Penalty to Bayer for Misleading Advertisements Despite Lawsuits

The closest the controversial birth control pill Yaz ever came to a total recall by the Food and Drug Administration was in late 2009, when the drugmaker Bayer was forced to recall nearly 33,000 boxes of the pills after it was revealed that they were using unsafe production processes in creating the drug. Ocella, the generic form of the drospirenone-based contraceptive, was hit even harder by the Yaz recall – 120,000 boxes were pulled from the market due to faulty processes used by the Bayer manufacturing company.
Previously, Yaz has been slapped with two separate warnings from the Food and Drug Administration due to their marketing methods. In the first case, which took place in 2003, Bayer was putting out ads making claims that the synthetic hormone drospirenone was a more effective hormone than those in most birth control pills already on the market. The Food and Drug Administration contacted them to let them know that there was no scientific evidence that this was the case – and to this day, there have been no studies that show drospirenone to be any better than another hormone for birth control purposes. Then again in 2008, when Bayer was running an ad campaign that claimed Yaz was not only a birth control pill but a way of controlling acne and symptoms associated with severe PMS such as moodiness, bloating, and anxiety, the Food and Drug Administration gave them another warning, this time because Bayer was advertising their product as a cure for conditions that it was not approved to treat.
However, this is not the only concern that women have with Yaz – the birth control has been linked to serious side effects such as pulmonary embolism, Yaz heart attack, and stroke. These conditions can even be fatal in some cases. Therefore, it is no wonder why dozens of women have already filed lawsuits against the Bayer Corporation, while many more are following suit.