Public Citizen is Overreaching in Call for FDA Ban on Third-Gen Birth Control Pills

This morning, I recieved an e-mail from Public Citizen, a non-profit public interest group. They were asking for signatures to their petition to the FDA to ban all “third generation” birth control pills. Their main issue is that the synthetic progestin known as desogestrel — which is used in most of the newest birth control pills — doubles the risk of blood clots and strokes in women using the pill. There’s been a lot of hype around the whole thing:

Being a consumer of a third-generation birth control pill — I take Yasmin — I wanted to get more information. I called my gynecologist’s office and recieved a call back from a very nice nurse.

She told me that the risk of blood clot and stroke from the use of “second generation” birth control pills is only 10-30 per 100,000 women. Double that, and you have 20-60 per 100,000 women. “If you double the likelihood of a very rare occurence,” she explained, “it’s still a very rare occurence.”

I was also very relieved to hear that Yasmin doesn’t even have desogestrel, it has drospirenone, which is also a synthetic progestin.

Finally, she mentioned to me that the risk of blood clot and stroke during pregnancy was much higher. One study found it to be as high as 210 in 100,000 women during pregnancy and post-partum.

That’s a much greater risk than the one associated with desogestrel. I understand that its still an elevated risk, but it’s being blown way out of proportion by Public Citizen. Banning all third-generation birth control pills because some statistics demonstrated a slightly increased risk of a negative outcome would be a huge overreach on the part of the FDA. Instead, let’s just require doctors to explain the difference between desogestrel and other progestin options. I think that makes the most sense.

BTW, here is a list of the commercial birth control products that contain desogestrel:

• Desogestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol — ethinyl estradiol is the standard estrogen ingredient in all modern birth control pills
• Apri-28
• Cyclessa
• Desogen
• Kariva
• Mircette
• Ortho-Cept
• Reclipsen
• Velivet

If you’re taking any of those pills, and the slightly increased risk bothers you, you might want to think about switching.