Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Leslie Niedner can’t make sense of the death of her 17-year-old daughter Adrianna. She was a healthy and active college freshman. It was later revealed that what killed her was a blood clot in her lung, also known as a pulmonary embolism. But how could such a condition happen to someone so young and healthy?

Leslie cannot remember who first raised the question of whether Adrianna was on the birth control patch. But the suggestion sent her searching the Internet for answers. She quickly found dozens of other stories like Adrianna’s – of healthy young women on the Ortho Evra transdermal contraceptive patch who mysteriously suffered sometimes fatal heart attacks, strokes or blood clots.

“Why would they prescribe this?” Leslie asked the Boston Globe. The question is even more painful to ask, knowing that that thousands of lawsuits have mounted against Johnson & Johnson, makers of the Ortho Evra patch, by women who have been injured or died after using the patch. Johnson & Johnson has paid $70 million to settle the lawsuits.

The bad press has dropped sales of the patch by 75 percent, but the drug is still approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. “It’s needlessly dangerous,” says Sidney Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization in Washington, during an interview with UPI.

The birth control patch was marketed to younger women because the weekly patches provide a more convenient alternative to daily birth control pills. However, those patches have been found to deliver far more estrogen than birth control pills, Those higher estrogen levels can double a woman’s risk of blood clots.

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