A popular birth control that is used by over 70 million women each year has been linked to an increase risk of developing potentially-fatal brain tumors, but the company behind the product hasn’t been honest about the side effects of this medication. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Click here to find out more about Depo-Provera lawsuits.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: A popular birth control that is used by over 70 million women each year has been linked to an increased risk in developing potential fatal brain tumors. But the company behind the product hasn’t been honest about the side effects of this medication. I saw this article on Depo-Provera. Okay. We’re actually handling the case. And what’s missing in this article is that Depo-Provera was testing this product down in the Sudan, Sudan, Africa, back in the sixties and the seventies. They were testing it in Kenya, Zimbabwe, all over the Sub-Sahara Africa. And you know what? Women were coming up with brain tumors and dying from brain tumors. And they covered that up. That was back in the seventies and the eighties. They didn’t disclose to those women that the Depo-Provera would do that, and when they come back to the United States and start selling it, they don’t disclose to women that these brain tumors uniquely related to this product, we’re killing women.
Farron Cousins: And it’s really unfortunate to see this too, because this is a product that has been on the market for decades. So people tend to think, okay, well products been on the market for decades, I’ll look it up, oh, there’s been no major lawsuits against them. This is clearly safe. And so they take it, it’s four shots a year. It’s convenient. You don’t have to do it every day. You don’t have to have anything implanted or removed. This seems like such a good deal if you are a woman on birth control. And it only seems that way because, as you pointed out, these studies that the company conducted themselves were not made public. None of this was revealed.
Mike Papantonio: They were experimenting on human beings in the Sub-Sahara. That’s what was going on. Let’s see what happens. So they saw what happened. Yeah, it’ll kill people with brain tumors and they still didn’t disclose it when they started focusing primarily on the West. A typical case, the case that was brought, the woman started using the product, I think 1995, started developing all of these symptoms that were indicative of brain tumors. Had the brain tumors removed. She didn’t know, because nobody told her, don’t start back on Depo-Provera. So she started back and everything got worse and worse because there was no disclosure. And they knew clearly, there was no question, Farron, that they knew exactly how this would go about killing women.
Farron Cousins: Well, and the woman in question, the woman who filed this initial lawsuit here, when the brain tumor came back, it not only came back faster and larger, they assumed the doctor said, okay, obviously we’re dealing with some type of cancer here. She went through what, 40?
Mike Papantonio: Yes, chemotherapy.
Farron Cousins: 40 radiation treatments, which if anybody has known anybody that’s gone through that, it is hell. So she goes through 40 of these treatments to try to get rid of these tumors. All the while, if this company had been honest and forthright, they could have said, hey, just don’t get this shot again. Remove the tumors, get off the product and you should be fine.
Mike Papantonio: They didn’t even tell the doctors.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: The doctors didn’t know about the clinical results in the Sub-Sahara that took place in the seventies and eighties. They didn’t know these women were dying of brain tumors down in Africa. They kept it all quiet. And so how could a doctor even know that? So the doctor didn’t even know. The doctor treating her had no reason to know it was related to Depo-Provera. And so this case, we’re going to bust them up. We are going to rock their world. I promise you. We’re getting these cases in, in record numbers. I think there was like 70 million women that have used this birth control. It’s an ugly, ugly story.
