American Home Products Corporation last August agreed to settle lawsuits from almost 40,000 women who say they were injured by the Norplant birth control device. The settlement will give each woman $1,500 if she filed suit before March l.
The settlement tops $50 million, and ends five years of litigation involving the controversial product (“Norplant company agrees to settle suit,” Dallas Morning News, 26 August 1999). The settlement sparked hundreds of medical and legal information requests to PRI from women around the world who have used Norplant.
In June of 1996, PRI began to petition the FDA to revoke its 1990 classification of Norplant as a safe product. Despite the settlement, FDA officials told PRI recently it has no intention of doing so. Norplant has been banned in the UK.
The Norplant system consists of six small flexible capsules filled with a synthetic progesterone, levonorgestrel. The capsules are inserted under the skin of a woman’s upper arm to prevent pregnancy for up to five years. An estimated 1 million women in the U.S. and 2.5 million worldwide have been inserted with Norplant.
Norplant was tested on women beginning in 1972 in several developing countries, including Haiti, Brazil, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Jamaica, Chile, and the Dominican Republic. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) provided most of the $20 million in costs. Documented side effects include severe headaches, sickness, blindness (“Population Group Demands Halt of Norplant Sales,” PRI Press release, 27 June 1996).
Wyeth-Ayerst officials said the settlement “was purely a business decision,” and that Norplant would continue to be marketed to American women.
