It started with an itch and ended in a class action lawsuit.
As these things do.
There was: Big Pharma malfeasance, lawyer misconduct, contact with the FDA, the EPA, the FBI, the Attorney General of Virginia, the media, and the ethics committees of some Bar Associations. But mostly there were two very tired and very pissed off mothers.
A brief history:
A long (long) time ago I saw my middle-schooler watching Saved by the Bell (pre-syndication), while simultaneously tearing up her scalp. Thump, thump went my heart. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked faux-nonchalantly as she dug.
‘I don't know.’
‘Let me see.’
And I did.
A BusyTown of bugs were bustling around the pale part in her dark hair. They were shopping, building houses, teaching school. I held it together without shrieking, but only barely. ‘I’m just going to run to the drugstore,’ I said casually.
I returned with enough bottles of pricey lice shampoo for our family of five to perform two rounds of treatments. Just in case.
I read and scrupulously followed the directions, (something that is very, very hard for me.) We shampooed with insecticide. I stripped beds, emptied hampers and scalded everything in hot water. My spouse and I painstakingly nitpicked. And that, I assumed, was that.
Only it wasn’t.
By a long shot.
When I checked heads again the bugs were not only still there, they’d invited friends over to toast me with red plastic cups when I peered in. I bought more of the cure, sure I'd done something wrong, and somehow stepped up my efforts. Again, my spouse and I draped our long, thick-haired daughters over our knees, them twisting to play Oregon Trail on the computer, while we made meth smiles out of the ridiculously fragile plastic combs that came with the shampoo. The cheap accoutrements were provided to harvest the squirmy bugs, pre-paper towel squish.
The retrieval of lice eggs was where the serious work came in. Though the medication was supposed to take care of them too -- they still needed to be removed in order to comply with the school's no-nit policy. This involved threading the potato chip-ish crumbs off individual strands with one's fingers. Too sticky for the combs, they had to be pinched between thumb and pointer and slid down the hair shaft. One by one. It took forever and was a no-joke nightly undertaking.
Still the bugs flourished.
Suspicious that they were getting reinfected from playmates, I lectured my offspring about never sharing brushes, hats or scrunchies. I also talked about the importance of personal space. (I won’t take credit for inventing the concept of social distancing. But.)
I bought more insecticide, vacuumed incessantly (pitching expensive near-empty used bags in the event the bugs were crawling back out of the hose after a quick sojourn in the utility closet.) I changed sheets and comforters on the reg and used a broom to shove all into the washer. I boiled hair brushes in a spaghetti pot.
But no amount of (unusual) fastidiousness worked. The lice population continued to proliferate at our address.
More weeks passed.
One exceedingly early morning, I took every single piece of clothing we owned, as well as all the upholstery covers and curtains in the house to a laundromat, used a boatload of machines to scald all of it, staggered home hours later, exhausted but triumphant. At dinner, I sat across from my youngest and stared at her slack-jawed as a bug slow-walked and waved from her forehead.
I burst into hard tears.
Soon, Debbie, my friend and co-worker at the health department, noticed tell-tale signs on her kids, too. She began the regimen. Then my next-door neighbor's kids started to scratch. She, an uber-competent, scientific pharmacist methodically followed the directions on the over-the-counter cure. And experienced the same abysmal results as me and Debbie.
We continued scratching at our desks.
Finally, it occurred to me to call the company. We used a speaker phone and dialed the help-line listed on the box. We spoke with a pleasant woman who asked if we used conditioners after the lice treatments, or if we allowed the kids to swim in chlorinated pools.
We answered yes to both questions.
‘Well,’ the cheery helper explained. ‘Doing either can make the ingredients in the shampoo ineffective!’
My (raw) head spun. “Whaaaat? It doesn’t say that anywhere in the instructions!”
In fact, the box claimed the shampoo was 99% effective. Period. No caveats. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Voila!
'Let me get this straight,' I said calmly. 'I’ve been incessantly pouring sketchy poisons onto my kids’ heads, doing more laundry than humanly possible, cleaning like a crazy person and your company has been making money hand-over-fist knowing that the more the product failed the more I’d buy?'
She realized her mis-step. The speaker-phone grew quiet. I cleared my throat, narrowed my eyes; plowed on. ‘Tell your bosses that this won’t be the last they’ve heard from us. In fact, mention a class action lawsuit.' I wasn’t really sure what that meant (or entailed) but I was seriously pissed. ‘We’re going to go public on behalf of all the parents
(mothers)
who’ve been scammed into spending hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars and (wo)man hours trying to extinguish the scourge you all are literally profiting from.’
Debbie and I started doing research about what was going on. And then we really got mad.
There was literature out there about lice having become resistant to the widely-used shampoo. Scalps all over the country were seeing Darwinism in action. Stronger bugs survived while natural selection killed off those still susceptible to the active ingredients in the medicated soap.
Basically we'd been paying to participate in a self-defeating evolutionary experiment.
I wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration asking for consumer protection. Originally the agencies pointed at each other like cartoon characters. Undeterred, Debbie and I met with the Attorney General of Virginia, sure some law was being broken. He took our concerns seriously and spurred the FDA into investigating the known ineffectiveness. Later, he gave an interview in which he said he was besieged by other equally frustrated parents.
One of the head honchos of the shampoo company called me at home. First he tried sweet-talking me, mansplaining my frustration. When I didn't bite he ended up screaming so loudly I had to pull the phone away from my ear. 'We are getting representation,' I reiterated calmly into the landline's receiver. The C-Suite Big Pharma bro hung up.
I found a torts law professor interested in class action and consumer rights. He seemed excited by the case and brought in co-counsel who’d previously sued the same drug manufacturer for another issue. Because of some ethics rule, they weren’t able to advertise themselves for clients to join the class, so my husband, who went to engineering school before med school, put up a site for potential class members, directing them to the attorneys. (This was back when making a website was an intense undertaking and took a very long time.)
We needed 100 people to qualify as a class under the legal statute. Debbie and I signed a contingency fee agreement as group representatives and sent out letters to local pediatricians asking them to put up flyers about the suit. We did an interview with a science reporter who wrote an article outlining both the epidemic and evidence of a (literal) super-bug.
Per my mortified children’s orders (because, you know, head lice), I was an unnamed source in the piece. When a TV news magazine wanted to do a cover story about the suburban scourge, my children threatened to run away if I gave a single interview.
The plaintiff class grew and at one point the lawyer excitedly reported that his co-counsel had met with the drug company’s attorney and it looked like something could be worked out!
Which sounded a little strange but I didn’t go to law school.
Our main objectives were for the company to change the packaging instructions so as not to lead other desperate consumers (women) down the infinite OCD rabbit hole of futile cleaning; that they provide refunds for everyone who’d been snookered by the misleading claims; and that other damages be awarded for all the expenses incurred by the endless following of useless directions. (I didn't lose time off from work but chances were good that other people did.)
And, just for the record, our commitment to the case was total because months into it WE STILL HAD BUGS.
Suddenly, right before we hit the 100 client requirement, the attorneys, who'd initially been ever so responsive and engaging, ghosted Debbie and me. Completely. They stopped returning calls and responding to emails.
Aside: You’d think the torts guy might have had a somewhat of an inkling that I don’t go all Zen about being dissed.
When I eventually got him on the phone, I demanded to know what was going on. He said that he and his co-counsel had reached an agreement with the company.
I’m no lawyer but that didn’t sound right. ‘Without speaking to us?’
He smugly reported that everyone in the class would get a refund --up to $100.00. And, he said that that the company would change the packaging.
'Did they pinky promise?
Crickets.
'And how are you getting paid?'
Dead crickets.
(I'll take the drug company, Alex. For a quarter mil.)
When I asked for the contact information for those who had signed up through the website, he refused. 'That's confidential.'
‘My husband was the one,” I sputtered. “Who put up the site! Debbie and I brought you this case!”
He said they'd pay my spouse for his time. (Which they did. Which we donated.)
And then somehow, I have no idea how, the
F
B
I
got involved, calling for all notes and communication relating to the case.
Which was, um a tad unnerving.
After handing over the "files" (think: Lucy and Ethel level note-taking) Debbie called the science reporter and gave an update. Which turned out to be a mistake as the FBI agent who'd picked up our files called Debbie back after she did the interview to caution her to keep their contact private.
#Oops
Debbie gave her word (from that moment forward.) The guy wasn’t amused when the article came out. ('Ooh,' she said apologetically in her hardcore Long Island accent. 'Are you mad at me?')
The fact that the FBI was interested in the under the table negotiations between the object of a lawsuit and the plaintiffs' attorneys suggested that the disciplinary committees of the state bars might be interested, too. At least one license was yanked and a hasty retirement followed. Ethics articles were written about our lawyers' collusion and lack of contrition.
But all of this was just noise because
WE
Still
Had
Lice.
It wasn't until the smart pharmacist next door figured out what to do, that we finally got ahem, ahead, of the situation. (Which was all we ever wanted in the first place.) Rather than spend any more time on mental health consuming treatment, we decided to blow off the school’s no nit policy and just comb out the live lice every night. Eventually the life cycle was disrupted enough that we were no longer in danger of losing our minds.
Update: Recently I cleaned out a bathroom closet and rediscovered an array of independently purchased metal (not plastic!) combs from days of yore. They went straight back onto the shelf.
There is a new school outbreak -- and we have grandchildren now.
Comments