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Contraceptive ‘Sex Patch’ Linked to 17 Deaths 1/5/2005 Ortho Evra: more dangerous than you think.
The contraceptive patch, Ortho Evra, is responsible for the deaths of at least 17 women since its release on the market in 2002, according to an article in The New York Post. The most recent reported victim is 18-year-old Zakiya Kennedy. Zakiya Kennedy collapsed last April on the upper east side of New York City while waiting for the subway. She died one hour later on the way to the emergency room. Her father, Kevin, told ABC News' Chris Cuomo that, prior to his daughter’s death, "She was complaining about pains in her leg or in her shoulder. She thought it was from her exercising." The autopsy revealed Kennedy died because a blood clot had entered her lung. Called a pulmonary embolism, the blood clot is a dangerous side effect of the birth control patch that she wore. Ortho Evra is used by more than 400,000 women. It is similar to the birth control pill, yet manufacturers tout it as more convenient. Women wear the patch for one week for three weeks in a row and skip the fourth week. It works by secreting pregnancy-preventing hormones into the blood via the skin. Regrettably, Kennedy’s death is not an isolated case. The New York Post used Freedom of Information laws to obtain records from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to discover that 16 previous deaths and 21“life-threatening cases” have already occurred. For example, a 37-year-old mother of two suffered a massive stroke after using the patch for only 12 days. She has recently filed a lawsuit against Ortho-McNeil, the patch’s manufacturer. Dr. Andrew Friedman, head researcher of the women’s unit for Ortho-McNeil, says being aware of the signs, such as leg pain, swelling and shortness of breath, are important. “It could be a sign of a potentially dangerous clot.” Friedman defends Ortho-McNeil by reminding consumers: “On TV, almost half of the time of the advertisement is devoted to talking about the potential risks and potential warnings that women should be aware of.” Yet there is no mention of death as a side effect. Kennedy’s grandmother, Roberta Alloway, says Ortho-McNeil should increase warning labels so women are aware of what they are taking. “They need to really let people know that my granddaughter and other people have died from this patch,” she told ABC’s Cuomo. "My granddaughter was an A student. Her life was cut short because she wore a patch to protect herself from getting pregnant," she said. Dr. Shaun Biggers of New York Presbyterian Hospital says that very few women are expected to die from Ortho Evra. He told Cuomo: “Based on our best estimates — less than two per 100,000 women less than the age of 35 will die from complications of the patch.” Yet more than twice that number have already died. Concerned Women for America’s Senior Policy Director Wendy Wright is saddened by the outlook of these medical professionals: “Sadly, some medical and pharmaceutical officials believe that it is OK for healthy women to die in exchange for selling more of their products. In their minds, dead or injured women are a worthy price for sexual freedom and higher profits.” Lester A. Ruppersberger, D.O., a gynecologist at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, told Physicians for Life that the numbers didn’t surprise him. “It’s about money. It’s about marketing. I hear the Ortho salesman in here every week. He doesn’t talk about the pill at all anymore. All he wants to talk about is the patch, because that’s what he gets his commission on—how many he sells.” Ruppersberger continued, “Birth control pills did not do what everybody expected them to do. … [T]hey increased the rate of unwanted pregnancies, abortion rates, sexually transmitted disease rates, abuse rates, and pornography rates. But wasn’t the pill supposed to free women?” |
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