Serious Warning On Birth Control Patch

As reported in the New York Times on April 5, the Ortho Evra birth control patch, manufactured by Johnson & Johnson has found to cause 50 deaths which occurred between 2002-2006.

Serious side effects such as strokes and heart attacks have been reported as well.

While news of serious side effects did come out in November 2005 in the form of warning the public about potential risks, the new report says that J& J knew even before the product hit the market that the dosage was higher than FDA regulations allowed.

In 1988 the FDA banned birth control pills with more than 50 micograms of estrogen. While J & J said their patch had 30-38 it had in fact altered the reports to get to that number and another study said the dosage could actually be 76 micrograms of estrogen.