Who doesn’t have a wafer lying around at the bottom of their toiletry bag? Bright pink phloroglucinol dragees are prescribed for stomach aches, particularly to relieve menstrual pain. Marketed in France from 1964 by the Lafon laboratory, Spasfon is a commercial cardboard. At the end of the 1990s, 40% of the French company’s turnover came from its sale. More than 25 million platelets were prescribed during 2021, making this drug, now produced by the American giant Teva, one of the ten best-selling in France. A success deciphered by the philosopher of medicine Juliette Ferry-Danini, who published the essay Pink Pills with Stock. On ignorance in medicine (214 pages, 19.50 euros).
It was while reading patient testimonials on the social network Twitter (now X) in 2020 that the author decided to retrace the history of Spasfon. In the 1960s, it was mainly tested on women. A small group of doctors put them through what they call the “choleretic-morphine test”: skin injections that trigger headaches and stomach aches… Reports of this experiment report terrible suffering among the patients. .
Juliette Ferry-Danini’s research confirms her hunch: the lack of scientific data proving the effectiveness of phloroglucinol in the treatment of painful menstruation. Proof that medicine takes very little account of the issue of pain, particularly for women, considered too sensitive. The scientific discourse around Spasfon is thus based on a simplistic idea: during their periods, women have spasms, which medicine has sought to calm since the end of the 19th century, considering them as signs… of hysteria. In 2014, the High Authority for Health declared that the “medical benefit provided by Spasfon is low in treating painful spasms in gynecology”.
Controlled by the European Medicines Agency, which intends to bring order to marketing authorizations, and in the midst of controversy over the dangers of vasoconstrictors used to relieve colds, will Spasfon disappear from pharmacies ? Not at the moment. Because, despite its low effectiveness, it is safe. It will also remain inexpensive, since the government has just announced that it will not double the medical deductibles applied to reimbursable medicines in the Social Security budget for 2024. But Bercy wants to save 1.3 billion euros on drugs. And so might see red about the pink pills.
