SIDE EFFECTS

 

In the last days we read the news of a French female who sued Bayer pharmaceutical after suffering a CVA (cerebrovascular accident) as a consequence of the third generation contraceptive pill she had taken.

A French female sues Bayer for cardiovascular damage caused by a contraceptive pill.

Marion Larat, who took the contraceptive pill “Meliane” for four months, suffered a vascular stroke that led her into a comatose state and caused serious consequences. Her case was analyzed by the commission of medical accidents in Bordeaux, which ruled that the stroke had been caused by the pill.

Marion Larat’s family decided to take the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer to the courts. According to “Le Monde”, Larat’s lawyer lodged a complaint for “involuntary attempt against the integrity of a human being” in the district attorney's office of Bobigny, near Paris.  The lawsuit is against the general manager of Bayer in France and the responsible of the National Security Agency of Medicines and Health products as well, for not ordering the pill to be taken off the market.

The lawyer, named Me Jean-Christophe Coubris, who also helps hundreds of victims of the slimming product “Mediator”, wants “to sensitize the population about the dangers of that pill”, and she asks “why third generation pills, which are more expensive, more dangerous and no more efficient than the previous ones, are still on the market”.

Bayer and other big pharmaceutical laboratories that manufacture the third generation contraceptives don´t deny the risk of thrombosis related with these pills, yet they protect themselves of the possible legal actions just warning about it in the patient information leaflets. However, the formal complaint says that during the time period Larat took those pills, the patient information leaflet didn’t mention the rising risk of suffering blood cloths or arterial embolism compared with the second-generation pills. Today, companies already warn about the risks of their products.

The first criminal charge in France is added to the increasing concern in different western countries about the use of oral contraceptives. There are already hundreds of formal complaints in progress in The United States, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Germany as well.

On January 11th of 2013 was published the news that the French Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, asked the European Union to limit the use of the third and fourth-generation pills, after the wave of lawsuits in France against these medicaments.

Our Comments:

Several times we have asked ourselves what will be the long-term results of the use of birth-control pills or drugs like hormonal replacement prescribed during menopause, as well as the slimming products the lawyer informed about in this article. It is still too early to know the answer. So far, we know that the imminent risks of contraceptives are too many.

It is not our goal to discuss about if the use of contraceptives is appropriate or not. Of course, from our point of view, birth control is something necessary in women’s life, yet we need to develop our own resources and criteria to determine the most accurate method for each woman, and, above all, to avoid becoming elements of experimentation.

 Frequently, inmates have been used to make all kinds of experiments. That is usually known some years later (there are always delayed things). Women are like ‘inmates’ of a jailer called patriarchy. They have been shut up behind the bars of ignorance, illiteracy, poverty and religious laws. Therefore, they have been treated that way: as guinea pigs. 

 Not only have women been considered as elements of experimentation but as well, as sick beings and, consequently, labile, weak, fearful, and manageable. Natural and physiological feminine process have been established as pathologies, this way, contraceptives pills are not only used as birth control but as menstrual regulators, menstrual painkillers, as well as they are used to calm PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome).

Nowadays the ‘morning-after pill’, which is a hormone bomb, is frequently used as birth control, instead of a good education. Moreover, society sells us this product as a kind of “liberation” –and we, women, usually believe it- because we can have sex when and how we want without any fear to get pregnant.

Feminine physiology is truly complex. It makes us strong, yet also very sensitive to hormonal imbalances. The same way that our Psyche changes during the premenstrual and menstrual days; it is evidence that our Psyche will be different if every single day we take a pill that modifies our physiologic hormonal behavior.

In the same way, there is a normal decreasing of estrogen levels during the menopause, and this is why women in the climacteric phase have a different attitude. Different but good, in accordance with the normal evolution: they focus on different things; they are calmer, and develop more creativity and intuition as well. If we provide the hormones she shouldn’t have to have, we are blocking this development. We don’t believe that women in climacteric phase should be like old bike wheels full of patches.

Without doubt, by modifying the natural hormone cycle, women’s psyche is also modified making them more manageable. Perhaps we are attending the creation of design women? In some way, avoiding menstruations as well as Premenstrual Syndromes achieves a more competitive and simple woman.

The lack of information that women have had, makes us to think that everything is alright, but what’s more, to see it as the ‘panacea’ of our lives. Unbelievably, we –women- are very ignorant about our complex bodies. It would be good to take an interest in knowing our bodies, that way we will probably realize that some things are not pathologies but parts of a natural process.

It would be advisable to inform ourselves about what these pharmaceutical companies offer us, to avoid having regrets.

We tend to get impressed by what they skillfully sell us. Lets develop our own criteria, because we already know that ‘flies enter in an opened mouth.’