The Pharma Giant Pfizer is sued by 1,300 women for its contraceptive drug Depo-Provera as a Hidden Brain Tumor Risk has been Exposed.
In what seems like an escalation of accountability for Big Pharma’s recklessness, over 1,300 American women have filed a massive multidistrict lawsuit against Pfizer, accusing the corporation of concealing a lethal link between its injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera and aggressive brain tumors. As proceedings kick off this week in a Florida federal court, these plaintiffs – many scarred by surgeries, vision loss, and lifelong disabilities – demand justice for a drug peddled for decades without adequate warnings. Pfizer, already notorious for its profit-driven scandals, now faces allegations that it buried scientific red flags dating back to the 1980s, prioritizing sales over safety and leaving countless women to suffer the consequences of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), the hormone fueling Depo-Provera’s tumor-inducing potency.
The heart of the case is Pfizer’s alleged failure to disclose the skyrocketing risk of meningiomas – benign tumors that, despite their “non-cancerous” label, wreak havoc by compressing brain tissue and demanding invasive interventions. These growths, which disproportionately strike women due to hormonal sensitivities, can trigger seizures, paralysis, blindness, and deafness. As attorney Ellen Relkin, representing the plaintiffs, starkly put it in words to Newsweek.com: “Meningioma, the majority are ‘benign’ only in the sense that they do not metastasize to other organs. But it is in the brain and can grow. The brain controls sight, cognitive abilities, hearing. Clients have lost vision, some have become blind, others lost hearing.” Her clients’ stories paint a grotesque picture: women blinded in one eye, deafened overnight, or cognitively shattered, all after relying on Depo-Provera for contraception or endometriosis relief.
Studies confirm the link
The evidence against Pfizer is stacking up, rooted in peer-reviewed studies that the company allegedly ignored. A landmark French case-control analysis in the British Medical Journal (March 2024) scrutinized 18,061 women undergoing meningioma surgery versus 90,305 controls and found prolonged Depo-Provera use (>12 months) spiked meningioma odds by 5.62 times (95% CI: 2.19–14.42)—a risk far beyond everyday contraceptives or hormone therapies like levonorgestrel intrauterine systems.
Echoing this, a U.S. cohort study published as a preprint earlier in 2025 analyzed new users of MPA and ethinylestradiol-levonorgestrel from 2006–2020 in a large claims database and reported Depo-Provera users faced 3.55 times the meningioma incidence compared to those on combined oral pills for exposures greater than one year (95% CI: 1.85–6.55).
These aren’t fringe findings; a study published in JAMA Neurology (September 2025) corroborated the pattern in over 10 million U.S. women, linking depot MPA injections to a 2.43-fold increase (95% CI: 1.77–3.33) after adjusting for comorbidities, though the elevated risk was primarily observed with more than 4 years of exposure or initiation after age 31.
Yet Pfizer, with its vaults of internal data, purportedly sat on “significant scientific evidence” of these harms since the 1980s, according to plaintiffs’ lawyers.
The FDA greenlit Depo-Provera in 1992 after earlier rejections over cancer fears, but labels vaguely warned only of bone loss from extended use – nothing about brain tumors. Globally, over 75 million women depend on this shot annually, especially in under-resourced areas where alternatives are scarce, amplifying the ethical outrage.
This lawsuit potentially could mean $100,000 to $1 million per victim, factoring in surgeries and lost livelihoods – it’s another reckoning for Pfizer’s pattern of deception, from Vioxx to opioids. As Relkin warns, “These women trusted a system that failed them.” With discovery underway and Pfizer’s preemption defenses crumbling, the Florida courtroom could force a label overhaul or worse: a recall. For the afflicted, though, justice arrives too late, their brains forever altered by a “safe” shot that wasn’t.
