Via America’s Lawyer: Thousands of women experienced adverse reactions due to defective IUD’s that are falling apart upon removal. Attorney Stephen Luongo joins Mike Papantonio to explain how Paragard and Mirena have quietly swept concerns about their birth control products under the rug. Plus, Zoom agrees to pay out $85 million for violating user privacy. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Thousands of women are experiencing adverse reactions due to defective IUDs that are falling apart upon removal and while the FDA alerted manufacturers about the dangers of these devices, companies have been keeping it quiet. The media has been keeping it quiet when it comes to informing patients about the risks. Attorney Stephen Luongo joins me now to talk about it. You know, frankly, Steve, I got to tell you for ABC to cover this story, to have corporate media ever cover a story where they got advertisers out there is really unusual, but ABC is the only place we really found this story.
Stephen Luongo: Absolutely. And what we’re talking about is Paragard, is a IUD, IUD, the only hormone free one out there on the market, there’s five of them total. But they, they bill themselves and advertise themselves as the safe hormone free alternative. What we’re finding is that the women that have these devices, once they try to get them removed, it’s breaking apart, the arms are falling apart. They’re being embedded in their uterus and their cervix and then requiring follow-up surgery to remove that and obviously causing tremendous pain and trauma.
Mike Papantonio: Well, yeah, aside from the pain, I mean, the pain is obvious. If you have something embedded that they can’t get out, if it’s migrating. Is there an issue of migration here where pieces or maybe migrating through the body? We’ve seen that with other IUDs.
Stephen Luongo: We have. We’ve seen that in the lawsuits with Mirena where migration was a major issue and the, the prevalent issue in that case. Here for us, we do see some migration, the bigger issues that we are seeing with the perforation of the organs, bodily organs there, the uterus sometimes resulting in a hysterectomy and ultimately resulting in infertility, which is the exact opposite.
Mike Papantonio: So, the doctor goes in. I got to remove the IUD and the reports that are coming out, what are there 3000 or 3000 plus reports.
Stephen Luongo: Correct.
Mike Papantonio: Where the thing has shattered, it’s broken off. The doctor goes in, let’s remove it. And one of the arms, one of the arms on the IUD breaks off and is embedded in the tissue. And they can’t, you know, it’s, it’s major surgery to try to go in there and get it out, right?
Stephen Luongo: Absolutely. And, and that’s, that’s the harm that has not been advertised to these women. They took the product, they thought they were being safe. They thought they were protecting themselves. This harm has not been advertised to them. They have not been warmed, warned correctly for it, with dating back as you said, with the FDA telling the company at Teva pharmaceuticals, a parent company that, hey, your advertisements are not sufficient. These women are going out there not knowing the dangers and it is being embedded. It is causing damages.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So here’s what the FDA could do if the FDA were actually functional, they’re totally dysfunctional. The FDA is a joke. They allowed this to go on for a very long time. They finally said, you need to give a real warning, a black box warning that somebody can see, and the doctor knows about it. The patient knows about it, that if you put this in your body, it could shatter, break off and it can cause real systemic damage to you going forward. That’s a black box warning. So what they’ve tried to do is put it in small print. Doctor still is unaware of what the problems are. They don’t know about the 3000 plus problems. And, and the real issue comes down to the FDA could recall this immediately and say, until you get it right, we’re going to recall this product.
Stephen Luongo: Absolutely. And the product, as you said, is still on the market as is in its normal form without these proper warnings. The, the FDA warning that we talked about was for the television ads. But this product is still out there. Women are still taking it and they’re not knowing the risk. But they, they could certainly recall it. The FDA right now is not even doing a full investigation of it. That’s why these lawsuits are out there trying to get public awareness and try to get people out there to start stemming something.
Mike Papantonio: And the problem is if this ends up in front of a judge who is an ideologue, okay, the ideologue is I, I line up with corporate America. I don’t really line up with consumers. You see it all the time.
Stephen Luongo: Oh yeah.
Mike Papantonio: If it gets in front of an ideologue, we’ve already seen where one ideologue judge has said, we’re going to dismiss everything. We’re dismissing your case. Go, you know, go without any kind of recovery at all, right?
Stephen Luongo: Absolutely. I mean, what you’re talking about is what we mentioned earlier, the Mirena lawsuit, that’s exactly what happened there. We’re hoping for different results in this lawsuit to get public awareness up, to get in front of a good judge that will make the proper rulings and to have success for these women.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Let’s hope. I mean, this is, this is an important case for these women. Thank you for joining me, Steve.
Stephen Luongo: Yes, sir.
Mike Papantonio: Finally tonight, some good news. They’re looking at Zoom for private conferencing, $85 million fine for not doing it right. Pick up this story would you.
Farron Cousins: This is, you know, it was very disappointing to read this story, but yes, Zoom like so many other people in the big tech industry allowed people’s data to be leaked, you know, names, any, any kind of registration information. And then of course, one of the big ones, Zoombombing, you know, allowing hackers because their cyber security was so lax to basically hop on these private secure meetings. They throw pornography up on screen. They scream obscenities because Zoom didn’t protect people. But you know what, I do have to say in Zoom’s defense a little bit, you know, Zoom was kind of thrust into a situation. I mean, a year and a half ago, nobody knew who the hell Zoom was. And then suddenly it became the go-to software for millions of people because of the pandemic. So they were kind of caught off guard by their own success. But they didn’t take necessary steps to evolve.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, really, what kind of aberrational hacker bonehead says, oh, I’m going to jump on here and scream obscenities. I mean, these are people I guess, that still ride around on skateboards and read DC comic books, I don’t know. But you know, it’s not something you’d anticipate, that it’s somebody out in the public, some idiot that doesn’t have anything else to do says, hey, I think I’ll hack a Zoom call today and scream obscenities. It’s, you know, I don’t know, man. It is that the kind of thing you plan for? Maybe, but anyway, I think they’re going to get it right. I agree with you. It’s been an extremely important service that has risen to the occasion when the COVID, during the COVID shutdown.
Farron Cousins: And, and I’m glad they went ahead and agreed to this settlement. They’re not out there objectively trying to fight it too aggressively.
Mike Papantonio: They’re not.
Farron Cousins: Kind of admitting to a degree look, maybe we made some mistakes, let’s get this right. Because look, there’s a lot of corporations, the legal industry using Zoom more and more. Zoom is here to stay, so they better make sure they get it right.
Mike Papantonio: Thank you for joining me, Farron. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for tonight. Find us on Twitter and Facebook @facebook.com/rtamericaslawyer. You can watch all RT America programs and DirecTV channel 321 and also stream them live on YouTube and be sure to check out RT’s new portable app, where you can watch all your favorite shows all the time. I’m Mike Papantonio and this is America’s Lawyer where every week we tell you the stories that corporate media is ordered not to tell because their advertisers won’t let them or because of their political involvement. Have a great night.
