If you want to do some original reporting on this (as opposed to say, telling us what Marx would have said about it), go the store and buy it. Open the box and read the instructions. Does it include a big warning about doing a 48-hour skin test beforehand with each and every use? Did the poor woman follow directions and do a skin test?

I'm curious about what particular substance the hair dye contained that was so unique she never encountered it before in any other product. Hm?

The real question remains: What would Marx have said?

A woman dyeing her hair black is not looking for "good hair". That is a term that refers to texture and length. I'm not defending in anyway the use of these words to mean "long straight hair" but that's what it means and hair color isn't involved. Your not American-born roots really show sometimes.

L'Oreal does have a reputation for racism in its advertising but your post doesn't as others mention, note whether the allergy inducing ingredient was only in the Dark and Lovely brand or in all L'Oreal dye products.

It's still tragic that this woman died prematurely.

For some odd reason nobody understands, her immune system was primed to go stark raving gonzo the next time it saw a particular sequence of amino acids.

Or maybe not the next time... maybe she'd already used the dye. Her white blood cells encountered it in the scalp of her pores that night and one particular bit of peptide vaguely resembled a salad that had given her food poisoning once. So over the next few weeks, antibodies where created to bind to the dye.

Whatever caused it, it was just a horrible chain of very rare circumstances.

It seems as if there should be more to the story - some factor that was either not discovered or not reported.

Hrm.