Two Yaz Lawsuits Filed in California

Drug giant Bayer — the makers of Yaz, Yasmin and the generic version Ocella — can count two more lawsuits among the thousands that have been filed against the company over side effects linked to the birth control pills. The lawsuits were filed on April 5 in the San Francisco County Superior Court, and accuse Bayer of purposely hiding the injury risks linked to Yaz use from the public. Aside from suing for their injuries, these latest plaintiffs are also suing Bayer for medical expenses and loss of earnings caused by their injuries.
Yaz and Yasmin are fourth-generation birth control pills that boast a main active ingredient of drospirenone, which is a synthetic progestin. Originally, drospirenone was hailed in marketing campaigns as a cure for everything from acne to PMS and PMDD. In those earlier campaigns, Bayer was accused of downplaying the side effects while marketing the pills’ off-label uses. The FDA eventually forced the company to include the risks associated with Yaz in the ads.
Numerous studies have been conducted since then that show that Yaz causes serious side effects including heart attacks, strokes, gallbladder disease and kidney stones. The pills also cause blood clot-related conditions like pulmonary embolisms and deep vein thrombosis. While Bayer continues to maintain that Yaz is safe to use as a birth control pill, numerous studies have linked the pills to countless side effects that have proven fatal for some young women. Despite Bayer stubbornly standing behind its drugs, the company continues to negotiate settlements in the hopes of keeping payouts controlled.
Yaz has been around for years, and is now being used in patch form in Europe. With so many dangerous conditions linked to Yaz, a panel advisory meeting was held in 2011 to investigate whether Yaz should be taken off the market. Eventually the panel decided to keep the pills on the market, but to include stricter warnings on the pills’ labels about potential blood clots that the pills cause. That decision was met with a lot of criticism after it was discovered that four of the panelists had financial ties to Bayer.