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The Tainted Yaz FDA Vote
Serving Alabama, Mississippi & Florida including Mobile, Pascagoula, Gulfport, Biloxi & Pensacola
Fri, 01/13/2012
An FDA advisory committee met last month to determine whether Yaz and Yasmin birth control pills should be left on the market, in light of their risk of blood clots. The committee voted 15-11 that the benefits of the drugs outweighed the risks and they should stay on the market. Now, it has been disclosed that four of the committee members held ties to Bayer, the manufacturer of the drugs. What's more, each of the four committee members with ties to Bayer voted to leave the Bayer drugs on the market.
At the time of the committee meeting, attorneys for women suing Bayer for injuries arising from the use of Yaz and Yasmin attempted to make public the conflicts of the four committee members. They were prevented from publicizing the information because a federal judge said it was confidential.
According to The Washington Monthly, the four members were:
Julia Johnson, the acting chair of the committee, and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. She had previously conducted four clinical trials for Bayer.
Paula Hillard, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford School of Medicine, who has served as a paid consultant to Bayer Schering.
Elizabeth Raymond, a senior medical associate at Gynuity Health Projects in New York, conducted studies funded by Barr, which has a licensing agreement with Bayer for generic versions of Yaz.
Anne Burke, an assistant professor of gynecology and obstetrics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has received research funding from Bayer-Berlex and Duramed, which has a licensing agreement with Bayer for generic Yaz and Yasmin.
And then another committee member told The Washington Monthly that he received consulting fees from a law firm representing Bayer in 2006, but he did not disclose the information to the FDA because they "did not require information for that time frame for consulting unrelated to the meeting topic."
These disclosures underscore the fact that consumers must be proactive in talking to their physicians and becoming aware of the risks associated with the drugs they are taking. At the very least , this should make all of us very concerned about pharmaceutical industry ties to the FDA.
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