The
Bleeding Edge *** / *****
Directed
by:
Kirby Dick.
Written
by: Kirby
Dick and Amy Ziering.
The Bleeding Edge is another hot
button issue documentary – an advocacy documentary, that looks at an issue,
argues its case, and urges viewers to get involved – to take this seriously.
These documentaries are always well meaning – and they usually address
important subject matter that we really should care about – really should
become involved in. They are also usually more than a little dull to actually
sit through – favoring statistics over everything else, and then wrapping
everything up with an inspirational call to arms. The Bleeding Edge is like
that as well – to a certain extent – but it’s still better than most of the
films in this vein. In part, it’s because it has a genuinely fascinating
subject matter – medical devices, and the lack of regulatory oversite that goes
into them. And in part, it’s because director Kirby Dick (and producer/cowriter
Amy Ziering) have been doing this for a while, and really know how to make
these better than most. No, it isn’t quite the film the pair’s last two films –
The Invisible War and The Hunting Ground (the first about sexual assault in the
military, the second about sexual assault on college campuses) were – but it’s
still better than most.
Part of what makes Dick and
Ziering’s films better than most is that the strike a good balance between the
true life stories they are documenting and the stats about what they are
covering. Go too far one way and your doc can easily become sentimental and
unconvincing – go too far the other way, and you’re essentially watching a dry,
boring lecture.
The Bleeding Edge falls victim to
neither trap. It focuses on just a few medical devices – and tells the story of
the people involved, before slowing zooming out and showing the bigger picture.
The films spend the most time on Essure – which was supposed to be a permanent
birth control solution for women. Essentially, what it is a piece of metal that
is inserted – in what is supposed to be a quick, easy procedure – into the
woman’s fallopian tubes, and eventually scar tissue would build up to prevent
pregnancy. It didn’t really work though. It caused a lot of bleeding, a lot of
pain – often they wouldn’t get implanted properly, and would end up in the
woman’s uterus. If you tried to remove them, it would often leave pieces of
metal behind – setting off auto-immune disorders. It’s lead to ruined lives,
ruined marriages, and lots of other side effects.
The filmmaker use this as a
jumping off point to examine how medical devices are approved for use by the
FDA – not so shockingly, this government agency seems more interested in
protecting industry than they are protecting patients. The process seems to go
really quickly and easily – and almost everything gets approved, often with
little data to back this up. They depend on the industry to self-regulate –
which we all know doesn’t work.
The film will examine other
devices as well – hip replacements with high levels of cobalt, which can cause
mental issues. The Da Vinci robot surgeon – which real surgeons are required to
have almost no training in before using on real patients. Mesh, which is
supposed to help repair a woman’s pelvis, that instead becomes a sharp object inside
her body.
The film is smart enough to tell
the real human stories behind the failures of these devices. It doesn’t just
rely on stats – arguing that even though the patients they show know what
happened to them, that even more study is required – since no one is doing
them. The women who have been victimized by Essure, who form a Facebook group
which slowly grows to thousands of members, determined to get the product taken
off the market, are truly inspiring.
No, I don’t think The Bleeding
Edge is a particularly great documentary. It is nowhere near Dick’s best work.
But it is an important film – one that shines a light on an important issue,
and one that isn’t covered very often.
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