Fundie Win!?! Birth Control Recall

[dawniecakes]

Is it horrible that I immediately jumped to conclusions about conspiracies... you know, Duggars infiltrating the manufacturer on a "field trip" to mix up the pills, and such! This board has poisoned mah brainz!! :D

On a serious note, there is a birth control recall, so check your pills ladies!

http://theweek.com/article/index/219408 ... regnancies

(Not breaking the link as its news)

[titus2_4u]

Ha, my mind did the same thing: could it have been some crazy pharmaceutical company employee in the Bible Belt?

But yes, ladies: check your birth control!

[Turtle]

Yikes! How does an error like that happen?

[bananacat]

That is actually my brand of BC, so thanks for the heads-up. My lot number wasn't recalled, which I didn't expect it to be because the colors are in the right order in the pack.

If some fundie is actually responsible for this, then they have just increased the number of abortions. Congratulations to them! But it probably was just a mistake. Sometimes it happens. They should put more safeguards in place though.

[browncoatslytherin]

this is one of the reasons i love having the birth control shot: don't have to worry about pills getting mixed up! also, i have no period anymore, but hey, just a side affect i happen to love. :P

[Austin]

Ha, my mind did the same thing: could it have been some crazy pharmaceutical company employee in the Bible Belt?

But yes, ladies: check your birth control!

Oh, you can be sure that I did. I'm glad dawniecakes posted this - I read about it on CNN a few days ago and meant to post about it, but forgot.

If I get pregnant at my age, which is still technically possible, I suppose, I think I'd go over the edge. It would not be pretty :D

[Kitty]

I'm glad I'm on the NuvaRing.

[DamnPrecious]

This was God's will! He screwed with the pills. He was opening the womb! Just think of the blessings.

blah blah blah blah

[ADoyle90815]

It wasn't my brand, nice try though, fundies!

[PBrooke]

To be fair, though, if I saw that the different-colored placebo pills were randomly in the middle of the pack instead of the end, I would at least think of using secondary birth control, if not assuming they were bad altogether.

[TheJewAmongUs]

When I saw this story on the news they had lots of stock footage of various birth control pills. I guess they thought it made the story look good, but it really seemed like a disservice since some people would see it, and either disregard it if it didn't look like their pills, or freak out of they recognized theirs. (Let's be honest, we all look at the pictures more than we listen to the talking part.)

[CanadianHippie]

To be fair, though, if I saw that the different-colored placebo pills were randomly in the middle of the pack instead of the end, I would at least think of using secondary birth control, if not assuming they were bad altogether.

And to be accurate, you probably have more common sense than a lot of people out there.

[pandora665]

To be fair, lots of women start a new brand of pill every month and would not necessarily know which color the placebo pills are supposed to be. Every package says that if you are going straight from one brand to a different brand with no interruption, no backup contraception is required that month. I really hope the word gets out to everyone.

[CanadianHippie]

To be fair, lots of women start a new brand of pill every month and would not necessarily know which color the placebo pills are supposed to be. Every package says that if you are going straight from one brand to a different brand with no interruption, no backup contraception is required that month. I really hope the word gets out to everyone.

And to be accurate, it's easy for even someone like me who has never taken the pill to identify the placebo's simply because there are fewer of them than the other ones. It's not rocket science, just basic chemistry.

[bananacat]

And to be accurate, it's easy for even someone like me who has never taken the pill to identify the placebo's simply because there are fewer of them than the other ones. It's not rocket science, just basic chemistry.

That's just not accurate at all. Any of the tri-cycle types (Ortho TriCyclen and all generics of that) have 7 each of 4 different colors, a different one for each week. Each week gets a different dose, with the last week being the placebo. So no, there aren't fewer of one type than all the others.

There are also a lot of women out there who have just recently started BC, or just recently switched to a certain type, and are unfamiliar with how theirs should look.

Because of my insurance, my generic brands for all types of medications change pretty frequently. I don't worry about it because I know the active ingredient is the same, but I end up with some unusual looking pills pretty frequently. People who pick up all their meds (instead of using mail-order service like I do) can easily end up with different generics if they go to different pharmacies or if the pharmacy simply runs out of one type. Sometimes even the same brand will also just do a redesign for whatever reason, so it's not unreasonable to assume that a different look is just some stylistic change. And if you don't have anything to compare it to, a different order of colors could be hard to notice because who bothers to memorize the colors they saw last month, especially if you take the pill when you are groggy before you've had your morning coffee?

So it really isn't so weird that many wouldn't notice the problem.

And it's pretty clear that you have never taken any BC pills because you are clearly misinformed on some very basic facts.

[Patsy]

And it's pretty clear that you have never taken any BC pills because you are clearly misinformed on some very basic facts.

This is largely because of my bugbear with 'If you'd ever X, you wouldn't say that thing you said' (can't stand it!) but hey, I've been on about five? different BC pill types, and all were the three-weeks on, one-week off type, easy as anything to identify which were the active pills.

[PBrooke]

Yup, I've been on BC for ten years, at least four different kinds, but clearly I have never had the Neapolitan thrill of a Tricyclen pack.

[pandora665]

1/3 of the recalled varieties of BC pills are the 7/7/7 style, so I believe my point is still valid. For those of you who haven't been on the "tri" variey, count yourself lucky. All the women I know who got pg on the pill were on the low-estrogen tricyclen variety.

[Lainey]

I took my pills backwards by accident one month when I was on the tricyclen variety. This was when I was much younger and hated my then-boyfriend (if I had gotten pregnant I don't know what I would have done, but I'm sure it wouldn't have been good), so after going to the doctor in tears, he switched me to a "Lainey-proof" brand. :oops:

[CanadianHippie]

1/3 of the recalled varieties of BC pills are the 7/7/7 style, so I believe my point is still valid. For those of you who haven't been on the "tri" variey, count yourself lucky. All the women I know who got pg on the pill were on the low-estrogen tricyclen variety.

Or not, I looked up the pills and the only I could find where it might possibly be difficult to determine placebo from active pills is the Gildess FE 1/20 just because the active pills are white and and inactive pills are while speckled with brown.

All of the others have a very different colour for inactive pills. I.E. Cyclafem has white, light pink, pink, and green (which seems to be their most common inert colour).

If you know how birth control pills work it shouldn't be a huge leap in figuring out which ones don't belong, unless you're colour blind.

[Austin]

What I think of is perhaps a developmentally challenged woman would have trouble with this. Seriously. Lots of women of childbearing age who are not in a position to have children use the pill, as it has a pretty high effectiveness rate when used properly. I know of someone who has Down's Syndrome and lives in a group home situation and she found a boyfriend so her mom took her to get the pill. She takes it very faithfully and does just about everything using a rather strict routine. A person like that who depends upon routine to know what to do may have trouble.

I've taken Seasonale and Jolessa and am now using another generic of the same thing and all three have had different colors. In some the real pills are pink and the placebos are white, and others are vice versa or the placebos are green. With the 90-day types, you only have one week "off" and you don't get to that week until the very last card, so it would be hard to mess up on that for a typical woman.

[CanadianHippie]

The thing we have to remember is that someone, somewhere, very likely a consumer, noticed that there was an issue with the packaging and contacted the company who recalled the lot.

[bananacat]

If you know how birth control pills work it shouldn't be a huge leap in figuring out which ones don't belong, unless you're colour blind.

My current brand has white, light blue, dark blue, and gray. It's really not obvious at all which one is the placebo except the order that they are packed in. I've taken other generics of the exact same drug, and the colors have been completely different. If this had been my first or second month on this new version, I would have no way of knowing if they were in the wrong order. The colors are completely different on this one than on all the other brands I've taken.

[notsocommon]

[emmiedahl]

I'm glad dh had a vasectony. So much crap I don't have to worry about! Good luck interfering with that, fundies.

It would be easy to be fooled if you did not know that there is a problem. I was on Ortho-tri-cyclen for years and they do change the colors occasionally. If I saw that the colors were different, I might not really register it as a problem. However, I remember that the placebos tasted different, only because I tend to put pills on my tongue and then get a drink, which may mean hunting for a glass first. The placebos are sweet while the regular pills were not. I still probably would not see it as an issue, I'd be like, "weird that they made week 2 pills sweet!?!?!"