Product Liability Attorney Blog

If there was any doubt in people's minds that Yasmin and its cousin Yaz are incredibly profitable, it should be laid to rest at this point. Watson Laboratories just received permission from the FDA to manufacture and sell a generic formulation of the oral contraceptive under the brand name Zarah.

So, what exactly does this mean for consumers?

At the chemical level, Zarah contains the same active ingredients as Yasmin (drospirenone and ethinyl estradiol). This means that it will perform the same function as Bayer's contraceptive, which has been proven very effective at preventing pregnancies when taken as directed. However, this means it will also carry with it all of the same side effects as the parent drug: blood clotting risks and the chance of increasing the risk of strokes and heart infarctions.

The proliferation of generic drugs is, by and large, a good thing. They increase the availability of a drug in the market, which lowers prices and allows consumers more opportunity to get the medicine they want. They also create competition between companies for these clients, encouraging each company to provide the best quality and access.

However, it also means that the risks of the medicine are increased overall. More quantity of the medicine means more access, and when people find out there are generic versions of a drug available, they unconsciously believe that this means the drug must be safe — after all, the FDA approved the medicines for general use, right? They make generic acetaminophen that's just as good as the name brand stuff, isn’t it?

These attitudes demonstrate the lack of understanding about the FDA's role in things. As a regulatory body, it can't force testing that creates zero-risk results, nor should it. However, this also means that risky medicines such as Yaz and Yasmin get onto the market and lead to lawsuits and health complications that could be avoided, and the wisdom of allowing a generic version of a contested drug to go forward must always be questioned.