Episode# SAVTLTV20100114B Attorney Gene Brooks of The Brooks Firm warns viewers about the dangers of Yaz/Yasmin birth Control pills with Host Michael Shortt.
We’re back with the middle part of talking law tv where you were jean brooks hey michael hygiene how are you doing good so you’re here tonight are today talk to us about yaz and yasmin it’s a birth control pill that that causes injuries it is it’s been associated with an increased risk of stroke and heart attack and gallbladder injuries now is this two different
Pills or the same pill well you we have here on the screen and yaz and yasmin are the two branded drugs osela is the unbranded generic drug it’s all really the same thing they’re all basically the same thing and basically they’re a combination of an estrogen and a progestin the estrogen that is in it has been around for a long time but the progestin that is in
The drug has been fairly new so that appears to be that what’s causing the problem sort of like in the prempro pills it was a progestin we eventually found out that was causing a lot of the breast cancers and it’s the progestin in this that’s causing the blood okay and we have a graphic here some of the injuries that can be caused by this yeah and most all of these
Relate to a thickening of the blood because your your blood has certain enzymes in it that will cause it to clot for instance if you cut your hand some enzymes are activated and it will form sort of a mesh and we call it a scab it engine comes to scab and that starts the blood some of the like the the we believe is the estrogen by by itself kenny can change some
Of the blood chemistry but this added progestin even causes a more significant problem and what should someone do if they taking this pill in the past with eight well they have symptoms well yeah for instance that a deep vein thrombosis asked the top one and you got the pulmonary embolism and we’ll take those two by themself first a deep vein thrombosis is when you
Have that clotting i described earlier form on your leg and in your deep veins in your leg and you may have sort of a some swelling or some discomfort in that leg now if that’s where the clot stays it’s okay for the most part but the problem is it may become an embolism which means sort of like a floating blood clot and if it floats or is carried by your your your
Veins and your arteries up to your lungs and lodges in one of those areas of your lungs blocking that blood flowed and that’s called a pulmonary embolism and and part of the long will be injured and because it’s not getting the blood it needs to survive presence with a stroke if you have a yaz and do stroke that is when the blood clot lodge is not in your lungs but
Somewhere in your brain and so when that happened it has to be there two types of strokes gives me you can have a hemorrhagic stroke where the blood vessels bleed out that’s not the type of stroke we’re talking about here we’re talking about a clot that forms in the blood and you and it kills part of the brain saying we with a heart attack you have a heart attack
Here the clot instead of going to the longer the brain would go to one of the coronary arteries and blot the blood going to the heart and that would cause that part of the heart to die eventually cause death yeah we’re pretty sure we can recognize that one yes your hon and then that these blood clots and kidney failure now that’s i would imagine a lot of lot of
Young women are taking birth control pills because they’re sexually active but a lot of people maintain taking them for a variety of reasons you know to regulate their there yeah well i’m the long-term use the long-term use of this drug and many others has never been studied a most to get fda approval they do in short term test mean from 90 days to a year and the
Problem is when these drugs are taken for longer than that then it can be a problem for the gall bladder is on here is one of the injuries too and that’s that’s a little different mechanism than the clotting but you say if you have a 25-year overall his young lady who has a normal statute and she comes out and has to have a gallbladder removal then that needs
To be investigated somebody that young having a gallbladder removal or having a stroke or heart attack those are unusual and if the young lady’s been on the as or yasmin for you know two or three years which i don’t think is would be unusual that is something that really needs to be investigated it says something that would show up in a biopsy of the tissues well
It could be really what they with clotting it would be more of you privacy with an mri well i think there are imaging studies of the gallbladder and the gallstones i don’t think it’s an mri that’s done but as they in this moment out of scope which port more like an ultrasound where you can image what’s going on you can see in for instance for the cost ladder you
Could see gallstones but there are other matters if the gall bladder which is right under the liver in which releases the bow that’s created in the liver and it aids digestion if that’s not working properly then you’d have digestion problems for instance and you would have a lot of pain in in the gulf how do you prove the yaz or yasmin caused these injuries well
That can be difficult i mean you can’t really take a blood test of the of the clot or of the gallbladder and it’s going to say i’ve been injured by about ya head of work but the best way to do it is is first of all is is to document is the type of injury that’s associated with the drug next establish that the person was taking the drug and for how long they were
Taking the drug those are the two main facts you need to sort of establish the injury and then at that point you look at other factors such as their age i mean if the 65 year old has a stroke you’re going to have a lot more difficulty showing us associated with the birth control pill and somebody is 25 who has a stroke in st. mood with a heart attack in the
Gallbladder removed so that those are other factors that sort of add into we’re in a case like this be filed as you go down to chatham county courthouse and violet ah you you could but it would probably be removed to federal court because the drug companies are or national companies are not based in georgia and they’d probably go to federal court and then from
There would probably be sent to what’s called multidistrict litigation because there’s this litigation going on all around the country and multidistrict litigation is it’s not really a class action but in some ways it’s sort of a hybrid because all these cases will be sent to the mdl court which is established and that federal judge there would handle the motions
And discovery issues that would be common to all the cases in the cases would be sent back to their home court in this case to savannah where the actions could be tried to a jury and we’re going to talk more about class actions later but in a class action all the people who signed up pretty much get the same award correct yeah yeah and in this kind of case it would
Differ correct these are yeah yeah in personal injury cases because the damages aren’t all the same and in a pure class action which is more of a commercial setting all the damages for instance would be the same if they if a credit card company for instance overcharged everybody ten dollars everybody’s damages would be ten dollars but in in a personal injury case a
Product liability case like this the damage is for each degree of injury certainly would be different sometimes the courts come up with what we call matrices or a matrix of type of injury for like in as bestest cases you would have for instance mesothelioma would be at the high end and just in minor asbestosis would be at the low end and there would be a gradation
All the way down as to how the cases would be so okay quick answer how long do you have to file two years two years of the date you you or you discover that your injuries related to the drug reaction okay we’ll be back with more right after this
Transcribed from video
TLTV – Gene Brooks – Yaz Birth Control. By Michael Shortt