The Ultimate Birth Control: Death from Beyaz Blood Clots

Washington, DCIt may be a bit harsh, but the reality is true: you can’t give birth or maintain an accidental pregnancy, if you’re dead. And while all birth control pills from the time they were first introduced in the early 1960s contain a minute risk for blood clotting, it is generally held that so-called new-age birth control pills such as Beyaz birth control containing the synthetic progestin drospirenone carry a higher risk for blood clots.

Beyaz manufacturer Bayer AG says that’s not the case. And studies have delivered different outcomes. Some studies have found a significant risk, whereas others suggest that an increased risk for Beyaz blood clots is negligible. Doctors are on the fence.

However, statistics pale in the face of a death. Headlines have reverberated around the country after women of various ages have suffered blood clots after choosing Beyaz drospirenone and other drospirenone-based contraceptives such as Yaz and Yasmin. In Canada, no fewer than 24 women have died amidst an association with the drospirenone-based contraceptives Yasmin and Yaz.

The youngest: 14. To any parent of a 14-year-old girl, healthy in every other respect, whose life is claimed from a blood clot from drospirenone birth control, statistics are meaningless. All that matters is that a precious life has been snuffed out needlessly and heartbreakingly early.

It should be noted that Beyaz side effects are not an issue in Canada as Beyaz is not available there. But the formulation is similar to Yasmin and Yaz, which are available in Canada. Beyaz provides the added benefit of folic acid, critical to a woman’s health and equally so during pregnancy.

Therein lay the oxymoron: take Beyaz to prevent a pregnancy, but benefit from the addition of folic acid in case you become pregnant.

Covers all the bases. But those bases mean nothing if you are lying in hospital with Beyaz side effects. If that adverse reaction is a blood clot, your life could be in danger. Or it could already be over, as has been the case with countless women. Women, whose grieving families have filed a Beyaz lawsuit in an effort to eke out some form of justice.

Historically, women have embraced the opportunity to control when a pregnancy happens - or to avoid pregnancy altogether - with the aid of oral contraceptives. The bloating, weight gain and acne that sometimes accompanied pills carrying more androgenic properties (source: Natural Acne Clinic) remained a small price to pay for the benefit of adequate protection from an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. With a minimal risk for blood clot that appeared the same across the board, women remained happy with the status quo.

That all appeared to change when manufacturers like Bayer came out with products with added benefits, such as reduced bloating and weight gain, help with facial acne and - in the case of Beyaz birth control - the addition of folic acid. Young women, to whom the new age, drospirenone-based pills were targeted, embraced the added benefits in droves. Yasmin and Yaz, for example, quickly became the best-selling contraceptive out there. Beyaz birth control, which came later, held equal promise.

But then women started experiencing deep vein thrombosis from drospirenone-based products, including Beyaz blood clots. Women started dying. Women painfully young, some in their teens.

Even in the face of studies, which, overall, could not agree on the degree of risk, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nonetheless concluded in 2011 that oral contraceptives containing drospirenone could be potentially associated with a higher risk for deep vein thrombosis - in other words, Beyaz blood clots. Insufficient concern to pull drospirenone-based contraceptives such as Beyaz from the market, but enough for a warning on the label.

Bayer continues to defend Beyaz as well as Yasmin, Yaz and Ocella. It is prepared to pay out, when all is said and done, a reported $1 billion to settle lawsuits over its drospirenone-based products. And to be fair, one cannot fault a manufacturer for identifying new markets and new products targeting those markets.

However, in so doing, Bayer has brought out a basket of products that could be allegedly harmful. And while there is no debate surrounding the fact that the risk for Beyaz blood clots and risks associated with other drospirenone-based birth control pills remains relatively low, the debate centers on how much higher that risk is, over and above more traditional contraceptives.

The FDA entertains the view that the possibility is sufficient to merit a warning. Beyond that - in spite of a relatively low risk amongst the greater population for birth control - is the reality that we’re hearing a lot more about blood clots and women dying from birth control pills than we used to. Drospirenone-based birth control pills, such as Beyaz birth control.

Are the side effects of Beyaz serious? Lethal? Draw your own conclusions. But any parent, of any teen interested in drospirenone-based birth control for the benefits and the added value, needs to pay very close attention…