Yaz and Yasmin Should be Recalled?
Yaz Stroke Lawyers MD, DC, VA
One of the biggest selling products of the pharmaceutical company Bayer are a line of birth control pills that go by the names of Yaz and Yasmin. Key elements of the marketing strategy of these pills are what could be billed as peripheral benefits. Aside from the obvious purpose of the pill (avoiding pregnancy,) Bayer is also claiming that the pill helps prevent acne, and even helps users deal with some of the more emotionally charged aspects of the menstrual cycle:
“Can the pill be good for you? Can you feel OK when you're on it? Is it doing anything positive for you besides preventing an unwanted pregnancy? The answer to all these questions is yes! Discover it for yourself.”
If Yaz and Yasmine worked perfectly and had no potentially dangerous side effects, then we would have no problems whatsoever with Bayer touting these other aspects of the pill. But the fact is that there have been some quite serious allegations of very real danger to the users of these pills, and ignoring these while touting other minor aspects of the products to increase the customer base strikes us as the height of irresponsibility.
It also strikes us as very sadly familiar. There is a long history of corporate irresponsibility when it comes to women and birth control, and the Yaz line of pills are simply the latest examples.
In the early 1970’s, a company named A.H. Robbins began an aggressive marketing campaign for a new product called the Dalkon Shield. The Shield was an intra-uterine device (IUD) that was presented as the safest and most effective way for women to avoid getting pregnant. There wasn’t a pill that you had to take every day. There wasn’t anything that you had to remember to do. In fact, the strongest marketing aspect for this device was that a woman could simply have it inserted and then could practically forget it was there.
That’s what A.H. Robbins said, anyway. What was not mentioned in the marketing campaign was that this device was, like many pharmaceutical products before and since, tested in a rushed and slipshod manner and put on the market before they realized that something was going very, very wrong. The only real test that was performed on the Shield was one that determined whether or not it prevented pregnancy. Any other side effects were not considered or tested for.
The Dalkon Shield caused severe pelvic infections in over 200,000 American women, with the worst cases resulting in infertility and even death. What made the episode even more shameful was that A.H. Robbins fought tooth and nail for each and every case that was filed against them for damages, to the point that it was close to twenty years before any victims or their families received any compensation.
The Dalkon Shield is considered a watershed case because it caused both government agencies and manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices to seriously overhaul the way that they tested and marketed their products. As a result of this infamous IUD, products involving the reproductive functions of women have improved dramatically with regards to safety.
But as much as birth control products and devices have improved, there are still very real dangers involved in some of the products out there. In 2002, Johnson and Johnson released the Ortho Evra Birth Control Patch, which is a transdermal device that is meant to be worn for a week at a time. While both the patch and standard birth control pills work the same way (using the hormones progestin and estrogen to prevent eggs from being released from the ovaries for fertilization,) the main difference is that the hormones in pills are filtered and diluted through the digestive system, while the hormones in the patch are administered through the skin directly to the bloodstream. As a result, your average patch user is carrying 60% more estrogen in her bloodstream than the average user of a pill.
The problem here is that heightened levels of estrogen in the blood stream can lead to thromboembolism, which is the formation of blood clots in the legs. Blood clots can and will travel throughout the bloodstream, where they can end up in the lungs or the heart.
The first high profile victim of a pulmonary embolism was a perfectly healthy 18 year old girl named Zakiya Kennedy, who collapsed on a subway platform in Manhattan and died on the way to the hospital in April of 2004. Johnson and Johnson’s response was to deny everything, despite the fact that a CBS News story revealed that:
“…the company's own records reveal that it received some 500 reports of serious problems associated with the patch between April 2002 and December 2004.”
What followed was the inevitable incredibly lengthy bureaucratic ping pong match between Johnson and Johnson and the FDA, in which the FDA made the suggestion that perhaps Johnson and Johnson should include the dangers of blood clotting on the label, and Johnson and Johnson was given a lengthy opportunity to explain why they didn’t think it was necessary, and the FDA took a very long time to consider Johnson and Johnson’s explanations, all while more than a few of the users of this patch were not only suffering from serious adverse effects, but were also quietly receiving cash settlements, as reported in The New York Post in April of 2006:
"Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical of Raritan, N.J., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, has settled a dozen lawsuits for millions of dollars in the last few months, and more than 100 other suits are pending."
Finally, in January of 2008, the FDA ordered Johnson and Johnson to mention prominently the potential dangers of using this product. But all this really did was provide Johnson and Johnson with the opportunity to say to anyone who got hurt “Look, we told you this might happen. The warning is right there on the box.” The Ortho Evra birth control patch is still available for sale to this day.
You would think that with such a high profile product failure to use as an example, other pharmaceutical companies would stay well away from any sort of birth control that utilizes elevated levels of hormones and their accompanying dangers of blood clots, but Bayer apparently had no compunction whatsoever.
Which brings us to the Yaz line of birth control pills.
The culprit here is a variation on progestin called drospirenone, which is not used by any other birth control pill on the market. And again, we seem to be having the same problems with clotting that we had with the birth control patch, along with a host of others, including kidney failure, strokes, heart attacks, and, unfortunately, deaths:
“Over 50 reports of Yasmin or Yaz deaths were received by the FDA between the first quarter of 2004 and the third quarter of 2008, according to some of the complaints filed in the United States. The deaths involved women as young as 17 and included cardiac arrests, pulmonary embolisms and strokes, with elevated levels of potassium in the blood frequently reported.”
We would like to make the suggestion that perhaps simply making a bigger and bolder label on the box is not the solution here. While it is true that the percentage of Yaz users who suffer severe injuries is comparatively small, we have to wonder what sort of twisted arithmetic is going on over at Bayer when they can consider even a few of their customers dying or suffering from strokes as an acceptable outcome. Under no circumstances should any product be on the market where regular use has the potential to kill you, no matter how remote the outcome.
Recent studies published in the British Medical Journal reveal that women who use Yaz™ or Yasmin™ oral contraceptives are more than twice as likely to suffer serious health complications than women using other oral contraceptives. Yaz™ and Yasmin™ have been linked with the following serious health complications:
- heart attack
- stroke
- organ failure
- gall bladder disease
- blood clots/deep vein thrombosis
- pulmonary embolism
Greenberg and Bederman is currently accepting clients who have suffered serious adverse affects from the use of either Yaz or Yasmin birth control pills. If you or a loved one have suffered from the use of Yaz or Yasmin contact Greenberg and Bederman for a free legal consultation today from a Yaz or Yasmin lawyer.
To learn more about yaz, yasmin, or oscella dangers, please vist our website and click on the yaz page, or go to our youtube site and watch our yaz attorney video.
To learn more about yaz side effects, please read our yaz page. To learn more abour our yaz lawyer, Andy Bederman, please read yaz bio or watch his yaz lawyer video.
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