Is NuvaRing Dangerous?
The FDA says Schering-Plough's hip, new contraceptive is safe. More than 100 lawsuits say otherwise.
—By Stephanie Mencimer
May/June 2009
One minute, 32-year-old Jackie Bozicev was headed for the shower. The next, the New Jersey mother of two lay on her bathroom floor, gasping for help. It was a weekday morning in December 2007, and her husband, Rob, 35, was downstairs cooking breakfast. The couple's two-year-old son, who'd come up to complain that Dad would only dish him out one waffle, saw his mother fall to the floor and go into a seizure. Rushing upstairs, Rob found his wife turning blue.
He called 911 as his seven-month-old daughter cried in her crib nearby. Struggling for calm, he tried to coax his son into another room while fielding questions from the operator: "Does she have food allergies? Is she breathing? Do you know how to do cpr?" Rob pumped her chest. Her breathing resumed. When the emts arrived, they asked more questions, but no one seemed to know what ailed Jackie. Before the ambulance pulled away, Rob saw the medics intubating his wife, a bad sign. By the time he reached the hospital, she was dead.
When an autopsy later revealed that Jackie had died of a blood clot that had migrated from her pelvic area to her lungs, Rob was bewildered. His wife was perfectly healthy. She didn't smoke, nor did she have any history of clots. The doctors had no answers, so Rob googled his way to what he now believes is the likely culprit: NuvaRing, a flexible plastic contraceptive device that, when inserted vaginally, releases hormones for about three weeks.
A mother dying in front of her toddler? That's hardly the message of NuvaRing's sassy marketing, which is all about liberation from the drudgery of daily birth control. Manufacturer Organon—bought in 2007 by Schering-Plough, which is now merging with Merck—promotes the first-of-its-kind contraceptive with magazine ads proclaiming, "Let Freedom Ring." Its ubiquitous TV spot, a play on Busby Berkeley musicals, features synchronized swimmers posing as birth control pills. "Maybe it's time to break free from the pack," the voice-over suggests as the women abandon their repetitive routine.
The company also relies on Facebook ads and a girlfriend-to-girlfriend approach to overcome squeamishness about inserting the ring. It has even bought product placements on Scrubs and other shows. More than a million American women have responded; Jackie started using the ring in May 2007, about a month after the birth of her second child, when her sister raved about its convenience.
Making birth control easier is, of course, a good thing. But for years there have been serious safety questions about the "third generation" hormones used in NuvaRing and several other contraceptives on the market—questions that NuvaRing's labeling sidesteps by saying that it is "unknown" how the device compares to other hormonal birth control. "Jackie had no indication that this was any more dangerous than any other contraceptive," says Carmen Scott, a lawyer representing the family in a civil suit against the drugmaker.
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http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/05/nuvaring-dangerous