Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been accused in a lawsuit of hiding the link between its injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera and brain tumors.
The lawsuit was filed on Nov. 4 at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by plaintiff Taylor Devorak. The Crestline, California resident developed a tumor in her brain after taking the drug regularly as prescribed for several years, according to The Defender. Devorak is seeking damages from Pfizer for failure to warn, defective design, negligence, misrepresentation and breach of warranty.
When Devorak was 20 years old, her provider at Planned Parenthood prescribed Depo-Provera as a contraceptive. She received 36 regular injections of the drug as recommended and prescribed during a nine-year period.
By August 2018, Devorak began experiencing symptoms that included blurry vision, double vision and trouble focusing – which tests later found to be linked to intracranial meningioma, a slow-growing tumor impinging her optic nerve.
While she underwent a complex intracranial surgery but it failed to completely remove the meningioma. As a result, she continues to suffer serious injuries and damages.
Devorak had no idea that her tumor was connected to the contraceptive, until she saw reports about a study by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published earlier this year. The paper, which the federal lawsuit cited, found that prolonged use of medroxyprogesterone acetate medications like Depo-Provera increased the risk of developing intracranial meningioma by 555 percent. (Related: French study links prolonged use of Pfizer’s hormonal drugs to increased risk of BRAIN TUMORS in women.)
The New York-based Pfizer told The Guardian at the time of the study's publication that it was "aware of this potential risk." The Big Pharma firm has since changed the Depo-Provera label in the United Kingdom and the European Union, but not in the United States.
Thus, Devorak named Pfizer and its subsidiaries that developed and sold Depo-Provera and its authorized generic version as defendants in her lawsuit. As a direct result of being prescribed the drug, Devorak has been permanently and severely injured.
Pfizer will answer for its negligence
According to the complaint, "Pfizer has a duty to stay informed on relevant literature and to do its own long-term studies." The Defender added: "Despite research published over decades indicating a possible link to the tumors, some of which existed even before the drug was licensed as a contraceptive in 1992, the company and its predecessors never investigated this link or adequately studied such possible adverse events among women taking the drug."
The lawsuit continued that the defendants "did nothing, and therefore willfully failed to apprise the medical community, and the women patients receiving quarterly high dose injections, of this dangerous risk."
Ellen Relkin, an attorney from the Weitz & Luxenberg law firm representing Devorak, said: "Pfizer has included meningioma as a possible adverse reaction to Depo-Provera on its Canadian label since 2015. However, American women are not told of this risk."
Pfizer touts the injectable Depo-Provera as one of the most effective contraceptives in existence, second only to sterilization. But the company also manufactures a safer form of the drug called Depo-subQ Provera 104. This is available in a lower dose and can be administered less frequently.
Devorak's complaint, which comes in the wake of a handful of similar lawsuits, is a clear sign that there are more users of Depo-Provera who were in the dark as to the dangers of the prolonged use of the drug. Similar lawsuits had been filed in other federal courts in recent weeks.
They plan to petition the court to combine the cases into multi-district litigation, which would centralize the litigation process and allow multiple cases to share discovery and pre-trial proceedings. Relkin told The Defender that the plan is to assemble a good team of lawyers who could combine resources so they could have "a strong army to fight Big Pharma," which always has huge resources to defend itself in court.
Visit DangerousMedicine.com for similar stories.
Watch this woman's testimony about how the contraceptive Depo-Provera ruined her life.
This video is from the People's Truth channel on Brighteon.com.
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