Essure Birth Control Pulled From Market After Thousands of Lawsuits

Bayer Healthcare announced that they will stop selling their controversial birth control treatment called Essure. The company says it's because it wasn’t selling well, which is likely because it was destroying the lives of women. Ring of Fire’s Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss this issue.

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The Bayer HealthCare companies announced that they're going to stop selling their controversial birth control called Essure. The company says it's because it wasn't selling well, which is likely because it was destroying the lives of women all over the country. That's really why they're doing this.

This is a simple story to understand, okay? This company, Bayer, has made this product. They know it's a birth control, it's totally and unnecessary birth control. There are more birth controls out there that whatever the problem is that a woman is having with a particular kind of birth control, there are other alternative out there for them.

Essure was one of these lookalike kind of deals. Other people are doing something similar, we want to try this ourselves. Now what they're finding is the Essure that's embedded in the body is breaking off in the body, migrating throughout the body and causing real serious injuries to people. That's why they're pulling the product from the market.

As you know, I handled the, years ago, handled case against Bayer for another birth control pill and the problem with it sometimes is, they're always looking for that cash cow. They're always looking, this was called Yaz. It was a pill called Yaz. This is not a pill. This is, it's implanted in the body, this Essure. But they're always looking to get on the very edge of the new cash cow.

That's what happened here, isn't it, Farron?

It absolutely is and now they're saying well, this cash cow stopped giving us milk. It has nothing to do with these 16,000 lawsuits we're facing over this product in the US alone. No, no, no, it's because it wasn't selling well. And there's a reason. It's because, as you just pointed out, it's destroying the lives of women like so many other products that we see.

Essure is a permanent form of birth control. It's this implantable device and just like every other implantable, small, metallic device we see in bodies, it breaks apart.

IVC filters, the same thing.

IVC filters is a great example.

Same kind of deal. Breaks apart, moves systemically through the body. Lodges in organ systems, including the brain, by the way. The heart. This is the same problem here with Essure. They knew. They've known the science of implant fracture for ages. They know the science on it. They know it's bad. They know there's never been a good experience with this.

Due to the location of the device in the Fallopian tubes, most of the injuries that they're seeing involve, there's a lot of kidney damage, a lot of abdominal pain, because usually when it breaks off it'll embed almost immediately wherever it can get to. Sometimes it will migrate. It will go to the brain. It will go to the heart. If you're lucky enough, it's not going to go there and immediately kill you. Instead, it'll ruin a kidney.

Right.

It'll ruin a bowel, a bladder. Anything it can latch itself onto and Bayer knew it.

Actually pierce the bowel. That's one of the bigger problems.

Yeah.

Let me tell you a quick story. I think this is pretty instructional about Bayer as a company, generally. I've been toe to toe with Bayer on several occasions that's the same culture. It is a culture of, we want to follow the cash cow. We're going to make as much money as we can. We're going to leave what I call quick profits, horrible risks. Quick profits for the company, horrible risks for the consumer.