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

When Dr. Sidney Wolfe was asked in 2009 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to join the agency’s Risk Management Advisory Committee for a 4-year term, the head of the Washington, DC-based watchdog group Public Citizen took the task to heart. He championed the removal of the longstanding painkiller Darvocet/Darvon, calling the drug “extremely dangerous” based on reports of more than 2,000 accidental deaths since 1981. He also pushed for stronger warnings on prescription drugs, including the type 2 diabetes drug Avandia, which has been linked to fatal heart attacks.

Read the rest of this entry »

The first of more than 10,000 lawsuits against Bayer over its birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin won’t go to trial this week as planned because a judge appointed a mediator in hopes of settling the case. The lawsuit accused Bayer of misleading women about the safety risks associated with its oral contraceptives.

Read the rest of this entry »

Washington, D.C., lawmakers are considering a bill that will make birth control pills, patches, and vaginal rings available to consumers without prescriptions. Councilman David Cantania introduced the bill, which has the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scratching its head on how the process will work if the bill is passed into law. No such forms of contraception are legally available over-the-counter in the United States. Pilot programs to test the sale of nonprescription birth control in Seattle and Portland, Ore., have been discontinued.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Bayer Healthcare launched its new style birth control pills Yasmin and Yaz in 2001 and 2006, respectively, the drugs were marketed under the guise that they were safer than other oral contraceptives. Formulated with a synthetic hormone and containing a diuretic, drospirenone, the pills were touted as having an added benefit of clearing up problem acne and easing the symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). But the honeymoon has ended for Bayer, which is now facing more than a thousand lawsuits from women who said they were not adequately warned that the pills could cause serious and life-threatening health problems such as blood clots and gallbladder problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in Washington D.C. has chosen the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Illinois in East St. Louis to handle multidistrict litigation for what could be as many as 25,000 Yaz lawsuits. Chief Judge David Herndon will preside over the pre-trial proceedings, which have been filed by plaintiffs in all parts of the country against Bayer, the manufacturer of the popular oral contraceptive.

Read the rest of this entry »

Attorneys representing women who have been seriously harmed by Yaz expect that the number of lawsuits against Bayer will escalate dramatically in the coming years, possibly involving thousands of plaintiffs. A 41-year-old writer from Bethesda, Maryland, who is one of the most recent plaintiffs to file a lawsuit against Bayer, recently described her experience taking the drug to the Washington Times.

Read the rest of this entry »