Contraceptive maker Upjohn allegedly withheld info on animal deaths from regulators and marketed the drug globally without controlled testing on humans.

In a powerful presentation that opened the mass torts litigation track at this year’s Mass Torts Made Perfect (MTMP) Spring 2025 conference, Levin Papantonio attorney Chris Paulos delivered a searing exposé on the long and troubling history behind the injectable contraceptive Depo-Provera—a drug Paulos says was “carpet bombed” into 75 countries before it was ever tested in humans.

“When I first started looking at this case,” Paulos told a packed ballroom of attorneys, “one of the things that kind of blew my mind is… how long a history Depo-Provera has in the world’s population control.”

Paulos described how pharmaceutical giant Upjohn developed the drug in the 1950s, originally to treat certain cancers and pregnancy complications. But despite knowing the active ingredient—DMPA—caused cancer in animals, the company moved quickly to market the drug globally as a contraceptive.

“They knew that this specific hormone, DMPA, was causing cancer in animals before they ever decided to start shipping it to 75 countries around the world,” Paulos said. “And before they ever tested it in a controlled setting with humans.”

According to Paulos, Upjohn sought to leverage this widespread international use to pressure the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) into approving the drug under what he described as a “ubiquitous use exception.” But those plans were stalled by the Kefauver Amendments, which required pharmaceutical companies to submit rigorous risk-benefit analyses to the FDA.

When Depo-Provera finally entered human testing in the U.S., Paulos said, the results were horrifying.

At Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Depo-Provera was tested on more than 11,000 women, a majority of them African-American, without informed consent.

“None of these women had informed consent. None of them had been told that they were using an experimental drug or any of the risks,” Paulos stated.

Meanwhile, another trial at Johns Hopkins University explored Depo-Provera’s potential use as a chemical castration agent for sex offenders.

Despite documented animal deaths—dogs and monkeys dying after receiving the drug—Paulos revealed that Upjohn withheld this information from regulators for more than a year and a half. Even after being directed by the FDA to disclose the animal mortality data in consent forms, “They never did that,” Paulos emphasized.

Shockingly, Paulos pointed out that data from the flawed Grady study is still being cited in medical literature today, despite loss to follow-up rates exceeding 60% and numerous failures in the study’s design.

“The data is just horrific,” Paulos said.

In 1978, the FDA rejected Depo-Provera’s approval for contraceptive use, and in 1984, a Public Board of Inquiry—only the second of its kind in FDA history—upheld that rejection, finding “absolutely no data to support the safety of this stuff in the use of humans.”

Yet in 1992, the FDA abruptly approved the drug.

“The only thing that changed between 1978 and 1992 was that they simply moved the goalpost on the weight that they offered animal studies in terms of the risk-benefit profile,” Paulos explained.

He concluded by highlighting the broader implications of corporate capture at federal agencies and the disturbing ease with which pharmaceutical companies like Upjohn manipulate regulatory systems.

“This case will absolutely make your blood boil when you hear the facts,” said MTMP founder Mike Papantonio, a senior partner with Levin Papantonio, when introducing the panel.

The Levin Papantonio team is actively pursuing litigation on behalf of women who were harmed by Depo-Provera, focusing on links between the drug and brain tumors, cancers, bone density loss, and reproductive harm.

Attorneys interested in joining the fight can contact Levin Papantonio or visit Co-Counsel | Levin Law for more information.