Posted on 11/26/2005 5:56:51 PM PST by Coleus
When the parents of 14 year-old Alycia Brown of La Crosse Wisconsin found out their daughter was sexually active, they did what the modern culture told them was the right thing to do; they put her on birth control, choosing the popular hormonal patch instead of the Pill. When on May 7, 2004, Alycia died suddenly of blood clots in her lower pelvis Michael and Lorie Brown decided to sue the deadly drug's manufacturer in the hopes of having it taken off the market.
The patch, which releases a dose of contraceptive hormones into a woman's blood stream through the skin, has been responsible for at least 17 deaths in women age 17 to 30 since its release in 2002, according to the US Food and Drug Administration.
In September 2004, a study by the FDA revealed 21 "life-threatening" conditions related to the patch such as blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks. The Browns' lawsuit claims the company intentionally withheld information from its own clinical trials and Food and Drug Administration records suggesting the increased risks.
Thus far, Alycia is the youngest of the patch's victims. Her mother told the La Crosse Tribune that the suit is only partly about collecting damages. "More than anything, I want it taken off the market," she said.
"Maybe I'll be able to save a life, if people know what happened to her."
Earlier this month, Ortho-McNeil agreed to improve the warnings on the labels for the patch to include the information that it had possible fatal side effects. The company admitted that the patch exposes women to about 60 percent more estrogen than those using typical birth-control pills.
Read Previous LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Ortho McNeil Corp Admits Birth Control Patch Blood Clot Connection
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/nov/05111404.html
Contact the FDA to request that the drug be taken off the market:
U. S. Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane,
Rockville MD 20857-0001
1-888-INFO-FDA
(1-888-463-6332)
and your elected officials www.congress.org
What risks are associated with staying chaste?
Just the headline was enough to make my head spin.
"The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers."
(Shakespeare)
I'm sure Tom Daschle would be happy to join you in your sadness.
The parents weren't protecting their child. They authorized the behavior that led to her death. Now they want to profit off of it. As for planned parenthood, their motivation is not the best interests of children. Rather, children are tools to use in their quest for ever more power.
I'd be suing if the school or the state put my daughter on the biuth control without my consent.
That is the problem in CT and many of the blue states.
I originally thought that this blue state was only taking the teens for abortions, now I find they're injecting the teen girls with the "Depo" birth control and keeping it all from the parents.
And with such profound stupidity, they forfeited their right to sue IMHO.
Nobody killed their daughter but they themselves. Idiots.
I think that the parents did wrong, but I also think that willful ignorance of your child's habits is just as wrong. Simply sending them to an abstinance-only sex ed and then blithely assuming that they're not going to have sex is naive at best.
Therein lies the rub. The "parents" of this child authorized her being put on this abomination. And now, since they're unhappy with the result of their stupidity, they want to sue.
As parents we are told that we cannot teach our kids to wait until marriage for sex which I think is our right. I will never understand the need to make sure our teens are having sex.
No they shouldn't. I know that statins can be bad but I was not aware that they could be fatal. There are so many different sides to different drugs, some good and, obviously, some bad.
" The parents should have looked out for their daughter..."
In many blue states the parents are denied the consent/notification stage in even birth control decisions for teen girls.
Parents are too lazy to supervise, too spineless to understand the difference between "parent" and "buddy"
It's true that a 14-year-old girl's snits and tantrums can be pretty disagreeable. (Make sure you have earplugs in, before you tell one to wash the dishes.) No, seriously, as someone said up the thread, a child that age is not independent, and almost can't be sleeping around unless her parents are making the opportunity for her.
and just want to make sure their daughter doesn't come home pregnant so they don't have another kid to raise.
And they've never heard of adoption, of course.
Good point!!
Men are contracting it wihtout the patch so what's the beef?
Me thinks you just want to gripe about birth control.
When my oldest was about 11, one of her friends had a boyfriend (whole 'nother story ...). Anyway, my daughter asked, "Why does Kelly want a boyfriend?" and I said, "She doesn't have any brothers, so she doesn't understand what boys are really like!" "Ooooh!"
I took Accutane almost 22 years ago. It has very serious side effects and required monthly blood tests to determine if my liver and other internal organs were not being damaged. If taken by pregnant women, it can cause serious birth defects. This potential hazzard was documented long before the drug was put on the market, and female patients are required to sign a release before being allowed to take it. Every few years some regulator at the FDA threatens to ban Accutane, because some really stupid women get pregnant while using it and have horribly deformed children as a result. Should Accutane be taken off the market even though it is the most effective drug against cystic acne and works when every other course of therapy fails?
Yes, we need cholesterol. My count is usually rolling in in the low 100s (in a world where "normal" is 200 or so).
That's all? Out of a user-population size of what - millions?
How many patch users got hit by a bus over the same period - more than 17?
I see you've cleverly avoided telling them that real men are sometimes also stupid and immature. ;-) (I are one, so I get to say that. ;-))
Our rule is no unchaperoned dating before age 17. If a chaperoned date or a date to a school function is just too geeky to stand, the alternative of "no dating at all" is also readily available. :-)
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