When Joan Cummins said goodbye to her 18-year-old daughter before her first term at university, she consoled herself by thinking she’d be back for Christmas.
But Michelle Pfleger never did come home. Instead, after less than a month at Elon University, North Carolina, she collapsed and died from a massive blood clot – after taking the birth control pill to treat her acne.
Now Mrs Cummins is taking German pharmaceutical firm Bayer to court, claiming the contraceptive pill Yaz contributed to her daughter’s death.
Her case has been bolstered by the Federal Drug Administration, after it announced it was reviewing a range of oral contraceptives, including Yaz, which contain a form of the hormone progestin known as drospirenone.
In the lawsuit Mrs Cummins writes: ‘One day she was a freshman at college so full of hope and promise and the next she was gone.’
The pretty blonde student, who lived in the small town of Great Meadows, New Jersey, collapsed suddenly last September, when she was on her way to class.
