If a woman has not had a thrombotic event in years of use she is unlikely to have one now

EDITOR,--My editorial commenting on the letter from the Committee on Safety of Medicines and the three studies that gave rise to it had to be cut because of lack of space.1 In the original version I argued that, in these trials, the proportion of women who had been exposed in the past to ethinyloestradiol (in any combination) might be higher among current users of the third generation pills containing desogestrel and gestodene; ethinyloestradiol is still recognised as the prime prothrombotic constituent of …