Scandal at the FDA: board members with drug maker ties voted to approve drug that's killing women

Scandal at the FDA: board members with drug maker ties voted to approve drug that's killing women

by Tony Isaacs

(The Best Years in Life) An investigation by the Washington Monthly and the British Medical Journal determined that at least four members of an FDA advisory board which voted to approve a drug used in the birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin had either done work for the drugs' manufacturer or received research funds from the manufacturer. Though the four committee members disclosed their ties to the FDA, the FDA decided that the ties did not matter and did not make the disclosures public. Tragically, the drugs the committee endorsed have been killing the women who take them.

The birth control pills Yaz and Yasmin contain a drug called drospirenone, which the FDA advisory committee endorsed last December. According to the Alliance for National Health (ANH), women who take drospirenone are nearly seven times more likely to develop thromboembolism (obstruction of a blood vessel by a blood clot, which can cause deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, stroke, heart attack, and death) than women who do not take any contraceptive pill. Women who take drospirenone have twice the risk of developing thromboembolism than women who take widely prescribed contraceptive pills containing levonorgestrel.

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