NOT THE SHARPEST KNIVES IN THE DRAWER: Contraceptive Fail
Qualitest Pharmaceuticals is recalling several lots of birth control pills because the blister pack containing the pills was upside down within the package so that the inert pills that are supposed to be taken during the fourth week when a woman menstruates were at the top, Legal blog Abnormal Use reports:
Seldom, does a packaging error actually affect the performance of the drug itself.
The fact that the mere 180 degree rotation of a product’s packaging can render a product completely ineffective seems curious. If Crayola accidentally packaged its product in reverse-rainbow order, the crayons would not cease to become coloring utensils. One would think that if a company is capable of designing a product that can alter reproductive hormones and prevent unwanted pregnancies, it could also design a package not affected by a reverse rotation.
Abnormal Use anticipates that plaintiffs who have an unwanted pregnancy as a result of the mix-up may sue for wrongful pregnancy – as when a vasectomy fails – but their “unwanted children” would likely not be able to sue for wrongful life, because the few states that allow such suits typically require the child to be born with a birth defect. However, plaintiffs suing over an unwanted pregnancy would bear some responsibility for failing to notice that the seven inert pills were a different color than the 21 pills containing active birth control hormones.
If you think about it, rotating a gun 180 degrees seriously interferes with its proper function. However, we know that it's backwards and can correct the problem. We nay not know the difference in color of the pills matters, or we may be afraid to assume so in the case of medicine. The instructions should say that the inert pills are a different color, in which case "problem solved." If the instructions did say that and people still took the pills in reverse order, that is a problem as they are too stupid to breed but may have done so.
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