The Problem with The Pill?
25 May
By Executive Producer Dave Manoucheri
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―
- It’s one of the most popular birth control pills on the market and some believe it’s dangerous. Millions of women are taking the birth control Yaz every day. However, there’s a growing list of lawsuits claiming the side effects can be deadly.
Susan Galinis is one of those people. Susan’s life centers around her husband and her children. So much so that she arranged her work schedule to maximize her time with them.
“So I wouldn’t miss time with my kids I’d get up at three in the morning,” says Susan. That’s when she’d go to work saving animals at the Silicon Valley Humane Society.
“[We'd] do 40 surgeries in a day. . . come home by noon,” Susan said. Those afternoons were spent with her three-year-old twins, taking them out to the park, or even the theme park.
June 8th, 2008, was the last normal day she spent with her family. It was a day spent at Great America, a theme park. She didn’t know her world was about to turn upside down.
“Came home, went to bed, woke up with the worst headache,” says Susan. “Next thing I know, I’m waking up in the hospital paralyzed on my left side.”
Susan suffered a severe stroke. As doctors rushed to remove a blood clot in her neck they had to drill a hole in her head to relieve the growing pressure on her brain.
Susan had taken birth control for years, but her doctor had just prescribed a new pill one month earlier: Yaz.
The new pill is marketed as helping to keep skin clear and control acne. In the TV ads, shots of balloons touting the benefits and information for the drug float by the screen while women saying they’re on the drug talk about the new pill.
“There’s one pill that goes beyond the rest — it’s Yaz,” says the commercial, adding “it also helps keep skin clear…”
“I heard it on the commercial,” says Susan, “how it would clear up acne, so I was surprised they were giving it to me. It was a new drug and they’re expensive, so, ‘yay for me’,” says Susan, remembering her satisfaction with being given the drug. Now, however, she says she’d take that back.
Susan has spent the last two years learning to walk again and learning to move her left arm. Still, she has no short-term memory and can barely read.
“I feel like a different person, a person I don’t really like,” Susan says. “I like my old self,” Susan says, breaking down during our interview. As tears filled her eyes, she added “Yaz took that.”
Susan has now joined 1,100 women nationwide suing Bayer Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Yaz and Yasmin. These women claim multiple maladies, including stroke, pulmonary embolism, heart attack, kidney failure, pancreatitis, and gall bladder disease. One attorney told our sister station in Boston, WBZ-TV, that as many as 50 women have died as a result of taking Yaz.
The pills are made with a synthetic hormone called “Drospirenone”. Susan’s attorney says Bayer did not adequately warn women of its dangerous side-effects.
“All birth control pills pose risks,” says Susan’s attorney, Mike Danko. “In fact the manufacturers warn of those risks but what Bayer isn’t telling us is the risks associated with Yaz are much greater than the risks associated with other birth control pills.”
Last year, two studies in the British Medical Journal showed women on Yaz do have a greater risk of developing blood clots. But two studies paid for by Bayer show that risk is the same as with any other birth control pill.
The discrepancy bothers OB-GYN Doctor Kristen Eckler, who says “I think the studies out there are concerning.”
Bayer insists the product is safe. They sent us this statement, saying “Bayer stands behind the safety of its oral contraceptives, which are safe and effective when used as directed and according to product labeling and good clinical practice.”
Dr. Eckler agrees that most women do fine on Yaz.
“While it may be a somewhat higher risk of causing blood clot[s] than its predecessors,” says Eckler, “that difference or that amount of change is very, very small.”
Still, Susan says those odds didn’t work out for her.
“It feels like your hand is stuck in a freezer,” says Susan, describing what she feels daily in her hand, losing some sensation due to the stroke. “It’s so cold that it burns.”
Susan still has chronic pain in her arm, constant headaches, and the relationship with her kids and husband has dramatically changed.
“They identify me as two different mommies,” Susan says of her children. “What the doctor said basically is that to them I really did die and that he has a new wife and they have to get used to me again as a different person.”
While Susan can’t get her old life back, she says she can warn women not to risk their lives.
“You are taking a huge risk and it’s not worth it if you lose,” Susan says. I’m very fortunate, I lived. There are a lot of people who haven’t.”
Mike Danko now represents more than 300 women in this growing lawsuit. Susan was his first client. With hundreds of other women around the country, represented by other attorneys, Mr. Danko believes when he finally goes to trial in a year or two there could be as many as 25,000 women.
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