Legislator Handout, Research Paper Example

Current, thousands of women are continuing to fall victim to the negative side effects of the birth control medication Yaz.  This product claimed to be one of the best birth control medications available and it came with the added bonus of allowing women to only have 3 or 4 menstrual cycles each year.  However, this came with multiple negative side effects including but not limited to gallbladder defects, pulmonary embolism, DVT and even strokes (YazSideEffectsLawsuit.com).  Today, thousands of women are filing individual lawsuits against the Yaz production company and efforts are being made to create a class-action lawsuit as well.

Although this is the correct course of action, there is no current legislation that holds doctors responsible for prescribing medications that have such negative side effects.  Many doctors do not examine or request test results for potential side effects.  Instead, they simply rely on the approval of the FDA, which is not always entirely correct as in the case with Yaz.  Therefore, legislation should enable doctors to be held legally accountable for the drugs they are prescribing instead of placing the blame solely on pharmaceutical companies.  Doctors must be held accountable and be legally responsible.  The same punishments for pharmaceutical companies should also be awarded to medical professionals.

In addition to legal action, doctors should be held accountable for also testing and examining a drug if they are going to prescribe it.  This will force medical professionals to create a checks and balances system before a medication is prescribed.  If the pharmaceutical company’s tests do not reveal important side effects results, the tests performed by prescribing doctors should create a greater opportunity to find these errors before they prescribe medications to patients.  This will naturally take greater time away from doctors who have private practices and large practice responsibilities; however, it will create a necessary checks and balances system to reduce errors that negatively impact patients’ health as well as forces unnecessarily large legal proceedings on medical professionals.

References

Attorneys push legal action against yaz. The Indy Channel, Retrieved from http://www.theindychannel.com/health/20721651/detail.html

YazSideEffectsLawsuit.com. Yaz/yasmin side effects lawsuit center. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.yazsideeffectslawsuit.com/