Soap opera // Review

[Swasy] gives an appallingly slanted account of toxic shock syndrome and the alleged role of superabsorbent tampons such as P&G's Rely brand. One of her main sources is Tom Riley, the lawyer who acted for Patricia Kehm, a woman who had used Rely tampons and then died of toxic shock. Riley is allowed to accuse P&G of "corporate murder." This is irresponsible. It's also nonsense. There may have been a link between superabsorbent tampons and toxic shock, but P&G hardly set out to kill customers. Rely was withdrawn from shelves after Kehm's tragic death. In her all - out desire to prove P&G's excessive corporate power, Swasy again and again uses, or quotes, inappropriate and offensive analogies. Apart from the Kremlin, P&G is compared, at various points, to "a bunch of Nazis," "what Mussolini represented," "organizational fascism," the KGB, the Mafia and the gestapo. The company magazine is likened to Pravda. P&G's pricing tactics are compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Another Wall Street Journal reporter is quoted approvingly when he suggests: "The company may be the only organization in China that is more secretive than the Communist Party." Swasy's attempts to prove that P&G condones violence is confined to a more - than - tenuous claim that a woman was beaten, raped and set on fire by assailants associated with P&G. That the police brought charges of malicious perjury against the woman is not considered damaging to the woman's case. Rather, it is seen as evidence that P&G has the police in its pocket.