Misleading Yaz TV ads should have never been allowed to air

As advocates for drug safety who have seen firsthand how false advertising led to the injuries caused by Yaz birth control and affected the lives of hundreds of young women, we couldn’t agree more with a recent article by the Huffington Post.

This important article makes a plea to the mega pharmaceutical companies, urging them to take down the flashy, misleading prescription drug commercials without first making sure that the product is safe and effective.

“Regulators must do more than pull spots and mandate corrections when pharmaceutical ads are determined to be inaccurate -- at that point the damage is done,” Author Jerrold Parker writes. “Instead the FDA must tighten regulations on pharmaceutical ads, monitoring accuracy as well as tone, before they're ever approved. It could literally save lives.”

And while we applaud the FDA for regulating misleading ads and requiring them to be removed from the air, the article raises a good point – the ads should have never been there in the first place.

Take for instance the catchy, but deceptive TV ads that Bayer produced to promote their birth control pills, Yaz and Yasmin. Yasmin and YAZ are the first types of birth control to contain a different kind of hormone, called DRSP or drospirenone .

In putting the interest of corporate profits over public safety, Bayer’s advertisements focused almost exclusively on the positive affects of its newest drug creation, while continually omitting or minimizing the very significant risks associated with or increased by the novel birth control pill. These major risks include:

Blood clots

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT)

Pulmonary embolism (PE)

Strokes

Gallbladder disease

Other serious injuries and sudden death

These life-threatening risks include, but are not limited to, those risks that Bayer knew or should have known are associated with or increased by the unprecedented use of this new hormone. Bayer’s ads also improperly encouraged the use of Yasmin/YAZ/Ocella in circumstances other than those in which the drug has been approved and over-stated its benefits.

For example, the ads were targeted at women who suffered from PMS – yet Yaz was not approved to treat PMS. As a result of the fraudulent ads, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) repeatedly reprimanded Bayer for marketing the drug in a way that minimizes these very serious side effects, thereby misleading millions of women and their prescribing physicians about the safety of this new type of birth control.

While the advertisement helped generate more than $616 million in sales for the drug company, it came at a great cost to the American public. Thousands of women, many who asked their doctors for a prescription after seeing the ads, have died or have suffered severe, debilitating injuries because of Yaz and Yasmin.

For more information contact Anneke Kurt toll-free at 888.841.9623, via email at Anneke@toledolaw.com or by visiting our Yaz injury website.