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mispackaged birth control pills lawsuit

Over 100 women from 28 different states who said they took their pills at the same time every day have filed a birth control pill lawsuit against Qualitest Pharmaceuticals after claiming that they became pregnant because their pills were mispackaged. According to court documents, the women were taking pills that were “defectively and dangerously designed, manufactured, packaged, sold and distributed” while getting it in. Quelle horreur! Basically, the women were taking pills that were in the wrong order.

As birth control pill takers know, for birth control pills to be fully effective you have to take your pill at the same time every day. An average pack of pills contain seven placebos (which you take during your period) and 21 days of estrogen and progesterone hormone pills. In the case of the 113 women involved in the lawsuit, their packages were rotated 180 degrees meaning the women were taking placebo pills during ovulation when they should have been taking active pills. The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia on November 5 and just days after a federal judge in Georgia refused to grant class-action certification to a similar suit filed there, shows that some plaintiffs are even seeking millions in damages and some are also suing for the cost of raising their child through adulthood and college.

Don’t worry, the pills are off the market as of voluntary recall in September 2011 according to the FDA. The 3.2 million packs of pills included in the recall were Cyclafem, Emoquette, Gildess, Orsythia, Previfem, and Tri-Previfem. “As a result of this packaging error, the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives may be incorrect,” the FDA and Qualitest (a subsidiary of Endo Pharmaceuticals) said in 2011, “and could leave women without adequate contraception, and at risk for unintended pregnancy.”

Endo Pharmaceuticals told ABC News: “Our commitment is to patient safety and we take product quality very seriously. … There is no new or recent product recall. The recall that forms the basis of this suit was entirely voluntary and occurred more than four years ago in September 2011. The voluntary recall occurred based on an extremely small number of pill packs that were manufactured by an external contract manufacturer. Endo has been able to confirm only one blister pack that manifested a defect and was sold to a patient. Additionally, courts have dismissed cases arising out of the recall because the plaintiff could not establish that she purchased a defective package.”

In happier news, researchers claim that the pill can also drastically reduce your risk for certain cancers and that oral contraception has prevented 400,000 cases of endometrial cancer in the past 50 years, and 200,000 of these prevented cases are from the last 10 years.

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