Read Marie Brenner's NuvaRing Investigation

Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, agreed this morning to settle for $100 million with the thousands of claimants who have filed suit against their profitable contraceptive, NuvaRing. As Marie Brenner discussed in her January article, claimants have alleged that Merck was not forthcoming enough about the drug’s side effects, including potentially fatal blood clots. Merck denied any wrongdoing under the agreement preliminarily approved by a judge and pending the participation of 95 percent of the plaintiffs. Their competitor, Bayer, has already paid out $1.6 billion over the last two years to claimants against their contraceptive drugs, Yaz and Yasmin, over blood-clot related issues.

Rick and Karen Langhart—the Colorado couple whom Brenner profiled in her January article—have been battling Merck ever since their 24-year-old daughter, Erika, died of a double pulmonary embolism in 2011 while using NuvaRing. “We are absolutely devastated,” said Karen Langhart of the settlement figure. “This is exactly what we have feared.”

Roger Denton, the lead negotiator for the plaintiffs regards the settlement as progress. “Most of these young women who take contraception, regardless of the product, truly don’t believe they are the ones that are at risk, yet virtually all of them could be,” he told Vanity Fair. “The so-called second-generation products, which are now almost all generics, have been shown in the literature to be substantially safer than the newer products that would include… NuvaRing.” Regardless of the price tag, the settlement should stir the debate over contraceptive risk.