WASINGTON – On Thursday the Food and Drug Administration was told to hold a new vote about the blood clot risks a birth control pill is accused of. Reuters reports that ties between the agency and the pillmakers were shown in the report that the watchdog group brought forward.
In December the FDA asked experts “to discuss the safety of birth control that contains the compound drospirenone, including Bayer’s Yaz and Yasmin.” A four-vote margin declared that the benefits of the pill outweighed the blood clot risks but the ruling was annulled when “three of the FDA’s 26 advisers had research or financial ties to Bayer.” A fourth adviser had connections with Yaz.
“The American public must be able to trust that the FDA and its advisory committees are making decisions based on science, not industry influence,” POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian said.
An FDA study argues that ”10 in 10,000 women taking the drospirenone-containing drugs would get a blood clot per year, compared with about six in 10,000 women taking older contraceptives. A clot in blood vessels can prove fatal if it breaks loose and travels to the lungs, heart or brain.”
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