Originally published July 31 2005
Birth control patch causes heart problems and fatalities
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Nearly a dozen women in their 20s and 30s have died in the past year due to blood clots associated with a birth control patch made by Ortho McNeil.
The slightest stimulation might create a fatal amount of pressure on the 25-year-old woman's swollen brain, warned the doctors.
The mother of three died last fall, just after Thanksgiving, after days of agonizing headaches that the coroner's report said were brought on by hormones released into her system by Ortho Evra, a birth control patch she had started using a few weeks earlier.
She was among about a dozen women, most in their late teens and early 20s, who died last year from blood clots believed to be related to the birth control patch.
Dozens more survived strokes and other clot-related problems, according to federal drug safety reports obtained by The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Though the Food and Drug Administration and patch-maker Ortho McNeil saw warning signs of possible problems with the patch well before it reached the market, both maintain that the patch is as safe as the pill.
However, the reports obtained by the AP appear to indicate that in 2004 -- when 800,000 women were on the patch -- the risk of dying or suffering a survivable blood clot while using the device was about three times higher than while using birth control pills.
They point to more than 4 million women who have safely used the patch and note that the FDA reports are called in voluntarily, rather than gathered scientifically.
Ortho McNeil, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, says none of the deaths can be directly attributed to the patch.
Ortho McNeil says one of those women shouldn't be counted because she had undergone surgery.
But an FDA reviewer, using capital letters and underscoring his comments, took issue with Ortho McNeil.
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