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Women and Crime: Discussion Preparations

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Latest update: March 11, 2000
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Discussion Preparations

Drugs and Victimization

Within the framework of the Women and Crime Class this topic relates to the corporate victimization of women through the sale of pharmaceuticals in spite of their danger. Feminist studies speak of the extent to which drugs are used to control women: "These drugs . . . were developed not in response to disease but for use in healthy women to enhance what nature had provided or to control the natural processes of reproduction. Medical science has long sought to control women's reproductive capacity and to surgically manipulate or technologically "improve on" women's bodies. (Finley, "The Pharmaceutical Industry and Women's Reproductive Health," in Szockyj amd Fox, Corporate Victimization of Women, at p. 59.

We might also want to discuss the effects of drugs on bearing and raising children. It is women who generally care for the young. The DES scandal emerged from the indiscriminate prescription of woefully undertested drugs to make the baby healthier and to prevent miscarriage.

Drugs such as ritalin and dilantin are used to calm hyperactive children. Mothers with their hands full, and teachers are the primary caretakers for whom these children present difficulties. FDA testing on children has only recently come into play. Yet drugs are used for children, and for young adolescents, with little effective clinical testing on the long term toll of such drug taking.) DES and Structural Violence

What about the huge diet industry and the effect it may have had on the surge in anorexia and bulimia in our young people? Women are, again, the most likely victims in this market.

And what about the tragic long term results of DES? We do not even know what will happen to the next generation of DES babies, though there is evidence that there is still harm to come. The courts have decided that two generations is as far as standing to sue should extend, for the pharmaceutical companies could not have foreseen what would happen to the grandchildren of their victims. "DES daughters are today among the most frequent consumers of infertility drugs and reproductive technologies; and they are thus submjecting themselves and subsequent offspring to yet anotehr round of pharmacological experimentation. . . there has been little research into the efficacy or safety of contemporary reproductive technologies for this particularly susceptible group of women.

To Whom Are the Drugs Given?

The DES case was unusual: "Although quite inexpensive to produce, it was not sold nearly so cheaply. Considered the state of the art in high-level prenatal care, it was used by private physicians but rarely in clinics or public hospitals serving poor populations." (Finley in Corporate Victimization of Women, at p. 67.)