Bayer Healthcare is promoting a new birth control pill that promises to be an improvement over its former blockbuster, Yaz. If the thousands of product liability lawsuits filed against Yaz are any indication of what’s to come, that is not promising much.
The new pill is called Natazia. It contains a form of estrogen never before used in an oral contraceptive.
Bayer was known to make many far reaching promises in its ads for Yaz. After the birth control pill was marketed in 2006, it quickly became a best seller bringing Bayer $800 million in profits last year. The Jacksonville Yaz side effect attorneys at Farah & Farah are representing women in product liability cases who have been injured by the contraceptive’s dangerous side effects such as blood clots.
Like Natazia, Yaz was also a new chemical formulation and was promoted for multiple purposes. Brightly colored balloons in the commercial promised women would be able to say goodbye to headaches, a bad complexion, muscle aches, acne bloating, an increased appetite, and feeling anxious and moody. NPR quotes Ruth Day of Duke University, a professor who advises the FDA as saying that she has never seen an ad that makes such sweeping claims.
The FDA said the ads were misleading and the agency ordered Bayer to run a corrective commercial. But the original ad was effective.
And the side effects were profound. Women who took Yaz and a similar pill, Yasmin, suffered a 64% higher risk of blood clots than those women taking pills that were developed decades earlier, according to research published in the British Medical Journal. Bayer disagrees with the findings.
NPR reports that there are 2,700 women suing Bayer over Yaz. Not surprisingly, sales have dropped so Bayer is launching its new birth control pill.
Warning- Natazia has only been tested on 3,000 women pre-market and contains hormone combinations never used before. Does this sound familiar?
