If a drug does what it’s supposed to do and may possibly have what we like to
call ‘bonus benefits’, people who need it jump for joy. That’s how 24-year-old
Carissa Ubersox from Madison Wisconsin felt about the birth control pill Yaz.
She’d heard that it helped with acne and bloating, so when her boyfriend proposed
to her she started using it a few months before her wedding day, not realizing that
this was one of the drugs on the market that was suspected to be very dangerous.
By the time she did, it was too late. She fell out and went into a coma. A couple of
weeks later when she woke up, she was blind.
This kind of thing had been happening in the arena of female contraceptives
years before Carissa’s incident, mainly because drug companies care more about
money than what’s actually on their warning labels. Remember back in 2002 when
Organon pharmaceutical company released the Nuva Ring to the public? It was a
small round plastic one that was supposed to revolutionize female birth control.
Well, a little known story is that in one of the clinical trials of the product a healthy
lady in her twenties actually started getting blood clots that some felt came from
her using it. But did the company want to report it? Nope. Their intentions still
were to market it as groundbreaking and simple to use.
Yasmin actually contains more estrogen than its sister drug Yaz, but both
contain a synthetic substance called drosperinone, which according to a CBC News
report is exclusive to Bayer. Young ladies have been dying from these horrible
pills, including 23 people in Canada alone. Some of these women were as young
as the age of 18, like Miranda Scott. She was routinely working out one day at the
University of British Columbia three years ago when she spontaneously collapsed.
Her mother, Chip McClaughry, had these exact words to say to reporters and to her
loving family about the heartbreaking final moments of her daughter’s life:
“When she was on the ground she said, “I can’t breathe,” and then, you know, she
was gone.”
You would think that after these occurrences that more would be getting done to get
Yaz and Yasmine off the market, but it’s just not happening. Drug companies these
days seem to care about one thing and one thing only, and that’s the money that they
are getting for the sale of these dangerous products. These deaths go underreported,
and should never have happened in the first place. Still, there is no plan for them to be
recalled. The typical age of a woman who has died that was taking any of these pills
is between 14 and 44, and the cause of death is normally something related to blood
clots, just a few months after the unsuspecting victim starts taking them.
If you feel that you or anyone that you know and love has been having
complications or may have died from taking Yaz or Yasmine, please, don’t hesitate to
contact the attorneys at Makarem and Associates directly at 310.312.0299 or by email
