.920 of the Dalkon shields. So we do have one good 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:54.720 male doctor and he was like, what the fuck this 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:58.199 is like clearly a problem. Um, yeah, and he he 0:21:58.240 --> 0:22:00.399 took this on as a crusade. He started talking to 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.680 guynetrologists and obstetricians around the country and gathering hundreds and 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.080 hundreds of stories of Dalkon shield users who had been 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:09.680 injured or killed by massive bacterial infections that started in 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:12.560 their uteruses. By the spring of nineteen seventy three, he 0:22:12.600 --> 0:22:15.080 felt he had enough data to bring to the f D. A. 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:17.520 Christian's goal was to get them to suspend sales and 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.520 use of the Dalkon Shield until further research could be done. 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:23.399 But being history's greatest monsters and also a bunch of 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:26.080 cowards without the stones to assault my mountaintop compound, the 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:30.000 FDA waffled, enraged in dismay, Dr Christian wrote a book 0:22:30.040 --> 0:22:33.639 length study into the shield titled Maternal Deaths associated with 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:36.760 an intra uter and Device. Um. He wasn't great at titling, 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:41.200 but he didn't he did. He did the work. Yeah, 0:22:41.200 --> 0:22:43.960 His study focused on four deaths and six life threatening 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:47.160 infections suffered by shield users. Now. While he was working 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:50.200 on his manuscript, other doctors and women's health advocates grew 0:22:50.240 --> 0:22:53.080 more and more aware of the Shields flaws. By nineteen 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:56.320 seventy four, seventeen deaths had been traced directly to the device, 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:58.920 and the actual number was probably significantly highly. I think 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:02.160 at least twenty four we know now, say how many 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:04.440 people like we're told this is not the reason, it's 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.240 because of your fault. You're never you did this wrong, 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:10.520 You did this your dirty and you got sick, which 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:12.600 is essentially what happens to women or of those who 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:16.000 have have uterus is in general gets sold. Is your fault, 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:19.399 you did this wrong. Sorry, yep, yep. So you have 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.200 to assume, like seventeen is the minimum that had died 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:25.280 at this point, and that's just hundreds and hundreds, potentially 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:29.720 even tens of thousands um with some level of serious 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:32.520 serious adverse effects like in a lot of cases like 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:36.000 if you're getting um pelvic inflammatory syndrome, like your bedridden 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:38.639 for weeks. Like this is the amount of human misery 0:23:38.680 --> 0:23:42.920 that has been caused by nineteen seventy four is pretty astonishing. Um, 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:45.760 The estimate that I found is that for every million 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:49.919 dollars A H. Robbins, the pharmaceutical company, profited from selling 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:53.479 the Dalkon shield, their customers spent an estimated twenty million 0:23:53.520 --> 0:23:56.080 dollars on medical care due to the illness as it cost, 0:23:57.000 --> 0:24:02.360 which is pretty pretty bad. It's just it's just kind 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:04.400 of like one more thing of like how little they 0:24:04.440 --> 0:24:07.800 care about women's health, people with you to help, like 0:24:07.960 --> 0:24:12.120 people in that general like gnecology. How little is actually 0:24:12.359 --> 0:24:17.600 worried about and even to this day obviously, yeah, like 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:21.360 I think it's better, but not good now, I mean, 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:25.840 you know, yeah, and I'm certainly not saying it's absolutely 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:29.040 better now. I won't know, but I haven't heard of 0:24:29.040 --> 0:24:31.240 one quite this bad. Although maybe the Marina will wind 0:24:31.320 --> 0:24:33.120 up being that bad, Like we don't really know at 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:37.680 this point. Tell me that although, yeah, Probert, why I 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:42.160 think people should look into that. There's something absolutely interesting 0:24:42.240 --> 0:24:44.400 lawsuits happening now. I know a lot of people who 0:24:44.440 --> 0:24:46.840 have them and have great, great experiences with them, but 0:24:46.840 --> 0:24:49.879 it does concern me a bit. Um. Those numbers are 0:24:49.880 --> 0:24:53.760 still astonishing, and things that are being figured out the best, 0:24:54.840 --> 0:25:00.240 and this is just so blatantly horrible. Um, Like you're 0:25:00.280 --> 0:25:02.960 talking by nineteen seventy four, when it's mostly still on 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:06.119 the market, tens of thousands of women have been hospitalized 0:25:06.160 --> 0:25:08.760 because of their Dalkon shields. Like we're not talking about 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:11.560 oh yeah, you know one percent of people or whatever 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:13.720 are going to have a negative response, and that's a problem. 0:25:13.760 --> 0:25:16.639 But it's like within like this is a a sizeable 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:19.720 chunk of the people who get the dal shield inserted 0:25:19.800 --> 0:25:22.359 have health consequences as a result of it, right, because 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:24.120 we're not just talking about death, We're talking about all 0:25:24.160 --> 0:25:27.880 of the problematic issues that coscarriages and topic pregnancies which 0:25:27.920 --> 0:25:31.240 are nypermayors and for those who ye are wanting children 0:25:31.240 --> 0:25:33.679 and lots of children, all of these things. It's just 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:37.280 such a heartbreaking thing. Well especially you have a lot 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:41.400 of women who wanted children, who got pregnant and then 0:25:41.520 --> 0:25:43.280 or who wanted children at some point but didn't want 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:45.920 them now got the Dalkon shield and because of complications, 0:25:45.960 --> 0:25:51.439 had their uteruses removed. Um yeah, it's just a real bummer. 0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:54.480 Um yeah, I'm gonna quote from Mother Jones again. The 0:25:54.520 --> 0:25:56.679 Dalkon shield was turning out to be far more dangerous 0:25:56.720 --> 0:25:58.600 than any other i u D already on the market. 0:25:58.680 --> 0:26:01.159 Later research in Canada and Jerry Many show that microscopic 0:26:01.200 --> 0:26:04.440 defects helped account for the shield's ability to slice into 0:26:04.480 --> 0:26:08.119 the uterine wall. Physicians found insertion was difficult, patients sounded 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:11.200 almost unbearable. As early as February nineteen seventy one, a 0:26:11.240 --> 0:26:13.639 physician wrote to Age Robbins in reference to the insertion 0:26:13.680 --> 0:26:15.919 of the Dalkon shield. I have found the procedure to 0:26:15.920 --> 0:26:19.639 be the most traumatic manipulation ever perpetrated on womanhood. And 0:26:19.680 --> 0:26:23.520 I have inserted thousands of other varieties that would they 0:26:23.600 --> 0:26:27.800 keep doing this? Like what because? Because not to stop? 0:26:27.840 --> 0:26:32.240 It's like, quite well, we just kept pushing. It's fine, 0:26:32.280 --> 0:26:35.080 They're fine. They screamed a little bit, Everything's fine. I 0:26:35.119 --> 0:26:37.720 think these doctors are stopping. Like I think the doctors 0:26:37.720 --> 0:26:39.760 who are complaining like do it a few times and 0:26:39.880 --> 0:26:42.919 have a horror, realize that it's bad on everyone, and 0:26:42.960 --> 0:26:46.159 then say like, well, I'm not going to do this anymore. Um. 0:26:46.240 --> 0:26:48.359 But I'm wondering how many doctors just kept pushing and 0:26:48.359 --> 0:26:50.560 be like suck it up, which, by the way, women 0:26:50.600 --> 0:26:53.880 do here today about some procedures and being told you're 0:26:53.920 --> 0:26:56.800 not really in pain. You're making the ship up. So 0:26:56.920 --> 0:26:59.600 I can't imagine them when they're like, suck it up. 0:27:00.119 --> 0:27:02.760 I think it's most doctors do that because you you 0:27:02.840 --> 0:27:04.840 do have you do have good doctors like Christian, like 0:27:04.880 --> 0:27:06.800 this person who wrote that letter in nineteen seventy one, 0:27:06.840 --> 0:27:08.720 like the woman we heard from the lady ob Jua, 0:27:08.800 --> 0:27:11.880 and we heard from earlier. Um, who try to blow 0:27:11.920 --> 0:27:14.800 the whistle, who complain, who say this is unacceptable. But 0:27:14.880 --> 0:27:17.920 I think the bulk of people inserting them are just like, yeah, 0:27:18.000 --> 0:27:19.680 it hurts, Like what do you what do you want? 0:27:19.960 --> 0:27:22.439 Like stop complaining? You know you all have sex. You 0:27:22.440 --> 0:27:25.000 have to have pain to have sex, and then obvious 0:27:25.080 --> 0:27:27.240 and then and then die in the operating table. Yeah, 0:27:27.320 --> 0:27:29.840 but I wonder also for Dr Christensen, it took someone 0:27:29.880 --> 0:27:34.800 to die before realizing how bad this was, right, Yeah. 0:27:34.840 --> 0:27:37.080 I mean I don't know what his direct experience because 0:27:37.080 --> 0:27:38.720 he was the he was like the head of the 0:27:38.840 --> 0:27:40.719 unit at the hospital, so I don't know if he 0:27:40.760 --> 0:27:42.640 was actually putting them in, if this was the first 0:27:42.680 --> 0:27:44.440 time he maybe thought about it, Like I I don't 0:27:44.480 --> 0:27:48.080 know enough about the guy's actual history. Um, I just 0:27:48.160 --> 0:27:50.560 know that when when that happened, he went on the 0:27:50.600 --> 0:27:52.439 war path. But I don't know, like maybe he was 0:27:52.480 --> 0:27:55.359 putting it in for years before someone died. I really 0:27:55.400 --> 0:28:00.119 just I couldn't tell you many questions. So in of 0:28:00.200 --> 0:28:03.240 nineteen seventy four, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America banned 0:28:03.240 --> 0:28:06.320 the Dalkon Shield from use in their clinics. They recommended 0:28:06.359 --> 0:28:08.440 it be removed from patients who had had it inserted. 0:28:08.600 --> 0:28:10.919 Even this came with harms to patients because the vicious 0:28:10.960 --> 0:28:13.199 spikes in the Dalkon shields side had a tendency to 0:28:13.240 --> 0:28:15.960 tear through soft tissue when yanked out. As deaths and 0:28:16.080 --> 0:28:19.360 nightmare stories of injuries mounted, the FDA begged Age Robbins 0:28:19.359 --> 0:28:22.399 to stop selling their Vaginal Death Crap, which is a 0:28:22.440 --> 0:28:24.720 pretty good name for a band. I was going to say, 0:28:24.720 --> 0:28:29.920 who's a boy vaginal? Yeah, solid metal band, Oh my god, 0:28:30.840 --> 0:28:33.440 the songs, or maybe it's just an emo band. Yeah, 0:28:33.680 --> 0:28:36.439 Dalkon Shield is not a bad band name either. You know, 0:28:36.680 --> 0:28:39.520 I'm still holding it. That's a Star Trek weapon, Yeah, yeah, 0:28:39.520 --> 0:28:41.080 I do think it's more of a Star Trek a 0:28:41.120 --> 0:28:44.760 Star Trek ship. So the company refused to stop selling. 0:28:44.840 --> 0:28:49.000 You know, they're horrible, horrible, poisoned i u D executives 0:28:49.040 --> 0:28:51.160 worried that doing so would be seen as an admission 0:28:51.160 --> 0:28:53.680 of guilt um and since tens of thousands of women 0:28:53.680 --> 0:28:56.160 were suing them for injuries, it would be expensive to 0:28:56.200 --> 0:29:00.560 admit guilt. So, because so many people are suing us, 0:29:00.600 --> 0:29:03.240 we can't stop selling this because then they'll win their 0:29:03.240 --> 0:29:06.280 cases against us for the injuries and we did to them, right, 0:29:06.760 --> 0:29:09.080 So I assumed there would be a lot of lawsuits 0:29:09.800 --> 0:29:13.840 and it would go so many, so many lawsuits. This 0:29:13.920 --> 0:29:17.240 company gets sued like you would not believe, well, like 0:29:17.280 --> 0:29:21.240 you would absolutely believe they're contempt for human life. Yeah. 0:29:22.560 --> 0:29:25.440 So ah, Proven's lawyers took the text the shield was 0:29:25.480 --> 0:29:27.920 no more dangerous than any other i U D. They 0:29:28.000 --> 0:29:30.920 argued that all the pelvic inflammatory disease cases tied to 0:29:30.960 --> 0:29:33.200 the shield had actually nothing to do with it. The 0:29:33.240 --> 0:29:36.480 company spokesman Thomas Poe told press, they have their experts, 0:29:36.600 --> 0:29:40.400 we have ours, which is a very capital something to say, 0:29:40.680 --> 0:29:45.360 well we got experts. Bring my people who have no 0:29:45.480 --> 0:29:48.200 degree in this, but they're gonna be really loud about it. Yeah. 0:29:48.240 --> 0:29:50.080 It's that oil industry ship where it's like, yeah, well 0:29:50.080 --> 0:29:52.200 we got scientists too, and we pay them to say 0:29:52.240 --> 0:29:59.600 what the opposite of what you're saying, but louder. Despite 0:29:59.600 --> 0:30:01.800 all of the US by the end of nineteen seventy four, 0:30:01.840 --> 0:30:04.920 the Dalkon Shield was effectively off the market. They kind 0:30:04.920 --> 0:30:08.080 of just quietly stopped selling it after a while. More 0:30:08.080 --> 0:30:10.440 than two and a half million and well stopped selling 0:30:10.480 --> 0:30:12.800 it in the US after a while. More on that later, 0:30:13.120 --> 0:30:15.200 more than two and a half million American women had 0:30:15.200 --> 0:30:18.120 the shields installed in their bodies. As many as two 0:30:18.240 --> 0:30:22.160 hundred thousand people testified that they had been injured by 0:30:22.200 --> 0:30:25.240 the Dalkon Shield and filed claims against Age Robbins. Some 0:30:25.280 --> 0:30:28.920 set counts say four hundred thousand, like a huge amount 0:30:28.960 --> 0:30:31.440 of the people who get this wind up with, like, 0:30:31.800 --> 0:30:36.080 you know, legal complaints against Age H. Robbins. So the 0:30:36.080 --> 0:30:38.880 pharmaceutical giant would spend a full decade fighting these cases 0:30:38.920 --> 0:30:41.080 tooth and nail, doing everything and its power to avoid 0:30:41.120 --> 0:30:44.800 any kind of legal consequences for its actions. Numerous company 0:30:44.800 --> 0:30:48.000 executives perjured themselves in court. Tens of thousands of pages 0:30:48.000 --> 0:30:51.280 of internal documents were destroyed and direct violation with court orders. 0:30:51.520 --> 0:30:55.000 FDA offices and Capitol Hill were flooded with AH Robbin's 0:30:55.040 --> 0:30:57.840 lawyers just doing everything that they could to slow down 0:30:58.240 --> 0:31:00.840 the process at which like they were mitigated because they 0:31:00.920 --> 0:31:03.120 knew eventually litigation was going to mean the end of 0:31:03.160 --> 0:31:05.920 the company and they wanted to suck as much value 0:31:05.960 --> 0:31:07.720 out of it as they possibly couldn't put it in 0:31:07.800 --> 0:31:10.920 the hands of their shareholders. Part of why they're delaying 0:31:11.000 --> 0:31:13.520 this so much is because they're selling it to other 0:31:13.560 --> 0:31:20.960 people outside the United States after they stopped the US. Yeah, 0:31:20.960 --> 0:31:24.040 you gotta keep that ship going before your companies destroyed 0:31:24.040 --> 0:31:27.400 by a river of lawsuits. That was no one was 0:31:27.520 --> 0:31:31.200 dark and griffty. Oh it's about Sopha. You have no 0:31:31.240 --> 0:31:33.080 idea how bad this is gonna get. It's gonna get 0:31:33.080 --> 0:31:36.400 so much worse. Well before we get to so much worse, right, 0:31:36.920 --> 0:31:40.240 you know what it is, right? Yeah, you know what 0:31:42.040 --> 0:31:52.280 won't so vaginal death crabs. God, I hope not um 0:31:52.440 --> 0:32:03.720 audible Lobster. Yeah, either way, we're back. And I'm thinking 0:32:03.720 --> 0:32:06.120 about Red Lobster because of what you just said, because 0:32:06.160 --> 0:32:08.640 they have a new Mountain dew Margarita, I really wanted 0:32:08.680 --> 0:32:11.480 to go. I went to the nearest Red Lobster to me, 0:32:11.560 --> 0:32:14.840 and it was across the river in Washington, and everyone 0:32:14.920 --> 0:32:17.600 in the line outside didn't have a mask and it 0:32:17.640 --> 0:32:19.480 was inside seating only. And I was like, no, that 0:32:19.520 --> 0:32:22.280 seems I don't want to get COVID for this margarita. 0:32:22.360 --> 0:32:26.800 Are you sure? Yeah? But really, I what about cheddar biscuits. 0:32:27.440 --> 0:32:29.680 I've gotten a lot of diseases for cheddar biscuits in 0:32:29.720 --> 0:32:32.720 the past, enough that I think I don't need that anymore. 0:32:34.480 --> 0:32:37.800 I'm starting to question what you're worth, Like what what 0:32:38.720 --> 0:32:41.520 we've all We've all gotten a little bit of a 0:32:41.600 --> 0:32:46.000 little bit of what you think, like hepatitis whatever. It's fine, Like, yeah, 0:32:46.840 --> 0:32:48.800 you're not gonna go to red lobster and not get 0:32:48.800 --> 0:32:53.200 a disease. It's so bacon wrapt gallops that are kind 0:32:53.240 --> 0:32:56.600 of cooked. They are kind of cooked, and they only 0:32:56.680 --> 0:32:59.640 about a third of them have the haunt of virus. 0:32:59.760 --> 0:33:01.880 So that's a pretty good ratio. I mean, have you 0:33:01.920 --> 0:33:04.320 gone for shrimp thus come on, Oh yeah, no, you're 0:33:04.360 --> 0:33:12.200 definitely getting the hunt of virus. Is shrimp fust absolutely anyway? 0:33:12.240 --> 0:33:17.240 But man, them shrimps is cheap. That's so good. So 0:33:17.360 --> 0:33:20.200 in the end, the law did come for H. Robbins. 0:33:20.440 --> 0:33:23.600 In nine four, Judge Miles W. Lord ruled against the 0:33:23.600 --> 0:33:27.080 company and in favor of its hundreds of thousands of victims. Again, 0:33:27.200 --> 0:33:29.520 they're being sued in court by more than like a 0:33:29.600 --> 0:33:31.960 quarter of a million people at this point, which is, 0:33:32.720 --> 0:33:35.880 if that many people are suing you, you're in the wrong. 0:33:36.240 --> 0:33:38.000 Like I don't even need to hear about the case. 0:33:38.000 --> 0:33:41.960 So two fifty people are suing you, okay, but that's 0:33:42.000 --> 0:33:46.480 all like five of the population. You should you shouldn't 0:33:46.480 --> 0:33:51.840 be allowed in society anymore. Maybe it's fine. So um. 0:33:51.920 --> 0:33:54.080 Some of those victims were in the courtroom while Judge 0:33:54.080 --> 0:33:58.080 Lord read his his his judgment, and many of them 0:33:58.120 --> 0:34:01.320 wept openly as he read this. To the companies top executives, 0:34:01.920 --> 0:34:04.160 it is not enough to say I did not know. 0:34:04.440 --> 0:34:07.440 It was not me, look elsewhere. Time and time again, 0:34:07.600 --> 0:34:09.640 each of you has used this kind of argument in 0:34:09.680 --> 0:34:12.759 refusing to acknowledge your responsibility and in pretending to the 0:34:12.800 --> 0:34:15.560 world that the chief officers and the directors of your 0:34:15.600 --> 0:34:20.320 gigantic multinational corporation have no responsibility for the company's acts 0:34:20.440 --> 0:34:23.759 and omissions. Under your direction, your company has in fact 0:34:23.840 --> 0:34:26.840 continued to allow women, tends of thousands of them, to 0:34:26.880 --> 0:34:29.800 wear this device, a deadly depth charge in their wounds, 0:34:30.040 --> 0:34:34.120 ready to explode at any time. This is corporate irresponsibility 0:34:34.200 --> 0:34:38.080 at its meanest. Pretty good, many good band names in there. 0:34:38.160 --> 0:34:47.359 Yeah they're Veginale. Uh Se. Conviction is today because I 0:34:47.400 --> 0:34:50.120 feel like we do not hold obviously and I don't know, 0:34:50.200 --> 0:34:54.360 you know, of all people, enough heads of corporations irresponsible 0:34:54.400 --> 0:34:58.160 for these things, and they didn't then, like the company 0:34:58.280 --> 0:35:00.640 was destroyed, which is good, better or than like what's 0:35:00.680 --> 0:35:05.320 happening to Perdue, um, you know, for starting the opiate crisis? 0:35:05.760 --> 0:35:08.360 But they didn't. None of these guys went to prison, 0:35:08.560 --> 0:35:11.359 and they should have. Yeah, yeah, you put you put 0:35:11.360 --> 0:35:13.080 twenty of these guys in prison. Maybe we didn't have 0:35:13.080 --> 0:35:15.360 had an opiate crisis because maybe Perdue would have been like, 0:35:15.520 --> 0:35:18.640 oh ship, there's still Age Robin guys doing time for 0:35:18.719 --> 0:35:21.520 the vaginal depth charges. Like I don't know, I feel 0:35:21.520 --> 0:35:23.640 like those are narcissists who really believe they're the ones 0:35:23.640 --> 0:35:25.480 who get away with this, So it really doesn't matter. 0:35:26.480 --> 0:35:28.239 Maybe I say we still give it a shot and 0:35:28.280 --> 0:35:31.480 throw it. I'm not opposed to the don't get me wrong. 0:35:33.280 --> 0:35:36.080 So um, now, the company was set up to start 0:35:36.080 --> 0:35:38.759 a multimillion dollars and eventually think it was a multibillion 0:35:38.760 --> 0:35:41.399 dollar program to remove the shields from women and pay 0:35:41.440 --> 0:35:43.440 for them for their pain and injuries. Of the more 0:35:43.480 --> 0:35:46.839 than four hundred thousand lawsuits filed against the company were 0:35:46.880 --> 0:35:49.120 litigated or settled, and a lot of those were aggregating 0:35:49.320 --> 0:35:51.840 like thousands of cases together obviously, because you get that 0:35:51.880 --> 0:35:54.239 many people suing and you start like lumping them into 0:35:54.239 --> 0:35:56.960 class actions and stuff. The company was forced to declare 0:35:56.960 --> 0:35:59.759 bankruptcy in nineteen eighty five, and it collapsed under the 0:35:59.800 --> 0:36:03.240 way of so many judgments. By six and estimated hundred 0:36:03.280 --> 0:36:07.160 thousand American women still had Dalkon shields in their bodies. 0:36:07.760 --> 0:36:13.520 Think that long. Yeah. Yeah. The catastrophic and extremely public 0:36:13.560 --> 0:36:16.040 failure of the Dalkon shield nearly killed the i u 0:36:16.160 --> 0:36:19.400 D itself. By nineteen eight six, only one brand of 0:36:19.400 --> 0:36:21.520 iu D was still on the market in the United States. 0:36:21.560 --> 0:36:24.080 In the nineteen seventies, nearly ten percent of US women 0:36:24.120 --> 0:36:27.279 who used contraception used an i U D. Today that 0:36:27.400 --> 0:36:29.840 number is less than one percent. It's around one percent. 0:36:30.040 --> 0:36:32.440 And it's generally agreed that the main reason for the 0:36:32.480 --> 0:36:34.759 collapse and popularity of the i U D was the 0:36:34.840 --> 0:36:37.960 Dalkon shield that it created, Because obviously, like you hear 0:36:38.000 --> 0:36:39.839 that story, like, you're not gonna get one of those, 0:36:40.480 --> 0:36:42.719 you already get the horror story of the you know, 0:36:42.800 --> 0:36:48.760 floating i u D, which does happen. Yeah. In European nations, 0:36:48.880 --> 0:36:51.120 most of which never imported the shield i u D 0:36:51.239 --> 0:36:53.520 s remained popular. In the U S still has the 0:36:53.560 --> 0:36:56.040 lowest rate of i u D use of any Western nation, 0:36:56.280 --> 0:36:59.239 according to the Gutmacher Institute quote. The public health need 0:36:59.320 --> 0:37:01.080 for more whitespread use of the i u D is 0:37:01.080 --> 0:37:04.880 revealed in one simple statistic. Fifty of unintended pregnancies in 0:37:04.920 --> 0:37:08.080 the United States are the result of contraceptive failure or misuse. 0:37:08.320 --> 0:37:10.520 Because the i u D is almost impossible to misuse 0:37:10.560 --> 0:37:12.239 and is far less likely to fail from the pill, 0:37:12.280 --> 0:37:14.960 the condom, or the injectable. A national increase in iu 0:37:15.040 --> 0:37:17.040 D use that comes at the expense of such methods 0:37:17.040 --> 0:37:19.799 would reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. If some women 0:37:19.880 --> 0:37:21.880 choose the i u D instead of relying on natural 0:37:21.880 --> 0:37:24.920 birth control methods or chance, the number of unintended pregnancies 0:37:24.920 --> 0:37:27.840 should also decline. An industry sponsored survey of seven thousand 0:37:27.960 --> 0:37:30.520 U S women conducted in n revealed that many current 0:37:30.560 --> 0:37:32.719 i u D users had switched from the condom, the 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:37.279 pill or withdrawal. So again, pretty significant consequences to this. 0:37:37.360 --> 0:37:39.320 Outside of the suffering of the people who have it 0:37:39.400 --> 0:37:41.759 implanted in them, there's just there's god knows how many 0:37:41.840 --> 0:37:44.719 millions at this point of unintended pregnancies have occurred as 0:37:44.760 --> 0:37:48.879 a result of this thing. Um, you know which it's 0:37:48.960 --> 0:37:52.000 it's It's just the amount of human shrapnel caused by 0:37:52.040 --> 0:37:55.279 Age Robbins is pretty astonishing. And you add that to 0:37:55.320 --> 0:37:58.240 the couple of dozen people we know died, the hundreds 0:37:58.280 --> 0:38:00.520 of thousands of people who are injured and rendered fertile, 0:38:01.000 --> 0:38:03.640 And yeah, Age Robbins in the Dalkon Company make a 0:38:03.680 --> 0:38:07.399 pretty solid bastard. But we're actually just scraping the start 0:38:07.440 --> 0:38:13.680 of this story, Samantha, don't barely gotten started. Yeah, between 0:38:13.760 --> 0:38:18.680 the word slicing and scraping in this is a slicy 0:38:18.760 --> 0:38:25.440 scraping thing. You said, Bacteria Expressway. Bacterial Expressway, which is 0:38:25.480 --> 0:38:28.000 another good band name. This is a great episode for 0:38:28.040 --> 0:38:31.919 that is a punk band. Oh yeah, Bacterial Expressway open 0:38:32.000 --> 0:38:40.280 for uterine depth charge back. So um. The United States 0:38:40.320 --> 0:38:43.799 Agency for International Development, or us AID exists to do 0:38:43.880 --> 0:38:48.200 exactly what the name would suggests. Help other nations to develop. Now, 0:38:48.280 --> 0:38:50.320 one of the ways in which nineteen seventies thinkers in 0:38:50.360 --> 0:38:52.800 the government felt poor nations needed help developing was it 0:38:52.880 --> 0:38:56.200 giving their populations access to contraceptives. And obviously this isn't 0:38:56.239 --> 0:38:59.279 necessarily nefarious. It's great to get a lot of people 0:38:59.280 --> 0:39:02.640 are poor the money for contraceptives given free contraceptives always 0:39:02.719 --> 0:39:05.640 a good thing. I am supportive of people having access 0:39:05.680 --> 0:39:10.600 to good birth control. Um not a problem, except it 0:39:10.600 --> 0:39:12.440 becomes a problem because of the way that they do it. 0:39:12.520 --> 0:39:16.080 So back in two horrifying stories of the Dalkon Shields, 0:39:16.080 --> 0:39:18.520 Deadly Flaws had first started going public in a big way, 0:39:18.920 --> 0:39:21.040 and it was immediately obvious. They didn't stop selling it 0:39:21.080 --> 0:39:23.160 for two more years. But the people at H. Robbins 0:39:23.239 --> 0:39:25.239 knew pretty much as soon as this thing got on 0:39:25.280 --> 0:39:27.920 the market that it was going to get taken off 0:39:27.920 --> 0:39:29.840 the market because it was hurting too many people. And 0:39:29.840 --> 0:39:32.200 they didn't stop selling it in the US because of that, 0:39:32.320 --> 0:39:34.880 God no, But they did immediately start looking at places 0:39:34.880 --> 0:39:37.239 they could sell it overseas in order to make sure 0:39:37.239 --> 0:39:39.200 that they had a long term way of making money 0:39:39.200 --> 0:39:44.760 off of the Dalkon shield because they're good people. Yeah, 0:39:45.160 --> 0:39:50.160 So yeah. Yeah. Obviously, they still kept pumping out as 0:39:50.160 --> 0:39:53.120 many of these devices into the US market as possible, 0:39:53.120 --> 0:39:55.680 but being forward thinking capitalists, they started looking further afield 0:39:55.680 --> 0:39:59.359 for new markets from Mother Jones. With any other kind 0:39:59.360 --> 0:40:01.960 of hazardous product, the manufacturer might at this point have 0:40:02.000 --> 0:40:04.320 had to search out some sleazy broker to arrange a 0:40:04.360 --> 0:40:07.240 secret dump. Not so with a contraceptive device. The Office 0:40:07.239 --> 0:40:09.520 of Population within a I D had a budget of 0:40:09.520 --> 0:40:11.840 a hundred and twenty five million dollars to spend on 0:40:11.880 --> 0:40:16.440 the purchase and overseas distribution of contraceptives. Director RT. Ravenholt 0:40:16.440 --> 0:40:20.080 was known to be a population control enthusiast who would 0:40:20.080 --> 0:40:22.640 ask few questions about a good deal on Dalkon shields. 0:40:22.719 --> 0:40:25.160 It was only natural for Robbins to turn to the government. 0:40:25.520 --> 0:40:29.120 Robert W. Nichols, Robbins director of International Marketing, wrote to 0:40:29.120 --> 0:40:31.480 the Population Office of a I D to interest them 0:40:31.520 --> 0:40:34.719 in placing this fine product with the population control programs 0:40:34.719 --> 0:40:38.760 and family planning clinics throughout the Third World. Nicholas sweeten 0:40:38.800 --> 0:40:41.440 the deal with a special discount, which dramatically illustrates the 0:40:41.480 --> 0:40:44.520 double standard drug companies apply to Third World consumers. The 0:40:44.600 --> 0:40:47.440 company offered a I d the shield in bulk packages 0:40:47.880 --> 0:40:53.440 unsterilized at forty eight percent off. So that's that's not 0:40:53.480 --> 0:40:56.719 a good side. So the word population controls as a lot, 0:40:57.320 --> 0:41:00.120 that's not a good side either. That's never never a 0:41:00.200 --> 0:41:03.120 good sentence or a phrase to hear A b I 0:41:03.200 --> 0:41:06.160 just love. It's like vaginal death crabs for everyone. How 0:41:06.239 --> 0:41:11.319 to discommit price unsterilized. You're welcome, no problems, There's no problem, Paul, 0:41:11.480 --> 0:41:17.480 have vaginal death crabs. Everyone. Also, this is going to 0:41:17.560 --> 0:41:21.040 remain in your vagina for a long while, hanging in there, 0:41:21.080 --> 0:41:23.520 hanging in If you try to root move it out, 0:41:23.520 --> 0:41:25.759 it's going to rip you up like a fucking shrapnel 0:41:25.800 --> 0:41:29.080 from a mortar. But it's okay because it's population control, 0:41:29.360 --> 0:41:31.959 because we've got to control that population of you kinds 0:41:31.960 --> 0:41:37.400 of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you did kind of 0:41:37.440 --> 0:41:40.319 hit on the fact that population control enthusiast is a 0:41:40.440 --> 0:41:45.760 terrifying thing to call someone. Um now that that actually 0:41:45.760 --> 0:41:50.279 refers to a specific intellectual movement within the Western civilization 0:41:50.280 --> 0:41:55.600 that goes back almost a hundred years. Um. See, so 0:41:55.920 --> 0:41:57.520 I had this written a little bit differently, but I'm 0:41:57.520 --> 0:41:59.799 just gonna go ahead and say, surprise, this is not 0:42:00.000 --> 0:42:02.400 an episode about the Dalkon Shield. That was just the introduction. 0:42:02.440 --> 0:42:05.400 This is an episode about the population control movement, and 0:42:05.440 --> 0:42:07.880 I just kind of wanted to, like a Dalkon shield 0:42:08.120 --> 0:42:14.359 like slide in secretly and then surprise you, m yeah, 0:42:14.640 --> 0:42:18.120 and I wedged myself in there, and now we're going 0:42:18.160 --> 0:42:20.560 to learn about there not going to be friends, Robert 0:42:21.280 --> 0:42:26.520 friends after that. Sorry, I feel like I trade Samantha. Yes, 0:42:28.120 --> 0:42:31.239 if I could flip this desk over in a dramatic way. 0:42:32.000 --> 0:42:35.040 You know, we talked about the bacterial super Highway, and 0:42:35.080 --> 0:42:37.440 now we're going to take a hard right turn onto 0:42:37.440 --> 0:42:40.640 the eugenics super Highway, because that's what this episode is 0:42:40.680 --> 0:42:43.360 secretly about. I just we also say that's an expressway. 0:42:43.480 --> 0:42:48.520 Keep going, Oh yeah, maybe a tollway. Get shittier. So 0:42:49.239 --> 0:42:52.799 the first concerted project to control world population started in 0:42:52.800 --> 0:42:55.759 the late eighteen hundreds and four colonizer dominated nations the 0:42:55.800 --> 0:43:01.160 United States, mostly California, Australia, Canada, and South Africa. Now, 0:43:01.200 --> 0:43:05.280 in California, Canada and Australia, white people were increasingly terrified 0:43:05.280 --> 0:43:07.640 about the fact that Asian people were immigrating there and 0:43:07.719 --> 0:43:11.440 having babies in California. Asian immigration had actually been stoked 0:43:11.440 --> 0:43:14.240 by a US government policy. From the eighteen sixties, Washington 0:43:14.320 --> 0:43:17.160 d c. Had heavily pressured China's imperial government to make 0:43:17.200 --> 0:43:19.960 it easier for Chinese citizens to leave the country because 0:43:19.960 --> 0:43:23.280 we wanted workers and stuff. Um. The US actually argued 0:43:23.320 --> 0:43:27.080 that Beijing was treading on their people's quote inherent and 0:43:27.120 --> 0:43:30.160 an alienable right to change their home and allegiance by 0:43:30.200 --> 0:43:33.279 stopping them from leaving the country. So keep that in mind. 0:43:33.320 --> 0:43:36.640 The US government argued that restricting people from leaving China 0:43:36.719 --> 0:43:39.080 for the US was a violation of their inherent and 0:43:39.120 --> 0:43:43.239 inalienable right to change their home in allegiance. The only 0:43:43.280 --> 0:43:47.000 time you'll hear that from the United States government had 0:43:47.480 --> 0:43:51.560 left from well we know, well, yeah, because that's one 0:43:51.600 --> 0:43:54.120 where it's like, I'm totally on board with the United States. There. 0:43:54.120 --> 0:43:56.440 People do have an inherent right to change their home 0:43:56.440 --> 0:44:01.600 in allegiance. Um, they don't stick with that for long. 0:44:01.680 --> 0:44:03.880 From a Journey an article in the Journal of Past 0:44:03.920 --> 0:44:07.800 and Present by the Oxford University Press quote, disgruntled workers 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:11.319 in California attacked Asian immigrants and in eighteen seventy seven 0:44:11.400 --> 0:44:15.080 began political mobilization, much to the alarm of East coast elites. 0:44:15.360 --> 0:44:17.839 Writing for The North American Review the following year, MJ 0:44:18.040 --> 0:44:21.520 D sought to justify anti Chinese attacks. Migration was not 0:44:21.560 --> 0:44:24.440 just another form of international trade, he insisted, and the 0:44:24.480 --> 0:44:27.720 frugal Chinese worker was not just another labor saving machine. 0:44:28.040 --> 0:44:31.880 Migration was a biological process. Centuries of overpopulation in places 0:44:31.880 --> 0:44:34.520 like India and China had produced people able to subsist 0:44:34.560 --> 0:44:38.560 on wages that would starve Europeans. Facing such competition, Whites 0:44:38.560 --> 0:44:42.720 would fail to reproduce. Dire consequences would therefore ensue should 0:44:42.719 --> 0:44:46.520 they withdraw the intelligence of artificial selection from the environment 0:44:46.719 --> 0:44:49.280 and leave the battle to the chances of natural selection. 0:44:50.320 --> 0:44:56.080 So that's pretty racist, wow, I mean it's fitting with 0:44:56.080 --> 0:44:59.279 the current administration, So go ahead. Yeah, I mean we're 0:44:59.280 --> 0:45:02.839 really really a blast the past there. But yeah, that's 0:45:02.880 --> 0:45:06.080 the argument there. That's why. So initially the government's like 0:45:06.560 --> 0:45:08.920 forcing the Chinese government to let more people come here 0:45:08.920 --> 0:45:11.520 because we need the workers. But then like white people, 0:45:12.480 --> 0:45:14.680 I feel like they're getting undercut, and so pressure the 0:45:14.680 --> 0:45:17.240 government to stop Chinese people from coming into the country. 0:45:17.480 --> 0:45:19.279 Like that's the basic way that things go in the 0:45:19.360 --> 0:45:23.320 late eighteen hundreds, So that same year eighteen seventy seven 0:45:23.360 --> 0:45:25.120 there started to come out because you know how the 0:45:25.160 --> 0:45:28.239 way that like all culture really flows. This is one 0:45:28.239 --> 0:45:29.480 of the things I say that a couple of times 0:45:29.520 --> 0:45:33.760 that Andrew Breitbart got right, politics is downhill of culture. Right. Um, 0:45:33.840 --> 0:45:35.800 So what hat starts happening in the culture in the 0:45:35.880 --> 0:45:37.840 late eighteen hundreds that leads to all of these like 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:41.040 Chinese exclusion acts and stuff. Is this flood of novels 0:45:41.040 --> 0:45:44.120 and short stories that are like trying to warn white 0:45:44.160 --> 0:45:47.920 people of an invasion of Europe in the United States. Um, Like, 0:45:47.960 --> 0:45:50.120 that's this big thing that starts happening in the media 0:45:50.200 --> 0:45:51.759 right now. So you've got like this mix of like, 0:45:52.120 --> 0:45:54.160 you know, people who were I guess their modern equivalent 0:45:54.320 --> 0:45:56.760 be the guys writing for The Atlantic, you know, um 0:45:56.800 --> 0:46:00.440 like Connor Friedersdorff and the Then you know people like 0:46:00.480 --> 0:46:04.080 Steve Bannon like writing like racist fiction about how Chinese 0:46:04.120 --> 0:46:07.279 people are going to Uh it's it's white genocide ship right, 0:46:07.320 --> 0:46:10.120 Like it's it's always been the same fear are you 0:46:10.200 --> 0:46:16.720 talking about today? Right? Yeah? Yeah, it's it's it's changed, right, Okay, okay, yeah. Quote, 0:46:16.760 --> 0:46:19.480 Chinese were depicted not as nationals of a particular country, 0:46:19.480 --> 0:46:21.400 but as a hoard or flood, a force of nature. 0:46:21.440 --> 0:46:24.600 This image also featured in European journalistic and fictional accounts 0:46:24.600 --> 0:46:28.040 of migration. The German geographer Friedrich Retzel, perhaps the first 0:46:28.040 --> 0:46:31.520 European to draw attention to the Chinese question in California, 0:46:31.680 --> 0:46:35.040 would go on to popularize the notion of Levin's realm. 0:46:35.440 --> 0:46:37.080 Do you know what that? You get? You guys? You 0:46:37.080 --> 0:46:41.640 guys know Levian's realm? Right? Everybody remembers that from high school? Yeah, 0:46:42.160 --> 0:46:45.320 I did not realize that's where that concept had started. 0:46:48.640 --> 0:46:54.480 Pretty good, waiting for the big Yeah, I'm one of 0:46:54.520 --> 0:46:56.959 the big finale. Let's keep going. Yeah, yeah, that's coming. 0:46:57.200 --> 0:46:59.759 We gotta build up a bit. So obviously, the term 0:46:59.800 --> 0:47:02.080 lead in round was one of Hitler's chief talking points. 0:47:02.120 --> 0:47:04.520 The literal meaning of the term is living space. Hitler 0:47:04.560 --> 0:47:06.799 pointed to the US, which had genocided its way into 0:47:06.800 --> 0:47:09.640 possession of a vas continent and argued that Germany deserves 0:47:09.719 --> 0:47:12.480 that kind of space too. But the actual term Leban's 0:47:12.520 --> 0:47:16.839 round had originated in California from these Europeans and like 0:47:16.960 --> 0:47:20.400 American white people who were seeing Chinese people immigrant and 0:47:20.400 --> 0:47:22.719 being like they're crowding us out. Like that's actually where 0:47:22.719 --> 0:47:27.360 it started. Um Historian Matthew Connolly notes it suggested the 0:47:27.440 --> 0:47:30.880 word Leban's round suggested that biological processes of growth and 0:47:30.920 --> 0:47:35.239 movement underlay politics and were more fundamental than mere political borders. 0:47:35.239 --> 0:47:37.959 So Leban's round wasn't just a matter of physical space. 0:47:38.000 --> 0:47:39.919 In fact, it wasn't mostly a matter of physical space, 0:47:39.920 --> 0:47:42.920 because California is still empty today. Most of California, nobody 0:47:42.920 --> 0:47:45.360 fucking lives in, like as big as Los Angeles is, 0:47:45.400 --> 0:47:47.960 like it's it's it's a huge land mass, so it's 0:47:48.000 --> 0:47:51.560 like the whole continent. Like these these people who started 0:47:51.680 --> 0:47:56.680 using this term weren't actually short on space. Um, living 0:47:56.719 --> 0:48:00.560 space meant more directly physical and course not not physical, 0:48:00.560 --> 0:48:03.640 but philosophical space for white people and white culture and 0:48:03.680 --> 0:48:07.800 white jeans to spread. That's really what Yeah, exactly, exactly 0:48:07.840 --> 0:48:12.799 exactly yeah. So yeah. On a ground level, anti Asian 0:48:12.880 --> 0:48:15.239 sentiment in this period was driven by working class white 0:48:15.280 --> 0:48:17.839 people who were angry that Chinese immigrants were undercutting their 0:48:17.880 --> 0:48:21.279 wages and taking jobs. But on the loftier philosophical level, 0:48:21.280 --> 0:48:24.160 that politics kind of flows downstream from it was a 0:48:24.239 --> 0:48:27.719 question of the survival of the white race. Now then 0:48:27.840 --> 0:48:30.800 is now white supremacist ideologues were happy to take advantage 0:48:30.800 --> 0:48:33.440 of poor white resentment over economic trouble and turned this 0:48:33.520 --> 0:48:36.600 into a boiling race hatred. In eighty five, all this 0:48:36.719 --> 0:48:39.480 race baiting boiled over into a series of mass expulsions 0:48:39.480 --> 0:48:42.680 of Chinese immigrants all across the West Coast. Further inland, 0:48:42.840 --> 0:48:45.080 there were even murders and straight up massacres. There were 0:48:45.120 --> 0:48:50.279 ethnic cleansings in California of of of Chinese communities. Um 0:48:50.400 --> 0:48:53.719 White supremacist writers defended the killers, describing their actions as 0:48:53.719 --> 0:48:57.880 an example of workers expressing their citizenship. The expulsions and 0:48:57.880 --> 0:49:01.440 the violence were positively compared to anti Jewish programs in Europe, 0:49:01.640 --> 0:49:04.240 as both Jews and Chinese immigrants were depicted by racists 0:49:04.320 --> 0:49:08.520 as quote disease carrying cosmopolitans who excelled in economic competition. 0:49:09.080 --> 0:49:11.400 It was the same basic thing you know that you 0:49:11.440 --> 0:49:14.200 saw happening with anti Semitism. I'm not gonna lie, it's 0:49:14.239 --> 0:49:16.120 just kind of like, are we doing this again today? 0:49:16.120 --> 0:49:20.080 Except yeah, like Chinese immigrants is like this is too 0:49:20.120 --> 0:49:25.560 familiar in a way we never stopped. Uh yeah, I 0:49:25.600 --> 0:49:28.200 mean I think the focus is, yeah, the threat of 0:49:28.600 --> 0:49:31.200 white hierarchy, whether or not they're going to be decimated. 0:49:31.280 --> 0:49:34.280 No longer exists as if that could possibly happen, especially 0:49:34.280 --> 0:49:38.200 in the next generation or so. But interesting, there were 0:49:38.200 --> 0:49:40.920 actually well, and it's it's this matter of like the 0:49:41.360 --> 0:49:44.520 fuel for the movement comes from poor white workers who 0:49:45.360 --> 0:49:49.080 are getting edged out of jobs by people being paid 0:49:49.200 --> 0:49:51.200 less than them. But the problem isn't the people being 0:49:51.200 --> 0:49:53.640 paid less than them. The problem is, for example, the 0:49:53.719 --> 0:49:55.560 fact that there's all sorts of holes in our labor 0:49:55.600 --> 0:49:59.000 market whereby certain types of people who are not documented 0:49:59.040 --> 0:50:02.960 citizens can be treat did subhumanly by companies without any consequence, 0:50:03.040 --> 0:50:05.240 and it's just cheaper for them to not treat people 0:50:05.320 --> 0:50:08.919 or pay them properly, right yep. And companies like State 0:50:08.960 --> 0:50:13.080 Farm who love to advocate for special cards for immigrations 0:50:13.080 --> 0:50:16.480 who don't have citizenship rights but can be underpaid, paid 0:50:16.480 --> 0:50:20.040 taxes and no longer be recognized as individuals. Hey, it's great, 0:50:20.160 --> 0:50:25.840 it's good, it's a fine. Yeah, it's fine, everything's fine. Yeah, 0:50:26.200 --> 0:50:30.520 it's on fire. Yeah, I mean I wish everything we're 0:50:30.560 --> 0:50:35.760 on fire. Sometimes do do you do? You know what? 0:50:35.760 --> 0:50:38.239 What what is most likely not on fire? This is 0:50:38.280 --> 0:50:40.480 my worst, my worst way, you know what? I wouldn't 0:50:40.520 --> 0:50:44.759 set on fire. Samantha. There we go the products and 0:50:44.760 --> 0:50:50.200 services that support this podcast. That would be biting the 0:50:50.239 --> 0:50:53.280 dog that feeds me. I really wish we could transition 0:50:53.400 --> 0:50:57.280 like that. All you gotta do is believe in yourself, 0:50:59.560 --> 0:51:12.239 like we're bad. So we're talking about racism, so new 0:51:12.320 --> 0:51:19.200 legal it's always and individuals and you know, different racial people. 0:51:19.320 --> 0:51:24.880 Let's go population. I love is a melting pot, as in, yeah, no, 0:51:25.000 --> 0:51:29.400 I won't make a cannibals. Yeah. New legal barriers were 0:51:29.400 --> 0:51:32.400 added to Chinese immigration by the same government that had literally, 0:51:32.440 --> 0:51:35.680 like a decade earlier, lobby the Chinese government about the 0:51:35.680 --> 0:51:38.120 inherent freedom of human beings to change their face place 0:51:38.120 --> 0:51:42.120 of residence. That ship switches around real damn fast. Chinese 0:51:42.160 --> 0:51:44.800 migrants had to develop new ways of faking their identity 0:51:44.800 --> 0:51:48.200 paperwork in order to gain entrance into the United States. Meanwhile, 0:51:48.239 --> 0:51:52.040 immigration officials developed an ever more sophisticated and invasive system 0:51:52.080 --> 0:51:54.960 of tracking people, which Matthew Connolly, who's a great historian, 0:51:55.000 --> 0:51:59.440 describes as a prerequisite for modern systems of population control. 0:51:59.800 --> 0:52:02.600 So all of this human monitoring ship that we deal 0:52:02.640 --> 0:52:06.520 with today really does start in order to stop Chinese 0:52:06.560 --> 0:52:09.840 people from immigrating to the United States. The whole infrastructure that, 0:52:09.920 --> 0:52:13.160 like ice is the is the current manifestation of begins here, 0:52:13.640 --> 0:52:21.520 which is great just somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So, by nineteen 0:52:21.520 --> 0:52:24.879 o eight, America's top racist president, Theodore Roosevelt, was calling 0:52:24.920 --> 0:52:27.360 openly for Asian immigrants to be banned from entering not 0:52:27.480 --> 0:52:32.759 just the United States, but all English speaking nations. To 0:52:32.800 --> 0:52:36.439 say that about Teddy enough, Yeah, we're just talking about 0:52:36.480 --> 0:52:38.040 the parks he made. But no, yeah, he tried to 0:52:38.080 --> 0:52:44.640 ban every Asian person from English speaking nations. Pretty cool. Uh, 0:52:44.640 --> 0:52:47.000 And you know this is not just a US is 0:52:47.080 --> 0:52:50.280 bad thing because elected leaders in Canada and Australia expressed 0:52:50.360 --> 0:52:55.640 significant solidarity with Roosevelt's idea. White folks everywhere, Yeah, good 0:52:55.680 --> 0:53:00.000 on the solidarity bodies. Yeah, that's my favorite rom com. 0:53:00.040 --> 0:53:04.000 Let's go Yeah. White people everywhere cheered when Roosevelt dispatched 0:53:04.000 --> 0:53:06.440 the White Fleet to the Pacific. Now, the White Fleet 0:53:06.520 --> 0:53:08.840 was a U. S. Navy squadron named for the color 0:53:08.880 --> 0:53:10.919 of the holes on its ships, not for the white race, 0:53:11.000 --> 0:53:13.960 but kind of for the white race, um, and it 0:53:14.000 --> 0:53:17.000 was dispatched for the most part as an international goodwill exercise. 0:53:17.080 --> 0:53:19.280 Like the United States was starting to become a world 0:53:19.280 --> 0:53:21.719 power at this point. We built this big, modern fleet. 0:53:21.800 --> 0:53:23.759 Roosevelt wanted to sail it around the world and have 0:53:23.800 --> 0:53:26.200 it stopped in like twenty or thirty countries and you know, 0:53:26.239 --> 0:53:28.399 do diplomatic visits and just be like, hey, the US 0:53:28.520 --> 0:53:31.000 is here. We're gonna be in the Pacific more like 0:53:31.080 --> 0:53:33.439 we're a real country. Like check out how cool we are, 0:53:33.840 --> 0:53:36.920 which is you know, I guess fine broadly speaking, Um, 0:53:36.960 --> 0:53:39.239 and most of those trips were very pleasant, you know, 0:53:39.280 --> 0:53:41.640 the US expressing gets good will and desire to trade 0:53:41.640 --> 0:53:45.239 with everybody. We were not a world military power at 0:53:45.239 --> 0:53:47.480 this point. We weren't an invade people all that. I mean, 0:53:47.640 --> 0:53:50.520 the Spanish American war accepted had not done a huge 0:53:50.520 --> 0:53:52.200 amount of that is not nearly as much as we 0:53:52.239 --> 0:53:54.520 would do at this point. So it was mostly about trading, 0:53:54.880 --> 0:53:58.360 except for when it got to Japan. Um, because Roosevelt 0:53:58.400 --> 0:54:01.640 had sent it to Japan too, threatened the Japanese government 0:54:01.880 --> 0:54:04.719 to stop them from sending Japanese or letting Japanese people 0:54:04.760 --> 0:54:10.960 come over to the United States. Um, yeah, it's it's 0:54:10.960 --> 0:54:17.520 pretty bad. Um have a special white cloak they are, Yeah, 0:54:17.560 --> 0:54:23.480 I mean why not? Yeah, Yeah, it is a little 0:54:23.520 --> 0:54:27.359 on the nose that name, especially since when Roosevelt ordered 0:54:27.400 --> 0:54:30.319 them to intimidate the Japanese government, he specifically said that 0:54:30.360 --> 0:54:35.560 they were there to protect white civilization. Um. Yeah, it's 0:54:36.200 --> 0:54:38.120 a big reason for this was that the Empire of 0:54:38.160 --> 0:54:40.319 the Rising Sun had just beaten Russia in a war 0:54:40.360 --> 0:54:42.520 in like nineteen o five, which is the first time 0:54:42.560 --> 0:54:45.360 that an Asian power beat a European power in a 0:54:45.400 --> 0:54:49.919 modern conflict. Like the Russian like north fleet sailed into 0:54:49.920 --> 0:54:51.880 the area around like the coast of China where the 0:54:51.960 --> 0:54:54.319 Japanese were, and they this huge like they just got 0:54:54.480 --> 0:54:58.880 massacred by the Japanese navy, um, which like absolutely shocked 0:54:58.880 --> 0:55:01.560 the hell out of every anybody in Europe at the time, 0:55:01.600 --> 0:55:04.160 because like this is like colonialisms at its height at 0:55:04.200 --> 0:55:06.160 this point. They are not used to having to like 0:55:06.520 --> 0:55:08.759 have any sort of conflict that's a real fight with 0:55:08.800 --> 0:55:10.960 anyone who's not a white person, and it really scares 0:55:11.000 --> 0:55:14.720 the hell out of racists, um, which the Japanese Empire 0:55:14.840 --> 0:55:17.000 was too at this point. Like it's like we're talking 0:55:17.000 --> 0:55:25.040 about good are terrible? Yeah, talked to the Okinawans about that, Yeah, Yeah, 0:55:25.080 --> 0:55:27.279 I mean it was two imperial powers going to war 0:55:27.360 --> 0:55:29.880 with each other, and then another imperial power threatening that 0:55:29.960 --> 0:55:33.880 imperial power to not let everybody's bad. It's nineteen you know, 0:55:35.719 --> 0:55:43.799 I'm like, yeah, definitely not heroes. Yeah, so um yeah. 0:55:43.880 --> 0:55:46.160 The fleet was met with protests in Japan, most of 0:55:46.200 --> 0:55:48.239 which were inspired by the fact that California had just 0:55:48.239 --> 0:55:51.560 passed a law segregating Japanese children out of white schools, 0:55:51.760 --> 0:55:53.600 Which is interesting because if you look at like that, 0:55:53.719 --> 0:55:55.919 you can find maps online that will show like which 0:55:55.920 --> 0:55:59.279 states had segregation which didn't, and California is always listed 0:55:59.280 --> 0:56:01.840 as a state that didn't have segregation. But Japanese and 0:56:01.880 --> 0:56:04.640 I think a number of other Asian people were segregated 0:56:04.640 --> 0:56:07.360 out of white schools in California. So it's not true 0:56:07.400 --> 0:56:12.239 that that California had no segregation. It's not surprising. Yeah, no, 0:56:12.640 --> 0:56:15.400 absolutely not. I mean, the the the guy who was 0:56:15.440 --> 0:56:18.040 the first Supreme Court justice in Oregon who passed the 0:56:18.080 --> 0:56:20.239 Lash law saying that like black people had to be 0:56:20.239 --> 0:56:23.440 whipped if they didn't leave Oregon became the first governor 0:56:23.440 --> 0:56:25.520 of California, and one of the first things he did 0:56:25.520 --> 0:56:27.759 as governor of California was trying to kick all the 0:56:27.840 --> 0:56:33.719 Chinese people out of California. Um, so, yeah, it's pretty bad. 0:56:34.239 --> 0:56:38.600 It's pretty bad all the way down. Yeah. Yeah. History. 0:56:39.080 --> 0:56:42.120 Yeah it's fun. You get to learn new ways about 0:56:42.120 --> 0:56:45.319 how people sucked. Well yeah, that's about yeah what I 0:56:45.320 --> 0:56:49.919 feel like, the way people suck. Yeah, it's they never 0:56:49.960 --> 0:56:54.800 stopped finding ways to suck. It's remarkable. By this point, 0:56:54.840 --> 0:56:59.320 American intellectuals largely agreed that regulation of the quote composition 0:56:59.480 --> 0:57:03.200 of of immigration was necessary to safeguard the fertility and 0:57:03.239 --> 0:57:07.000 thus the supremacy of native stocks meaning white people. I'm 0:57:07.000 --> 0:57:11.000 gonna quote now from the Journal of Pasty Native Yeah. Yeah, 0:57:11.000 --> 0:57:16.560 I know, it's pretty wild, right, like my dudes, my dudes. 0:57:17.880 --> 0:57:22.919 That got me, That got yeah. Quote. In the United States, 0:57:22.960 --> 0:57:26.560 the Immigration Bureau one congressional approval for collecting statistics according 0:57:26.560 --> 0:57:28.960 to a list of races and people's rather than country 0:57:28.960 --> 0:57:31.600 of origin. This became a tool to prove the inferiority 0:57:31.640 --> 0:57:33.880 of racial groups and a model for like minded French 0:57:33.880 --> 0:57:37.080 officials in Canada, Australia, and several European states as well. 0:57:37.120 --> 0:57:40.080 Italians came to be known as the Chinese of Europe. 0:57:43.080 --> 0:57:49.400 Is happening? I love juxtaposition of this whole conversation. Keep 0:57:49.440 --> 0:57:52.960 going as an Italian descended person, I always love getting 0:57:52.960 --> 0:57:55.720 those like little glimpses of racism against Italians because at 0:57:55.720 --> 0:57:58.280 this point it's just it's just like like a little 0:57:58.280 --> 0:58:03.280 bit like funny. But yeah that at the time they 0:58:03.280 --> 0:58:05.280 were like, yeah, they were the Chinese of Europe. Um. 0:58:05.480 --> 0:58:10.440 So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's how you know, by 0:58:10.480 --> 0:58:13.200 the way, you're really racist when you start making gradients 0:58:13.200 --> 0:58:20.040 of white people, when you're like, oh, Hungarians. Right. So 0:58:20.320 --> 0:58:24.200 the category of people's requiring containment thus grew beyond Asians, 0:58:24.240 --> 0:58:27.240 defind not by nationality so much as by biology, that is, 0:58:27.440 --> 0:58:30.840 their supposed capacity to propagate on wages that would lower 0:58:30.920 --> 0:58:34.120 other people's living standards and fertility. Though Roosevelt failed to 0:58:34.160 --> 0:58:37.280 coordinate exclusionary measures, researchers and activists saw them as the 0:58:37.280 --> 0:58:40.480 beginning of a de facto policy of global population control. 0:58:40.720 --> 0:58:44.000 In nineteen twelve, the sociologist Edward All'sworth Ross, from whom 0:58:44.040 --> 0:58:47.280 Roosevelt had borrowed the idea of race suicide, which is 0:58:47.320 --> 0:58:50.080 again the genesis of white of the white genocide myth. 0:58:50.640 --> 0:58:53.200 That was the first term before white genocide, because genocide 0:58:53.200 --> 0:58:55.520 didn't really exist as a term at this point. Um 0:58:55.520 --> 0:58:57.640 it was race suicide. That was the thing that all 0:58:57.640 --> 0:58:59.720 of these guys like Ross were warning people of. That's 0:58:59.720 --> 0:59:02.880 what Zvelt believe, the white races committing suicide by letting 0:59:02.960 --> 0:59:06.800 Chinese people, in Italian people into our country. Yeah, talk 0:59:06.840 --> 0:59:14.320 about dramatic. Yeah, Like these guys are all fucking traumas. Absolutely. Yeah. 0:59:14.440 --> 0:59:17.439 Ross argued that Northern European nations had to hold fast 0:59:17.480 --> 0:59:20.640 to every settlement colony and fill them with their offspring 0:59:20.760 --> 0:59:22.720 or else see them filled with the children of the 0:59:22.760 --> 0:59:26.120 brown and the Yellow races. He predicted that the world 0:59:26.200 --> 0:59:28.480 will be cut up with immigration barriers, which will never 0:59:28.520 --> 0:59:31.800 be leveled until the intelligent accommodation of numbers and resources 0:59:31.840 --> 0:59:37.000 has greatly equalized population pressure around the globe. I'm gonna 0:59:37.040 --> 0:59:40.760 need you to read everything in that accident from now on. Yeah. 0:59:41.120 --> 0:59:44.040 If any of this is sounding a bit Nazi adjacent, 0:59:44.560 --> 0:59:50.720 that's because it was the beginning. Yeah. Yeah, all of 0:59:50.800 --> 0:59:53.840 this ship had a huge impact of Adolf Hitler and 0:59:53.840 --> 0:59:56.760 other Nazi fingers. It was an American, like we just 0:59:56.800 --> 0:59:58.600 talked about how it was, it was a European living 0:59:58.600 --> 1:00:00.800 in California who came up with the term Leban's round 1:00:00.840 --> 1:00:04.440 to talk about white people being overwhelmed by Chinese people. Um. 1:00:04.480 --> 1:00:07.120 It was an American named Prescott Hall of the Immigration 1:00:07.160 --> 1:00:10.440 Restriction League who first started describing Asian immigrants to the 1:00:10.520 --> 1:00:15.040 US as bacterial infections, which is both interesting what we're 1:00:15.040 --> 1:00:20.240 talking about definitely, like I don't think you can be 1:00:20.280 --> 1:00:23.080 a Prescott not a racist, Like if it's just it's 1:00:23.080 --> 1:00:26.640 a law, it has to be. Yeah, the world would 1:00:26.680 --> 1:00:30.000 break if that weren't the case. So barely twenty years 1:00:30.000 --> 1:00:34.680 after Prescott defined Chinese immigrants bacterial infections, Hitler would refer 1:00:34.760 --> 1:00:38.680 to Jews as plague bacillus in a clear imitation of this. Right, Like, 1:00:38.920 --> 1:00:42.440 the terminology that that people like Prescott are using for 1:00:42.520 --> 1:00:45.480 Asian immigrants is almost identical to the terminology Hitler is 1:00:45.560 --> 1:00:47.400 using for Jewish people. And a lot of those Jewish 1:00:47.440 --> 1:00:49.400 people are immigrants. A lot of the people who he 1:00:49.480 --> 1:00:52.320 was like ranting about were immigrants from Russia, like Jewish 1:00:52.320 --> 1:00:54.480 communities in Russia who had fled from the Civil War 1:00:54.600 --> 1:00:57.680 into Germany, which was proved not to be a great idea. 1:00:57.680 --> 1:00:59.959 Although if you were a Jewish person in Eastern Europe 1:01:00.040 --> 1:01:02.800 in the early half of the nineteenth century or twentieth century, 1:01:02.960 --> 1:01:09.360 really no good options, you're kind of no matter what happens, 1:01:10.240 --> 1:01:12.200 get to the UK if you can, but you still 1:01:12.280 --> 1:01:14.960 might wind up in a concentration camp, which happened to 1:01:14.960 --> 1:01:17.000 thousands of Jewish people in the US. We don't talk 1:01:17.000 --> 1:01:22.760 about that that much either, um so, uh yeah. Hall 1:01:22.960 --> 1:01:26.600 argued for world eugenics in which fit and unfit in 1:01:26.720 --> 1:01:29.600 terms of individual people in races, would be primary categories 1:01:29.600 --> 1:01:32.200 the government would use to determine who could immigrate. Hall, 1:01:32.280 --> 1:01:35.040 in many others like him, who very much dominated immigration 1:01:35.040 --> 1:01:38.440 policy in this period, saw the state as in Connolly's words, 1:01:38.920 --> 1:01:44.480 merely a mechanism for controlling biological processes, whether through promoting 1:01:44.520 --> 1:01:49.800 the propagation of the fit or excluding and sterilizing the unfit. Remember, 1:01:50.160 --> 1:01:53.480 that's what the people running the United States government in 1:01:53.520 --> 1:01:56.200 the early part of the twentieth century, and particularly immigration, 1:01:56.240 --> 1:01:58.880 but all throughout the government see the US government as 1:01:58.920 --> 1:02:02.960 a mechanism for cot rolling biological processes, promoting the propagation 1:02:03.000 --> 1:02:05.480 of the fit and excluding or sterilizing the unfit. That's 1:02:05.480 --> 1:02:09.360 what the government does. Are talking about Miller, Yeah, yeah, 1:02:09.400 --> 1:02:12.360 we are talking about Stephen Miller, because he's he very 1:02:12.440 --> 1:02:14.919 much sees things that exact same way I'm just ding, 1:02:15.080 --> 1:02:21.439 even though he pretends his little Asian wife. But yeah, 1:02:21.680 --> 1:02:24.680 certain racists have admitted Asians into the pantheon of white people. 1:02:24.720 --> 1:02:28.600 Now it's yeah, as long as like you're the right 1:02:28.720 --> 1:02:32.600 kind of Asian, you know. Yeah, that's I think Stephen 1:02:32.600 --> 1:02:37.200 Miller's I'm gonna get myself in trouble keep doing so. 1:02:37.480 --> 1:02:40.080 Um Now, I'm going to guess most people are broadly 1:02:40.120 --> 1:02:42.240 familiar with eugenics movement in the United States. We'll do 1:02:42.240 --> 1:02:43.960 a deep dive on that at some point. What's important 1:02:43.960 --> 1:02:46.360 to talk about the day is how the eugenics movement 1:02:46.440 --> 1:02:50.640 splintered off into the population control movement. Remember we heard 1:02:50.640 --> 1:02:52.320 that term a bit earlier when we're talking about that 1:02:52.360 --> 1:02:56.040 guy Ravenholt from USA. It was a population control enthusiast. 1:02:56.760 --> 1:02:59.400 All of this is trying to explain where population control 1:02:59.440 --> 1:03:02.160 comes from, because it's actually like a distinct like like 1:03:03.160 --> 1:03:06.360 like school of intellectual thought, very racist school of intellectual 1:03:06.400 --> 1:03:10.600 Thought's school school of intellectual thought. Um, So, what we're 1:03:10.640 --> 1:03:13.000 going to talk about today is how the eugenics movement, yes, 1:03:13.040 --> 1:03:15.960 splintered off into the population control movement, which wound up 1:03:16.000 --> 1:03:19.080 directing US AID policy until the nineteen eighties and beyond. 1:03:19.600 --> 1:03:22.760 The process started when eugenicists realized that they had the 1:03:22.800 --> 1:03:25.520 most success in pushing their policies when they could find 1:03:25.560 --> 1:03:28.600 ways to make them appeal to the masses. Naked racism 1:03:28.640 --> 1:03:31.160 did not appeal to the masses, because while most Americans 1:03:31.200 --> 1:03:34.160 were racist, they didn't like to think of themselves as racists. Right. 1:03:34.440 --> 1:03:36.840 That's always been the key of racism in America is 1:03:36.840 --> 1:03:41.720 saying you're not a racist. That's why you know a 1:03:41.760 --> 1:03:48.960 lot of people right now, I just Trump, yeahs, I 1:03:49.000 --> 1:03:52.320 have a friend of Yeah. There's a reason Enrique Tario 1:03:52.440 --> 1:03:56.240 was the head of the Proud Boys, you know, right. Yeah. 1:03:56.480 --> 1:04:00.520 So instead of just nakedly appealing to racism, um eugenics 1:04:00.560 --> 1:04:03.120 advocates realized that they had more success when they appealed 1:04:03.120 --> 1:04:06.720 to improving maternal and child health and restricting immigration in 1:04:06.840 --> 1:04:11.520 order to protect jobs. Eugenicists could still push racist eugenic policies, 1:04:11.520 --> 1:04:13.440 but they wrapped them in a veil of concern for 1:04:13.520 --> 1:04:16.400 human welfare. In the wake of World War One, increasing 1:04:16.440 --> 1:04:21.200 numbers of white supremacist academics began ringing alarm bells about overpopulation, 1:04:21.600 --> 1:04:23.400 and this starts to become after World War One this 1:04:23.480 --> 1:04:27.440 is like really what the population control movement focuses on, Like, uh, 1:04:27.640 --> 1:04:31.000 we can't talk about sterilizing whole races. Americans don't like that. 1:04:31.000 --> 1:04:33.200 That's a little bit too naked. When you talk about genocide, 1:04:33.200 --> 1:04:35.320 Americans are like, well, I don't really like I don't 1:04:35.480 --> 1:04:37.480 I'm racist, but I don't really like to think of 1:04:37.520 --> 1:04:40.240 myself as pro genocide, right, I mean, I'm come on, 1:04:40.520 --> 1:04:43.440 pro I'm pro live. We can't say that, so instead 1:04:43.480 --> 1:04:45.680 you say, no, we just we overpopulation is bad. We've 1:04:45.680 --> 1:04:48.520 got to stop over population, and then you start pushing 1:04:48.800 --> 1:04:53.479 exactly from Connolly quote. The Cambridge economist Harold Wright called 1:04:53.520 --> 1:04:56.480 for a world policy in regard to population problems, but 1:04:56.520 --> 1:04:59.920 worried that national rivalries were leading in precisely the opposite direction. 1:05:00.280 --> 1:05:03.439 The influential demographer A. M. Car Saunders thought that war 1:05:03.480 --> 1:05:06.600 would inevitably result from differential growth rates among nations and 1:05:06.680 --> 1:05:10.280 races unless declining populations were provided with some form of 1:05:10.320 --> 1:05:14.000 international guarantee. Similarly, the former MP and editor of the 1:05:14.080 --> 1:05:17.680 Edinburgh Review Harold Cox thought that low fertility nations needed 1:05:17.720 --> 1:05:20.760 to band together to defend themselves against any race that 1:05:20.800 --> 1:05:23.840 by it's too great fecundity is threatening the peace of 1:05:23.840 --> 1:05:27.480 the world. The psychologist and future leader of the International 1:05:27.480 --> 1:05:31.400 Planned Parenthood Federation CP Blacker worried that Asia and Russia 1:05:31.480 --> 1:05:34.440 might become a solid block determined to shake off the 1:05:34.520 --> 1:05:37.720 yoke of the Western powers end of America. Birth control 1:05:37.760 --> 1:05:40.000 offered the only way to avoid a second World War, 1:05:40.280 --> 1:05:42.880 this time between East and West. But this required that 1:05:42.960 --> 1:05:48.439 every culture accepted like the whole block, just the block. Yeah, 1:05:48.520 --> 1:05:52.040 And of course Russians aren't white in this period either, 1:05:54.520 --> 1:06:01.320 not white enough, you know. Um. Yeah, when you start 1:06:01.400 --> 1:06:03.920 to study white racism in this period, you realize that, 1:06:03.960 --> 1:06:06.200 like from the late eighteen hundreds of the early nineteen hundreds, 1:06:06.240 --> 1:06:08.680 there were about eleven actual white people on the planet. 1:06:11.760 --> 1:06:14.560 It's just a really fancy club. You have to be really, 1:06:14.600 --> 1:06:19.320 really really perfectly fit, right, Yeah, yeah, because you lose 1:06:19.320 --> 1:06:22.240 your whiteness if you're poor and until they need your 1:06:22.320 --> 1:06:24.600 help to like hurt other people, then you get to 1:06:24.600 --> 1:06:26.600 be white again. Yeah, as long as you have to 1:06:26.600 --> 1:06:31.760 be at the front of yea, possibly being hurt first. Yeah. Well, yeah, 1:06:31.800 --> 1:06:35.200 they're not gonna be expendable. Its expendable people, of course 1:06:35.240 --> 1:06:37.280 you do. Why not? Yeah, you have to go invade 1:06:37.280 --> 1:06:43.480 Stalin grad Yeah, nicely so. Biologist Raymond Pearl addressed the 1:06:43.480 --> 1:06:47.160 International Eugenics Congress, projecting our thought ahead for a moment 1:06:47.200 --> 1:06:49.480 to that time, at most a few centuries ahead. We 1:06:49.600 --> 1:06:52.840 perceived that the important question will then be what kind 1:06:52.880 --> 1:06:55.240 of people are they to be? Who will then inherit 1:06:55.280 --> 1:06:58.280 the earth? Here into is the eugenic phase of the problem. 1:06:58.520 --> 1:07:01.360 Man in theory at least has it now completely in 1:07:01.440 --> 1:07:04.080 his power to determine what kind of people will make 1:07:04.200 --> 1:07:07.160 up the Earth's population of saturation. This is the way 1:07:07.160 --> 1:07:10.000 these guys are thinking, is that, like we, this tiny 1:07:10.080 --> 1:07:12.840 group of the very widest, richest people in Europe can 1:07:12.840 --> 1:07:15.760 determine what the entire population of the world will look 1:07:15.800 --> 1:07:18.280 like in the future by controlling eugenics. That's the goal, right, 1:07:19.320 --> 1:07:24.800 Obviously pretty cool stuff. Pearl said that it was pointless 1:07:24.800 --> 1:07:27.360 for eugenesis to go about their old tactics of urging 1:07:27.400 --> 1:07:29.680 the fitter classes of people to have more children as 1:07:29.760 --> 1:07:32.760 some sort of transcendental social duty. He also told them 1:07:32.800 --> 1:07:35.800 that simply targeting the obviously unfit would mean that meaning 1:07:35.840 --> 1:07:39.320 the disabled for sterilization was not a good tactic. Instead, 1:07:39.480 --> 1:07:41.880 the poor and unfit had to be stopped in mass 1:07:41.920 --> 1:07:45.600 from increasing their numbers. One of Pearl's strongest allies in 1:07:45.640 --> 1:07:49.080 this would be a woman named Margaret Singer. Margaret is 1:07:49.120 --> 1:07:51.240 the woman who popularized the term birth control. She went 1:07:51.280 --> 1:07:53.600 on to found the organizations that would eventually become the 1:07:53.640 --> 1:07:56.680 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and as it happened, her 1:07:56.720 --> 1:07:59.880 advocacy would, years after her death, help spread millions of 1:08:00.000 --> 1:08:03.160 on millions of unsterilized alcon shields to uterus is all 1:08:03.240 --> 1:08:05.680 over the global South. And we will talk more about 1:08:05.680 --> 1:08:12.160 that in part two. It will be fun. How are 1:08:12.160 --> 1:08:15.120 you doing? How you doing, Samantha. I'm I'm digging all 1:08:15.160 --> 1:08:17.120 of this in. I'm just first of all, all of 1:08:17.160 --> 1:08:20.280 the different names and there is that I have I 1:08:20.320 --> 1:08:22.000 get to I get that note. I mean like I 1:08:22.040 --> 1:08:25.040 get to use as my band names and or screen 1:08:25.160 --> 1:08:29.679 names somewhere. That's definitely gonna be happening soon. Uh. I'm 1:08:29.720 --> 1:08:33.639 I'm enjoying every bit of this level of building up 1:08:33.640 --> 1:08:37.040 of what hierarchy and supremacy is. It's quite delightful this 1:08:37.200 --> 1:08:40.360 little chain as a little uh adventure maze that you 1:08:40.479 --> 1:08:43.280 put me on. I am glad to hear that we 1:08:43.960 --> 1:08:46.679 seek to please heat people here in our horrible stories 1:08:47.320 --> 1:08:50.920 of genocide and forced hysterectomys as one of the brown 1:08:51.040 --> 1:08:55.800 yellow people who may be infesting the nation's Uh, I 1:08:55.840 --> 1:08:58.320 will tell you I have been one that have been 1:08:58.320 --> 1:09:05.120 inundated and not breeding. You're welcome. I guess I'll tell 1:09:05.280 --> 1:09:08.800 Raymond Pearl that when he stops having been dead for 1:09:08.840 --> 1:09:11.640 half a century. I mean, you know, I want to 1:09:11.640 --> 1:09:14.559 give somebody some satisfaction and enjoy in their life. That's 1:09:14.560 --> 1:09:20.960 how I did it. You're welcome. Uh. God, Yeah, it's weird. 1:09:21.120 --> 1:09:23.080 There's like this is this is a tough one because 1:09:23.120 --> 1:09:25.880 like a lot of the history we're talking about is 1:09:25.920 --> 1:09:30.400 misinterpreted by anti birth control advocates, by like like hardcore 1:09:30.439 --> 1:09:32.720 Catholic and Christian advocates. You just think that like like 1:09:32.920 --> 1:09:35.599 who want to demonize plant parenthood, and they're wrong actually 1:09:35.600 --> 1:09:38.040 about what's bad Like Margaret Sayinger, there's a lot that's 1:09:38.040 --> 1:09:40.640 sucked up about her. They always lie about her, like 1:09:40.720 --> 1:09:43.439 and say stuff that she didn't actually say in order 1:09:43.479 --> 1:09:45.519 to condemn her with their stuff. She said. It's just 1:09:45.560 --> 1:09:48.360 a different kind of bad um. And the reason they 1:09:48.360 --> 1:09:50.320 don't say the bad stuff she actually did is that 1:09:50.360 --> 1:09:54.280 it's very similar to the bad stuff they say, right, yeah, 1:09:54.439 --> 1:09:56.919 I mean that's kind of the whole like beginning of everything, 1:09:56.920 --> 1:09:59.800 whether there's the suffragette movement and how racist and fucked 1:09:59.880 --> 1:10:03.880 up the whole community was from get go. But they 1:10:03.880 --> 1:10:07.240 did do some good work, and you have to sit back, yeah, 1:10:07.320 --> 1:10:10.519 taking back through like, Okay, how awful is this and 1:10:10.560 --> 1:10:11.960 how do we need to correct it? It's kind of 1:10:12.000 --> 1:10:15.440 like it's a it's a constant change in trying to 1:10:15.520 --> 1:10:18.400 justify I guess I don't even know the word justified, 1:10:18.439 --> 1:10:21.080 but trying to look back at how awful people were 1:10:21.120 --> 1:10:24.000 in history, historical contacts on who they were and what 1:10:24.040 --> 1:10:26.800 it was, but trying to also say, yeah, I guess 1:10:26.840 --> 1:10:30.400 they did do some good things too. You have to 1:10:30.520 --> 1:10:35.120 be fair without whitewashing. So like the you know, with 1:10:35.280 --> 1:10:37.400 with the abolitionist movement, you have to point out like 1:10:37.439 --> 1:10:39.479 these people were on the right side of history. It 1:10:39.560 --> 1:10:42.240 was a critical fight and a heroic fight, and it's 1:10:42.240 --> 1:10:44.680 good that they did it. Also, a huge chunk of 1:10:44.720 --> 1:10:47.280 them were abolitionists because they didn't want black people anywhere 1:10:47.280 --> 1:10:50.200 near them, right, Like, that's that, and that doesn't mean 1:10:50.200 --> 1:10:52.320 that it wasn't good that they were abolitionists. It just 1:10:52.400 --> 1:10:55.280 means that, like, let's be honest about what they were 1:10:55.439 --> 1:10:57.240 and like, it's same thing with the suffragettes. A lot 1:10:57.240 --> 1:10:59.920 of the absolutely we're fighting on the side of his 1:11:00.040 --> 1:11:02.760 story and like doing the right thing, and it's good 1:11:02.800 --> 1:11:04.679 that they were there. A ton of them were racist 1:11:04.680 --> 1:11:06.680 as hell, you know, just see Harriet Tubman's Ain't I 1:11:06.680 --> 1:11:10.800 a woman's speech? Right, Like it's yeah, And that's the 1:11:10.840 --> 1:11:13.360 same thing with the abolition is it's not that they 1:11:13.880 --> 1:11:15.840 didn't do a good thing. Is literally they just didn't 1:11:15.880 --> 1:11:21.720 like people. But then yea, well, it's like you you 1:11:21.760 --> 1:11:23.599 go back to the civil rights movement and a number 1:11:23.640 --> 1:11:26.080 of like the black men who were like prominent the 1:11:26.120 --> 1:11:29.200 civil rights movement, we're very misogynists and like that. People 1:11:29.479 --> 1:11:33.240 people are not never perfect or even all that great usually, 1:11:33.640 --> 1:11:35.960 but it doesn't like what matters is, you know, the 1:11:36.040 --> 1:11:38.799 broad sweep of what they attempted to accomplish. You can't 1:11:38.800 --> 1:11:41.639 expect people to be perfect as long as they're fighting 1:11:41.640 --> 1:11:44.160 to make the world better. No one's going to make 1:11:44.160 --> 1:11:46.840 the world perfect, and nobody is perfect and like, and 1:11:47.000 --> 1:11:49.280 we definitely need to make sure you know the truth 1:11:49.320 --> 1:11:52.240 of it all before we ideal idealized people in any list. 1:11:52.880 --> 1:11:56.280 But as a rule, don't make statues of people. I 1:11:56.280 --> 1:11:58.120 am never going to sit in a fetal position and 1:11:58.160 --> 1:12:00.720 making sure no one comes near my vaginant with a 1:12:01.479 --> 1:12:05.439 what was it a vagina? Is it a vaginal death crap? Yeah? 1:12:06.320 --> 1:12:11.800 Or a uterine depth charge? Both? Again? Great band names, 1:12:13.320 --> 1:12:18.240 best bed named ever, Samantha, You got any plugg doubles 1:12:18.240 --> 1:12:22.000 to plug before we roll out apart one? Well, if 1:12:22.000 --> 1:12:23.960 you guys want to find me on social media, I 1:12:24.000 --> 1:12:28.400 am under McVeigh Samantha on Twitter. Are Sam McVeigh at Instagram. 1:12:28.479 --> 1:12:30.320 You can see the pictures of my dogs because that's 1:12:30.320 --> 1:12:33.240 pretty much the only thing that hangs out with me 1:12:33.280 --> 1:12:35.760 now since we're in quarantine and never will leave. Or 1:12:35.840 --> 1:12:37.840 you can check me out on Stuff I've Never Told You, 1:12:37.880 --> 1:12:40.639 which is an intersectional feminist podcast, So if you're afraid 1:12:40.640 --> 1:12:46.439 of that, you probably will like it. But with heart. 1:12:47.280 --> 1:12:51.040 Yeah yeah, check out Stuff Mom Never Told You on iHeart. 1:12:51.560 --> 1:12:56.000 Check out Samantha on the interweb net dot com. Send 1:12:56.000 --> 1:12:59.320 her your favorite band names, um, send me your favorite 1:12:59.360 --> 1:13:03.280 band names. Start a band, uh and come back on 1:13:03.280 --> 1:13:07.639 Thursday to hear more about the population control movement Margaret 1:13:07.680 --> 1:13:11.160 Sanger And finally, the conclusion of our horrible story about 1:13:11.160 --> 1:13:14.840 the Dalcock shield um. All that and more coming up