The Obama administration has barred over-the-counter sales of Plan B for women under 17 because of as-yet unelaborated upon health concerns. A popular breast cancer drug doesn’t work. Breast cancer screenings may be harmful. And now, the Food and Drug Administration wants birth control manufacturers to include new warnings on their packaging informing pill popping harlots that their consequence free sex now comes with a higher risk of blood clots. The FDA wants to make sure that every day in every way, you’re aware that your ladyparts are going to kill you.
TIME is reporting that the FDA is concerned that newer generations of certain types of oral contraceptives like Yaz actually pose a higher risk of blood clots than their predecessors and that their packaging doesn’t adequately warn users of that risk. At issue is the drugs’ use of drospirenone, an artificial approximation of progesterone. Recent medical trials have shown that the hormone increases users’ risk of developing potentially fatal blood clots in their legs and lungs; according to one study, women who used drugs containing the artificial hormone upped their risk of developing blood clots by 75%. Yesterday, a panel of FDA experts overwhelmingly agreed that current warning labels on the drugs don’t give the drug’s users enough of a heads up that their harlotry might literally kill them.
There’s no reason that Yaz’s manufacturer Bayer needs to take this lying down, though. If spun the right way, the drug’s potential to turn its users’ blood into death pudding can actually be a positive. Did you hear that ladies? Yaz, will give you the firm, impermeable leg veins of your dreams! And who hasn’t wanted to add some definition to their hard-to-tone lungs?
Yaz hit the market five years ago and pitched itself to consumers as a magical pill that fixed PMS and cleared skin, stopping short of informing insecure teens that unless you take this pill, none of the boys will like you. In recent years, its manufacturer has had to scale back on its emphasis of how magical the pill actually is, concern about blood clot risk increased (and anecdotally, I don’t know one person who’s taken Yaz and not turned into a tear machine who hates everyone.)
Perhaps more disturbing than the move to enhance warning labels was a vote taken earlier in the day, where the same expert panel decided 15-11 that drugs like Safyral, Beyaz, and their generic drospirenone-containing equivalents should remain on the market. That means they just barely think that these drugs aren’t crappy enough to pull from shelves. One panelist who voted against the drug’s continued use for the purpose of preventing unplanned pregnancy said that he saw no benefit to using drugs that contain drospirenone over less-clotty alternatives.
So, ladies who can’t keep their pants on, take note: Yaz and its chemical cousins might kill you, and that extra sucks for you, since it says in every religious book that you can’t go to heaven if you’re on the Pill.