Contraceptive Comeback: The Maligned IUD Gets a Second Chance
By the early 1970s, 17 IUDs were under development by 15 different companies. The problems started with the fourth one to actually hit the market: the Dalkon Shield. AH Robins (which also made ChapStick and Robitussin) marketed one version of it as a smaller option for women who didn’t have children. Like all medical devices at the time, the Shield wasn’t vetted by the FDA. While drugs got careful screening, safety and efficacy claims on device labels did not. The FDA stepped in only if people started reporting problems.
And report they did. Women with the Shield came to doctors ravaged by infection. Some complained of uterine bleeding or pain during sex. In others, the symptoms were less severe, like vaginal discharge or vague abdominal pain. Doctors diagnosed some of them with a condition called pelvic inflammatory disease—PID—which can be caused by chlamydia and gonorrhea or by normal vaginal bacteria. The women took antibiotics and usually got better, though a few rare cases led to hysterectomies. Furthermore, the Shield had a higher failure rate than originally reported, and some women who became pregnant with the Shield in place experienced spontaneous septic abortion, a miscarriage complicated by infection. At least 18 died. In 1974, faced with a flood of Shield-linked complaints, AH Robins took it off the market.
