I watched some sort of medical mystery show about Toxic Shock Syndrome on Discovery Health. If the show is supposed to be a suspenceful mystery, it’s a bit of a failure as there’s not much mystery if you have been paying attention to women’s health issues for the last 30 years. What is this bad orange makeup mystery disease epidemic affecting young women? And how are they all contracting toxic shock? Gosh, I don’t know! Will the doctors and epidemiologists ever figure it out? The kicker is when all the CDC types finally do figure out the link between the sick women and say “well it was this certain brand of tampon, and it got recalled” without naming Rely and naughty, naughty Proctor and Gamble! (Hmmm, maybe I should start paying attention to what commercials are on Discovery. P&G’s Swiffer gets a lot of ad time on Discovery’s TLC.) And the show implies that the industry responded with an absorbancy standard immediately. Hey! Guess what! It didn’t! (Are you surprised?) While this TSS crisis occurred in 1980, according to Karen Houppert in The Curse, it wasn’t until 1990 that the FDA and the tampon industry implemented the now familar standard. But, oh my, let’s not get into the politics of women’s health on tv, shall we?