The Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) has aired a segment about the side effects of Yaz called “Spinning the Pill.” During the broadcast, various young women that were interviewed were telling about their experiences while taking the popular birth control pills.
One of the women interviewed, Jennifer, spoke about experiencing extreme pain while she breathed after taking Yaz for a year. She was first misdiagnosed with the flu and sent home but wound up in the hospital anyway because her breathing pains worsened. Eventually she was diagnosed with a blood clot in her lungs (pulmonary embolism).
Another young woman, Hayley, told interviewer Erica Johnson that she started taking Yaz when she was 15 to help her with her PMS symptoms (as advertisements for the drug claimed Yaz did). Within 3 months, Hayley was experiencing pains in her right side and vomiting. An ultrasound revealed an enlarged gallbladder that eventually had to be removed with painful surgery. As a result of that, Hayley will have problems with her digestive system as long as she lives.
Both of these girls have joined in a class action lawsuit that is being filed in Canada. Bayer has gone under fire recently when it revealed the results of its own studies that claimed that Yaz and Yasmin were no more likely to cause blood clots than any other birth control pills. However, there are various other studies that claim just the opposite. In fact, Susan Jick of Boston University completely disagrees with Bayer’s study findings, saying that the company’s research was flawed and that the current data reveal that Yaz and Yasmin may cause an even higher risk of blood clots than was previously believed.
The family of Vicky, a young woman that died after taking Yasmin, will agree with Jick’s account of the pills. Vicky’s brother told CBC that Vicky experienced multiple massive pulmonary embolisms after only 5 weeks of taking the pills. Vicky was 26 at the time of her death.
