Punishment for Witchcraft: How Transvaginal Mesh Harmed Millions of Women

They Knew. They Sold It Anyway.Trial attorney Mark Mueller spent years trying to answer a deceptively simple question: why were hundreds of thousands of women being quietly devastated by a product their doctors swore was safe?In this episode, Mueller traces his decade-long investigation into transvaginal mesh, a polypropylene surgical implant marketed to treat urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse. What began as a handful of unexplained injuries in a West Virginia law office grew into what became the largest, most complex product liability case in U.S. history, with settlements exceeding $10 billion and counting.But the money doesn't begin to cover the full cost.Mueller walks through how the device slipped through FDA oversight via a regulatory loophole known as the "creeping predicate," how manufacturers used doctors as a buffer to insulate themselves from liability, and how a network of industry-funded research kept inconvenient findings buried. Along the way, he describes what it took to find a single material safety data sheet buried on page 50 of a Google search that changed everything. Four words in bold: Do not use in human implants.The episode covers:FDA clearance vs. approval, and why the distinction mattersThe "creeping predicate" and how a suture became a full pelvic implantHow adverse event reporting failed at every level, from patients to doctors to manufacturersIndustry tactics used to discourage and derail patient complaintsWhistleblowers, suppressed engineering reports, and the paper trail that unraveled it allWhy women's pain was systematically dismissed and misattributedThe oil and gas origins of the material inside millions of women's bodiesMueller calls it "punishment for witchcraft against women." The evidence suggests that's not far off.This episode is part of the Truth & Justice League Podcast’s “Stories from the Vault” series, featuring real legal battles that reveal the human side of the justice system.--------Mark Mueller is a nationally recognized trial attorney and the host of the Truth & Justice League Podcast, where justice meets humanity. With over three decades of experience fighting corporate negligence, environmental harm, and medical injustice, Mueller brings listeners inside the real-life cases that shaped his career, and exposed the systems that put profits over people. A pioneer of the historic Transvaginal Mesh litigation, Mueller has also represented Indigenous communities, including the Blackfoot Brave Dog Society and Lakota Sioux Sundance Chiefs, in landmark cases defending sacred land and cultural rights.Through weekly episodes featuring frontline advocates, artists, legal experts, and "Stories from the Vault" drawn from Mueller’s own case files, the podcast shines a light on the machinery of injustice, and the people working to dismantle it. Equal parts legal exposé, personal reckoning, and call to action, the Truth & Justice League Podcast is built to inform, inspire, connect and empower a rising movement of everyday heroes.