Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Bayer HealthCare has launched another birth control pill packed with the hormone ethinyl estradiol, the diuretic drospirenone, and the B vitamin folic acid. The new oral contraceptive, called SAFYRAL, follows by three months the introduction of Beyaz, a near-identical pill packed with the same active ingredients. Folic acid has been shown to protect unborn babies against neural tube defects if the vitamin is taken regularly by women before and during the first three months of pregnancy.

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Just one month after Susan Gallenos began taking the birth control pill Yaz, she nearly lost her life to a stroke. Half her skull was removed to ease the pressure on her swelling brain. She would never be the same again. Her doctors blamed her birth control pill.

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The number of lawsuits against Bayer for its top-selling birth control pill, Yaz, has climbed to more than 4,200. The lawsuits allege that Bayer knew its pills put women at risk for blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, a common side effect with any oral contraceptive. However, nearly half of the lawsuits against Bayer allege that the pills caused damage to the gallbladder and in many instances resulted in gallbladder removal. Bayer dismisses the notion that its pills can cause gallbladder problems and maintains its pills are no more dangerous than other oral contraceptives.

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Sarah Haskins of Target Women, a recurring segment on Current TV’s weekly television show, infoMania, is known to some for her take on the often-ridiculous way the media reaches out to women. In this episode she tackles birth control commercials from Seasonique, Yaz and NuvaRing.

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Lawyers suing Bayer over the popular birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin have convinced Multi District Judge David Herndon to revise a previously negotiated privacy ruling in their favor. The new ruling, handed down on Sept. 22, prohibited the drug company from editing sales strategy information about contraceptives similar to Yaz and Yasmin in documents that it was required to deliver to plaintiffs. Workers must now pore through more than 30 million pages of information, find each redaction, and determine the reason why the document was altered.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new oral contraceptive from Bayer, makers of the blockbuster birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin. Called Beyaz, the new pill contains the same estrogen-progestin combination and the diuretic drospirenone as Yaz, plus another ingredient – .451 mg of levomefolate calcium.

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“Should I still be on Yasmin?” asks Beth on a Drugs.com forum. The woman has been taking the popular birth control pills for two years and suddenly developed migraines with blurry vision. Soon after, she had knee surgery and developed a very large blood clot in her leg, called a deep vein thrombosis, or DVT. Doctors put her on the blood thinner coumadin and told her to continue taking Yasmin, but Beth is worried. “I’m swelled up like a balloon,” she writes. “Should I really still be on Yasmin?”

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Watson Pharmaceuticals has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Abbreviated New Drug Application for Zarah, its new oral contraceptive pill that serves as a generic version of Bayer’s best-selling birth control pill Yasmin. Yasmin and its generic equivalents sold approximately $97 million in the U.S. for the twelve months ending June 30, 2010.

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Last spring, Tara Jones gave into her dermatologist’s advice and agreed to take birth control pills to clear up moderate acne. Doing so almost killed her. “I had a deep vein thrombosis in my leg that broke off into many blood clots that traveled through my heart and into my lungs. If large enough, these clots, called pulmonary embolisms, could cause sudden death,” Jones wrote for BSU Daily.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reminding drug companies that they are required to disclose side effects or risks about their medications in advertising, even banner ads and Facebook “share” buttons. The agency recently required Novartis Pharmaceuticals to take down a Facebook Share button used to promote a cancer-fighting drug, saying it was “incomplete and misleading” and violated advertising disclosure requirements. Novartis removed the widget but says it will continue to discuss the parameters of web advertising and social media marketing with the FDA in order to fully understand the agency’s concerns.

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