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

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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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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If you have a product that is ultimately dangerous to the people who use it, wouldn’t you want to either fix what makes it dangerous or remove it from the market?

Most manufacturers do exactly that.  If a car is defective, automakers recall it and fix the problem. Or if a baby carriage has a flaw that puts children in danger, the carriages that have been purchased are recalled and those that are still on the shelves are removed.  The repairs and changes have to directly address the problem.

For instance, if I were selling a car which had a tendency to deploy the airbags every time it drove over a speed bump, the correct solution would be to fix the problem.  An incorrect solution would be to change the color, shape or name of the car while leaving the airbag problem in place.

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For the better part of a year, we here at Greenberg and Bederman have been closely monitoring developments over the Bayer Corporation’s line of birth control pills. Yaz, Yasmin and its generic version Ocella are all immensely popular and incredibly profitable for the German drug manufacturer.  Aside from simply preventing pregnancy, Bayer markets the secondary benefits of Yaz and Yasmin, which include prevention of certain types of acne, as well as relief from some of the more traumatic emotional disturbances that can come with menstruation.

What separates Yaz and Yasmin from other forms of oral contraceptive is that these pills contain a synthetic variation of the normal birth control ingredient progestin. This variation is called drospirenone, and while it can contribute to less acne and relief from emotional trauma, it also significantly raises potassium levels in the bloodstream. Elevated potassium levels can cause deep vein thrombosis, which is the formation of blood clots in the major veins and arteries in the legs. If the blood clots break apart and travel, they often get pulled into the pulmonary bloodstream, which can lead to pulmonary embolisms. Or the pieces of the blood clot can travel to the heart or brain, which can lead to heart attacks or strokes. It’s important to mention that these birth control injuries aren’t one-in-a-million occurrences. They happen with unfortunate regularity.

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Damage from Yaz birth control pills is International

At Greenberg and Bederman, we have been keeping a close eye on developments regarding Bayer’s line of Yaz birth control pills.  For those of you who have not been informed, birth control pills that have been marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella have been linked to serious health complications among the women who use them.

Since Yaz and Yasmin have been on the market, there have been thousands of incidents of strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease among otherwise perfectly healthy women who have been using these pills.

What appears to be the cause of these medical complications is that when Bayer developed these pills, they chose to use as an ingredient a synthetic variation of progestin called drospirenone. This ingredient has been shown to increase the potassium levels in the bloodstreams of those who use it. When potassium levels increase substantially, this can cause blood clots to develop in the main arteries and veins in the legs. This condition is called “deep vein thrombosis.” While the clots themselves are relatively harmless, complications develop when these clots break apart and start to travel through the bloodstream. When these bits of blood clot get to the lungs, the heart or the brain, the end result can be a pulmonary embolism, a heart attack or a stroke.

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DC Area Yaz Birth Control Injury Law Firm Greenberg and Bederman is Currently Offering Legal Assistance

As many of you probably know, the Bayer Corporation is facing a series of yaz lawsuits in various American states due to problems that users of their line of birth control pills are experiencing. If you don't know about yaz health problems, please read our page on yaz history.The difference between Bayer’s pills and most other oral contraceptives on the market is that Bayer’s birth control pills (which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin, and a generic version called Ocella) all contain a synthetic variation of progestin called drispirenone. While the use of drispirenone has been marketed by Bayer as having some beneficial peripheral effects such as prevention of minor acne or helping to alleviate the symptoms of pre menstrual dysphoric disorder, Bayer failed to mention in either it’s marketing campaign or the warning labels used on the medication that drispirenone raises the risk of deep vein thrombosis, or blood clots in the deep arteries and veins of the legs. These blood clots can then break apart, and the pieces can travel through the bloodstream, which can cause strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms. The use of drispirenone has also lead to a higher than normal rate of gall bladder disease.

These side effects of yaz are not merely theoretical. There have been hundreds of women who have been seriously injured and hospitalized all over the country due to clot-based injuries. Otherwise perfectly healthy women have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms and gall bladder disease, and there have even been more than fifty deaths.

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Women in Indianapolis Latest to File Yaz Lawsuits

According to the Star Press, over fifty women have filed yaz lawsuits against the Bayer Corporation due to injuries that these women received due to the use of Bayer’s line of birth control pills.

According to the British Medical Journal Study of the women who take Yaz, Yasmin, or Oscella, 6% will experience dangerous adverse reactions ranging from blood clots, to DVT, to Gallbladder injury. Other birth control products have adverse reactions in about 1 % of patients who take birth control pills.

Bear in mind, we certainly don’t think that it’s “normal” for birth control pills to be dangerous to women. But considering that Bayer had no problem with producing, releasing and aggressively marketing a pill with an ingredient that they knew to be more dangerous than other forms of oral contraceptives, we have to assume that they think a five percent casualty rate for their products is “normal.”

The ingredient in question is a synthetic variation of one of the two main ingredients found in almost every birth control pill on the market. Most pills contain a combination of progesterone and estrogen, which essentially fools the female body into thinking that it is already pregnant. In order to separate themselves from the pack, Bayer decided to use a synthetically produced variation of progesterone called drospirenone. With this ingredient firmly in place, Bayer began to trumpet the additional peripheral benefits of what their line of pills could supposedly do. Aside from helping to prevent pregnancy, Bayer claimed that Yaz and Yasmin both helped to prevent serious forms of acne and Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD.) They combined these claims with an expensive and flashy advertising campaign that was aimed at younger women. After all, what young woman wouldn’t want to avoid acne? What young woman wouldn’t wantto avoid the emotional instability that often comes with menstruation?

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One of the reasons that scare people away from litigation is the amount of time that it takes for many cases to come to a conclusion. Many corporations and insurance companies make it a point to delay the litigation process as much as they can, solely in the hopes of wearing out the plaintiffs. In the midst of the judicial process, there are all sorts of opportunities for both sides to file motions about one aspect of the trial or another, and corporate defendants often take many of these opportunities. They are in a good position to do so. Most plaintiffs in injury cases are facing real financial hardship, like medical bills or an inability to go back to work due to injuries. Insurance companies or major corporations aren’t facing any such difficulties, and can more easily afford the legal costs of delaying a trial.

A product liability trial most often takes a long time; especially if there have been multiple victims from the same product. Fortunately for the victims of Bayer’s line of birth control pills, the process has been streamlined by the judicial system, so women who have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, gall bladder disease or pulmonary embolismshould not have to suffer as long from unnecessary delays.

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Whenever there is a high profile legal action against a manufacturer or corporation, there is almost always an outcry from some in the public who think that the biggest victim is the manufacturer or corporation.

Even if the legal action in question involves a major consumer catastrophe where hundreds of people get injured or worse, die, some people manage to portray the perpetrators as the victims. They moan about the “expense of the legal procedures,” or they complain that the courts are being clogged up with “unnecessary” or “frivolous” cases. They may also claim that lawsuits “force” businesses to raise their prices, which will impact all the consumers, and not just the ones who were injured.

We have a particularly hard time buying these arguments, especially when they come from multibillion dollar earning pharmaceutical companies. In the first place, the only thing that can “force” a pharmaceutical company to do anything is either the pharmaceutical company itself or the law. Nothing “forces” a pharmaceutical company to charge fifteen dollars for a pill that costs eight cents to manufacture. Nothing “forces” a pharmaceutical company to put out products that are dangerous to the public. Nobody “forces” pharmaceutical companies to “grind out” any and all legal proceedings when a simple admission of wrongdoing and a reasonable offer of compensation to the victims would be more than sufficient.

But the narrative is quite often sympathetic to the poor, beleaguered pharmaceutical companies who are being attacked by opportunistic and ungrateful patients and lawyers, demanding unreasonable rewards for medical problems that were “dubious” at best.

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As we have been reporting extensively over the past few months, Bayer’s line of birth control pills has been a source of major controversy over the past year or so. The pills (which are marketed under the names Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella) first came to the attention of the general public when the Food and Drug Administration ordered Bayer to remake an advertising campaign in October of 2008. The FDA’s problem with the campaign was that it overstated the supposed side benefits of Yaz (treatment for acne and depression,) while understating the increased dangers that the special ingredient posed towards the women who used the pill.

While the FDA was having problems with the advertising, the women who were actually using the products themselves were having serious problems of their own. The new ingredient that Bayer decided to use for these birth control pills is called drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin. Along with the supposed benefits of decreased acne and an easier time with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, this ingredient has also been shown to increase the odds of deep vein thrombosis (blood clots in the legs.) These blood clots have a tendency to break apart, and the pieces of the clots have a tendency to travel through the bloodstream. This can cause pulmonary embolisms, strokes and heart attacks among women who are otherwise healthy.

To be fair, there is a risk of deep vein thrombosis associated with most forms of oral contraceptives, but the problem with Bayer’s line of pills is that the drospirenone increases those odds pretty substantially. According to the British Medical Journal, there is a 6.3 fold increase of deep vein thrombosis among women who use birth control pills containing drospirenone. Bayer’s birth control pills are the only brands available that use drospirenone, so the BMJ’s study might as well just say “Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.”

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One of the reasons that scare people away from litigation is the amount of time that it takes for cases to come to a conclusion. Many corporations and insurance companies make it a point to delay the litigation process as much as they can, solely in the hopes of wearing out the plaintiffs. In the midst of the judicial process, there are all sorts of opportunities for both sides to file motions about one aspect of the yaz lawsuit or another, and corporate defendants often take many of them. They are in a good position to do so. Most plaintiffs in injury cases are facing real financial hardship, like medical bills or an inability to go back to work due to injuries. Insurance companies or major corporations aren’t facing any such difficulties, and can usually afford the legal costs of delaying a trial.

A product liability trial like the yaz lawsuit, can often take a long time; especially if there have been multiple victims from the same product. Fortunately for victims of Bayer’s line of birth control pills, the yaz lawsuit process has been streamlined by the judicial system, so women who have suffered from strokes, heart attacks, gall bladder disease or pulmonary embolism should not have to suffer from long and unnecessary delays.

Bayer’s birth control pills, which are marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella, contain an ingredient called drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin. Bayer claims that this ingredient brings with it additional benefits, such as an easier time with premenstrual dysphoric disorder as well as a cure for acne. While that might or might not be correct, the trade off is that the levels of potassium in the blood go up, which can and does cause blood clotting. These clots can break apart and travel, which can cause blockages in the heart (cardiac arrests,) blockages in the brain (strokes,) and blockages in the lungs (pulmonary embolisms.)

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Have you ever been questioned on the witness stand or in a deposition? It isn’t fun.

The main job of the opposing counsel is to make the jury doubt the validity of your testimony. This means they will do everything short of calling you a liar. They will pick apart your story, obsess over irrelevant details of your testimony and call your motives into question.

If that doesn’t work, the opposing counsel often has no problems with getting personal. They will often ask you questions about your life that has absolutely nothing to do with the case at hand. The reason they do this is because they want to make you appear untrustworthy to the judge or jury.

Fortunately, for thousands of women across the country, the judge presiding over the Yaz birth control pill case will be placing limits on these sorts of questions.

For those of you who don’t know, there have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against Bayer over their line of birth control pills. These pills, which are marketed under the names of Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella, contain drospirenone, which is a synthetic variation of the hormone progestin. This variation has been shown to increase the level of potassium in the bloodstream of the women who use these birth control pills. This can cause deep vein thrombosis, which is the formation of blood clots in the veins and arteries of the legs. Quite often, theses clots break apart, and the remnants travel through the bloodstream, causing blockages in the lungs, heart or brain.

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The Food and Drug Administration’s  (FDA)primary responsibility is to see that any food products and pharmaceuticals are safe for consumption or use, or at the very least they make sure that the benefits outweigh the risks. For instance, if you were to come up with an effective pain reliever using ingredients in your kitchen, you couldn’t mass produce and sell it as a pain reliever unless you had your product go through the FDA approval process.

This process actually takes years. After initial testing, the pharmaceutical companies have to send their testing results to the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation Research (CDER.) These results are then reviewed extensively by a team of doctors, statisticians, pharmacologists and other scientists. Aside from going over the testing results, they also see if the labeling proposed by the pharmaceutical company is accurate. In other words, if the CDER perceives a risk in the drug that isn’t mentioned in the labeling, or feels that the supposed benefits of a drug are overstated, it is their duty to inform the pharmaceutical company of their findings.

It is important to mention that the CDER doesn’t actually test the drugs themselves. They only go over the data provided to them by the pharmaceutical companies. That’s not to say that they do a poor job in analyzing the data, but what is to prevent the pharmaceutical companies from turning in half truths or incomplete information? What if the pharmaceutical companies fail to mention a possible side-effect because they view it to be “statistically unlikely?”

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There are many frustrating things about the work that we are doing with women who have been injured by Bayer’s line of birth control. The idea that these women came to us after being hospitalized for taking what was supposed to be a safe drug is bad enough. But what makes it even worse is that Bayer is continuing to deny that Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella are dangerous despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We also find it aggravating that while the Food and Drug Administration has been taking some positive steps towards bringing Bayer’s rampant and irresponsible marketing under control, they are still moving unacceptably slowly when it comes to having the drug removed from the shelves. They are currently running “more studies,” but they don’t expect to have that done within a year.

There is also an element of frustration in the deafness of the media. Greenberg and Bederman and other law firms like us have practically been crying from the rooftops about the dangers of Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella. We have been running radio and TV ads, we have been all over YouTube, and we have been running this blog, and up until today, the dangers of these birth control pills have received barely any coverage in either local or national media.

Finally, the Washington Times has taken notice that there is something very wrong with these pills, and that there has been something wrong with them from the very beginning.

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We have spent the past month or so taking the Bayer Corporation to task over their line of birth control pills, which go under the names Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella. We have been doing this for quite a few reasons, chief among them the fact that they have decided to use an ingredient called drospirenone that creates dangerous side effects. This synthetic variant of progestin has been shown to increase the likelihood of blood clots not just in women who smoke or women over thirty five, but in any woman who uses the pill at all. The damage from these adverse side effects  of this “new and improved” ingredient has been substantial. Hundreds of women have reported serious bad side effects and complications after taking this pill, ranging from strokes and heart attacks to pulmonary embolisms, and the FDA has received over fifty reports of deaths.

A product which establishes a casualty list is bad enough, but what we find equally bad about this whole scenario is that the advertising campaigns that were used to promote Yaz in particular were misleading. They understated the increased dangerous side effects of the pill while promoting supposed secondary benefits of the pill, which, as it turns out, weren’t all that effective in the first place. All of this served to get more and more women to buy a pill under misleading circumstances, which meant that more and more women were in danger.

In all fairness, nearly all birth control pills carry some risk of blood clots and other dangerous side effects. All of the makers and manufacturers of birth control pills are well aware of this. But with other birth control pills, the amount of incidents where blood clots occur are quite small, with the number remaining around 1%. And even with that number, the vast majority of manufacturers of birth control pills advertise their products responsibly. They tell you what the pill does, does not do, and, most importantly, they tell you what the risks and serious side effects are.

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Let’s say for the sake of argument that we decided to get into the car wax business. Let us further say that we spent millions of dollars on an advertising campaign in which we claimed that not only would our wax make your car extremely shiny, but would also make it run better.

If we ran ads making this claim in newspapers, on television, the radio and the internet, we would be in serious trouble, regardless of the accuracy of our claims about the ability of our wax to make cars shine. The sticking point is that we claimed that our car wax can do something which it most certainly cannot, which is improving the function of your cars motor.

No reputable business would market a product by claiming that it does something it wouldn’t do, yet many pharmaceutical companies seem to have no problems doing exactly that. Just this past year, Bayer has been cited for misleading advertising by the Food and Drug Administration, which forced the pharmaceutical giant to spend even more money to adjust its marketing campaign.

The advertising in question involved a birth control pill called Yaz, which was marketed as not only a contraceptive but as a cure for both acne and premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD. You shouldn’t confuse  PMDD with premenstrual syndrome (PMS,) as the symptoms of PMS are much less severe then the symptoms of PMDD. PMS brings with it mild mood swings, irritability and cramps, while PMDD is associated with severe depression, panic attacks and insomnia, among other symptoms. One of the many problems that the FDA had with the Yaz advertising campaign was that Bayer actually did mistaken the symptoms for PMS with PMDD in order to increase the appeal of the drug.

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Yaz, Yasmin, Ocella and Gallbladder Injury

Over the past few months we have been staying on top of the news about Bayer’s line of birth control pills. As many of you probably know, there have been serious medical problems that have been surfacing among women who have used Yaz, Yasmin, and Oscella, which is the generic version of Yasmin.

Women all over the country have been suffering from strokes, pulmonary embolisms and heart attacks, which are being caused by blood clots that generally form in the legs of users of these pills. The cause of these clots is due to elevated levels of potassium in the bloodstream, which falls firmly at the feet of one of the two main ingredients of Bayer’s line of birth control pills. Rather than use the standard ingredient of progestin, Bayer decided to go with Drispirenone, which is a synthetic variation of progestin that was shown to be effective in fighting acne and the mood swings that sometimes come with PMS.

We believe that Bayer was well aware of the increased dangers of drispirenone, but chose to downplay them in advertisements, labeling and the information that was given to doctors.

We also believe that Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella are causing gall bladder disease in the women who use them. In addition to raised potassium levels in the blood stream of users of these pills, it has also been show to increase the level of cholesterol in bile, which the gallbladder is primarily concerned with storing. Once the cholesterol level goes up, the gallbladder’s storage abilities are slowed down, which can and often does lead to gallstones.

Gallstones might not seem to be a serious medical problem, but anyone who has suffered the severe pain that accompanies them could certainly tell you otherwise. There is also the very real danger that a gallstone might get caught in a bile duct, which can cause the bile to stop being produced. The only remedy for this is painful and expensive surgery in which the gallbladder is removed.

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Yaz Lawsuits

Our Federal Court system did something very wise earlier this month. Being mindful of the fact that several lawsuits were being filed all over the country due to the harmful and even deadly side effects of Bayer’s line of birth control pills (Yaz, Yasmin and the generic version, Oscella,) all of these lawsuits were consolidated in MDL-2100, Yasmin and YAZ Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation.

“MDL” stands for “Multi-District Legislation,” and what this means is that several suits have been filed in multiple districts over similar circumstances. In the case of Bayer’s birth control pills, hundreds of women have been suffering from similar injuries due to blood clotting after using them.

Rather than force each individual suit to go through individual court processes in their respective districts, the Judicial Panel on Multi-district Litigation can consolidate all the pretrial work. In other words, rather than have 300 separate plaintiffs present 300 different versions of what damages they received, and rather than have 300 separate experts hired by Bayer explain why each of these 300 separate plaintiffs are mistaken about their complaints, the JPML can simply bring all the plaintiffs together under the umbrella of one group of accepted evidence.

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"I remember him. He died the same year I did." - H.L. Mencken

 To fully understand that quote, you have to understand the context in which it was said.

H.L. Mencken was the founder of The Baltimore Sun, and was easily one of the most controversial and entertaining writers of his day. In one of the world’s great ironies, Mr. Mencken suffered a stroke towards the end of his life that left him unable to read or write. It was during this period of time that he began to refer to himself in the past tense, often beginning sentences with "Back when I was alive," or "Since my death…"

Mencken was a remarkable man, especially in that he was able to very succinctly sum up exactly what that stroke did to his ability to live his life. He was a writer who was unable to write, a newspaper publisher who was unable to read the very publication that he started.

A stroke is essentially an internal wound to the brain. The causes can be either too little blood to the brain (which is called an ischemic stroke,) or too much brain in the skull (which is called a hemorrhagic stroke.) The end result of either one of these types of stroke could be paralysis or loss of muscle movement, difficulty in talking or swallowing, memory loss or difficulties in comprehension, or severe and ceaseless pain.

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 Yaz birth control side effects

Whenever you think about birth control side effects, what comes to mind?

A little bit of weight gain? A minor swelling of the breasts, or maybe breast soreness? A lightening of the period, or spotting between periods? An occasional mood swing?

These are the sorts of birth control side effects that have occurred on a pretty regular basis since the birth control pill was placed on the market. Most women and medical professionals view these issues as more of a nuisance than a detriment. And quite often, even if they do occur, the benefits of the pill seem to far outweigh the negative aspects.

But there are other side effects to the pill that don’t even belong under that category. While breast soreness and weight gain can fall under the category of “birth control side effects,” strokes, heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms certainly can’t. These injuries can at the very least be considered “birth control complications,” but if the pharmaceutical industry were to be honest, they would call them “birth control dangers.”

After all, there is a big difference between coping with gaining five pounds and learning how to live your life after a massive stroke from a birth control with severe adverse side effects. And while weight gain or other minor inconveniences are far more likely than stroke, heart attacks or pulmonary embolisms with standard, run of the mill birth control pills, the odds of a “birth control danger” happening to users of a line of birth control pills manufactured by Bayer are much higher.

The birth control pills in question go under the names “Yaz,” “Yasmin” and “Oscella.” These pills were marketed by Bayer as not only birth control pills, but also as “lifestyle choices.” The pills were sold in flashy, chic advertising campaigns that showed successful women in expensive clubs and seemingly prestigious universities touting the big differences that these pills have made to their lives.

These birth control pills were marketed as a cure for acne, and as a cure for PMS, PMDD and mood swings. It was even marketed as a “light dose” pill, which gives one the impression that you could take it without having to worry about those minor “birth control side effects” that we mentioned earlier. And while that might be the case, we are quite sure that any user of Yaz, Yasmin or Oscella would choose breast soreness over a pulmonary embolism any day of the week.

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Since Yaz, Yasmin and Oscella have been on the market, hundreds of women who use these birth control pills have been hospitalized with a medical condition called deep vein thrombosis. While that might not sound like a particularly harmful event, DVT can actually be extremely painful, and even fatal in some cases.

As the name of the condition implies, deep vein thrombosis occurs in the major veins in the legs rather than the superficial, minor veins closer to the surface of the skin. What happens is that a clot or clots develop in the major veins. Believe it or not, the clots themselves are not necessarily harmful. Your blood clots quite naturally whenever you cut yourself. But the situation becomes dangerous when the clotting mechanism gets overzealous; especially when pieces of the clots start to break off, because then they are pulled into the pulmonary circulation system.

Blood is meant to flow unimpeded. In fact, this what keeps us alive. Blood is the delivery system for oxygen to every organ in our bodies, from the heart to the lungs to the brain, and if an obstacle is placed in the path of the regular flow of blood, the results can be painful, long lasting or fatal. This is what causes strokes. This is what causes heart attacks. And this is what causes pulmonary embolisms.

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Let’s say that a company releases a product and goes on an all out marketing blitz to promote it. The company spends millions on flashy advertising featuring celebrities. They take out ads in magazines and newspapers. They consult with marketers and designers to turn the product into an “identity brand,” or a “lifestyle choice.” And all of this works. The product sells like nobody’s business.

If this product, be it a car, an energy drink or a floor cleaner had a defect in it that caused say, 6% of the users to suffer severe and painful injuries, wouldn’t you expect a massive government recall of that product? After all, cars, children’s toys and tennis shoes have been recalled for a much smaller casualty rate than 6%.

But it seems that drug companies have an exemption to facing the consequences of putting out products that could be harmful. Considering what it takes for a drug to actually be pulled from the shelves, it would seem that Merck, Pfizer, Bayer and all the other multi-billion dollar drug conglomerates are free to advertise as much and as recklessly as they please, regardless of the consequences or dangers to consumers.

Last month, the British Medical Journal released a study about incidences of blood clotting in women who use different types of birth control pills, particularly those that use an ingredient called drispirenone. This ingredient is a synthetic variation of progestin, which along with estrogen is one of the two main working parts of the birth control process.

The results of this study showed that users of drisperinone have a higher risk of venous thrombosis (or blood clots) than other forms of BCP. In fact, the report says that drisperinone has “a sixfold to sevenfold increased risk compared with non-users.”

Bear in mind that when the folks who did this study are saying “drisperinone,” they might as well be saying “Yaz,” “Yasmin,” or “Ocella,” as these are the only pills on the market that actually use drisperinone as an ingredient. But if you took a look at the initial advertising blitz that took place when Bayer marketed the pills, you wouldn’t know that there was anything wrong with it at all.

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Yaz Side Effects

One Health Forum, Multiple Injured Women

Most threads on internet message boards don’t last that long. Rampant discussion over things like the latest plot twist on Desperate Housewives only last until the next episode. Same with things like professional sports injuries, or even political scandals.

It isn’t surprising that our collective attention span has dropped, especially when you consider how quickly news and rumors circulate on the internet. As soon as something is new it is instantly on its way to becoming old.

But we recently came across a message board with a thread that has maintained a steady stream of posts and replies since the topic was first posted in June of 2007. The topic is entitled “Yaz Side Effects,” and it is on ehealthforum.com.

You can check the news and read about all the lawsuits that have been filed, and you can read about how the FDA has been cracking down on Bayer’s line of birth control pills, but if you really want to get an idea of how this faulty drug is impacting regular people like you or me, you should take a look at how this topic thread has progressed since it started.

The original post of the thread was this:

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 Yaz Health Alert

The birth control pill was first approved for sale and marketing as an oral contraceptive in 1960. The release of this pill did not pass unnoticed. Since the passing of the Comstock Laws in 1873, the sale of any method of birth control device, be it a condom, IUD or diaphragm, was illegal. Even by the mid-1950’s these laws were still on the books in thirty states, which, combined with the cultural philosophies of the times, left women in very narrow personal and professional roles. A life of marriage and child rearing was considered the true calling for all women, both due to societal pressures and the laws on the books. In Massachusetts and Connecticut for example, the use of any form of birth control was punishable by fines or prison terms.

The company that released Enovid was so terrified of a boycott by Catholic Americans that they initially marketed it as a treatment for menstrual disorders rather than a pill that prevented pregnancy. But it was the sort of marketing that was done with a wink and a nod, and within two years the number of women who were taking Enovid was at 500,000.

In May of 1960 the FDA allowed Enovid to be marketed solely as a contraceptive, without the socially acceptable camouflage of menstrual problems providing cover against the Catholic Church and others who fundamentally disagreed with the notion of birth control.

It can be said with certainty that the birth control pill altered practically everything about gender dynamics in the United States. Women were no longer at the mercy of biology. Women could develop careers without worrying about having to leave them before they were ready. Women could have children when they wanted to as opposed to having them whether they liked it or not.

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 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.

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