Maryland Injury and Disability Law : Washington DC Metro Injury & Disability Lawyer & Attorney : Greenberg & Bederman : Accidents, Falls, Medical Malpractice : Maryland, DC, Virginia

Even though we live in a media environment where many events are forgotten almost immediately after they occur, we think it will be a long time before anyone forgets the disaster that happened at the Indiana State Fair.

Thousands of people turned up to see a band called Sugarland, who are quite popular. Before the show even started, wind gusts began to develop. The stage, which was not properly anchored, collapsed onto the first few rows of spectators. Forty-five people were injured, and seven were killed.

Not surprisingly, many of the victims and loved ones of the deceased began to contact attorneys about legal representation. It would be hard to imagine why they wouldn’t do so. This tragedy occurred on the site of the Indiana State Fair, which means the state was ultimately responsible for making sure that everything was secure and safe. As you can see from the video evidence, everything most certainly was not secure and safe.

With Indiana being quite a long way away from Maryland or D.C, we don’t have all the facts in front of us. But upon giving the case a passing glance, it seems that a reasonable argument could be made for a wrongful death claim for the seven victims who died, with negligence claims being made for all the injury victims. And from what we read in the papers, it appears that almost everyone involved in the accident is involved in a legal claim against the state of Indiana. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that it will do them much good.

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The Food and Drug Administration recently released a study confirming what the British Medical Journal had already suggested in April. The FDA study found that birth control pills containing an ingredient called drospirenone put women at a greater risk of blood clotting than from other types of birth control pills.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal came to the same conclusion, stating that the risk for women taking pills with drospirenone is about 3 or 4 in 1,000. To put it in perspective, the risk from other pills is 1 in 1,000.

If there were only 1,000 women taking these pills, then 3 or 4 blood clotting episodes would be bad enough. But the pills that the BMJ, the CMAJ and the FDA are referring to are Yaz and Yasmin, which are birth control pills made by Bayer. Significantly more than 1,000 women are taking these pills. Hundreds of thousands of women all over the world are taking them, so the threat to the health of these women is much more wide spread.

It should also be mentioned that Bayer engaged in a particularly heavy advertising campaign which made quite a few misleading promises. The advertisements claimed that Yaz could prevent women from gaining weight, could cure acne and could prevent PMS. This wasn’t true. Some people who took the pill did not gain weight, but there isn’t much evidence that suggests that all women would experience the same thing. And some women did experience a clearing up of some pimples. But in the advertisements, they listed symptoms that are commonly associated with PMS, while what Yaz and Yasmin actually had an effect on were symptoms of Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. PMDD is significantly different from PMS, and the ads implied that the two conditions were interchangeable.

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Have you ever wondered why it is that so many people are so eager to embrace limitations on their own Constitutional rights?

We don’t think it is because Americans are unintelligent, or because they enjoy having things taken away from them, or because they enjoy being ripped off. We think it’s because they have been systematically misinformed for so long that they have developed a worldview that is completely backwards. Up is down. Black is white. North is south. Hot is cold.

Whenever you see news coverage about the Constitution, you mostly read about cases involving the First Amendment (say, a case on flag burning or a case about corporate campaign donations), or the Second Amendment (assault weapons regulations or handgun bans.) But for some reason the rest of the Amendments of the Constitution never really come up. And one particular amendment that has been steadily eroded over the years is the Seventh Amendment.

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There has been a more or less constant stream of news about Bayer’s line of birth control pills for about two years now. Sometimes the news is a flood, while other times it is merely a trickle, but as a story it has never gone away entirely.

We view this as a good thing. The more women know about the dangers of Yaz, Yasmin or Ocella birth control pills, the more likely they are to find alternative methods of birth control, which means that they will be less likely to suffer from blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, strokes, heart attacks or gall bladder disease.

These health risks appear to be coming from a specific ingredient in these pills, which is a synthetic variation of progestin called drospirenone. While there is a risk of blood clots with practically every form of birth control pill, the risk of a blood clotting episode for women taking a birth control pill with drospirenone is 75% greater, according to a study by the FDA.

One of the theories as to why these clots occur is that drospirenone might elevate the potassium levels in the blood stream, which causes the clotting mechanism in the blood to become more sensitive. The elevated potassium level in your blood essentially tricks your brain into thinking that you are bleeding somewhere, when in fact you are not. Clots have a tendency to form in the deep arterial veins in the legs. These clots then break apart into tiny pieces, and these pieces travel through the bloodstream. This is when they cause blockages in blood flow, either in the heart (heart attack,) lungs (pulmonary embolism,) or brain (stroke.)

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