VIDEO. In her book “Pilules roses”, Juliette Ferry-Danini investigates Spasfon

Painful periods, cystitis… When she was a teenager in France, Juliette Ferry-Danini was prescribed Spasfon for multiple ailments. Skeptical about its real effectiveness, she is now investigating in her book Pink pills. “Why is there this success in prescriptions and sales in pharmacies? And why do we have so little scientific data? The whole point of my book was to explain this situation”, declares the philosopher of medicine and teacher-researcher at the University of Namur.

According to his research, Spasfon was born in France in 1961 before being marketed three years later. “It was an immediate success. This will make the Lafon laboratory rich”, comments the author. In 2021, “25.3 million boxes of phloroglucinol, so not just Spasfon but all its generics”, were prescribed in France and “72% of phloroglucinol prescriptions concern women.

“Spasfon was born in a kind of ignorance”

She adds that very few clinical trials preceded its marketing: “In [le premier] trial, which is not a clinical trial, they actually report 14 clinical cases, 14 patients, 10 women, 4 men.” For her, “this is very revealing of the fact that Spasfon was born in a kind of ignorance, both of ethical rules and of scientific rules”.

This poses “several problems“since it is a medicine”massively” prescribed in France. First, patients do not benefit from the medical treatment best suited to their ailments. Second, “This situation of over-prescribing a drug that has not been scientifically proven keeps us, the patients, in a situation where, potentially, we no longer understand what medicine is.” In her work, the philosopher wished “study the Spasfon as a space of ignorance”.