Controversy
In February 2007, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen released a petition requesting that the Food and Drug Administration ban oral contraceptives containing desogestrel in the United States, citing studies going as far back as 1995 that suggest the risk of dangerous blood clots is doubled for women on such pills in comparison to other oral contraceptives. In 2009, Public Citizen released a list of recommendations that included numerous alternative, second-generation birth control pills that women could take in place of oral contraceptives containing desogestrel. Most of those second-generation medications have been on the market longer and have been shown to be as effective in preventing unwanted pregnancy, but with a lower risk of blood clots. Medications cited specifically in the petition include Apri-28, Cyclessa, Desogen, Kariva, Mircette, Ortho-Cept, Reclipsen, Velivet, and some generic pills, all of which contain desogestrel in combination with ethinylestradiol. Medications containing desogestrel as the only active ingredient (as opposed to being used in conjunction with ethinylestradiol, like in combined oral contraceptives) do not show an increased thrombosis risk and are therefore safer than second-generation birth-control pills in regards to thrombosis. Research
Desogestrel has been studied extensively as an antigonadotropin for use in combination with testosterone as a hormonal contraceptive in men. Such combinations have been found to be effective in producing reversible azoospermia in most men and reversible azoospermia or severe oligozoospermia in almost all men. References
Further reading
Chez RA (1989). "Clinical aspects of three new progestogens: desogestrel, gestodene, and norgestimate". Am. J. Obstet. Gynecol. 160 (5 Pt 2): 1296–300. doi:10.1016/S0002-9378(89)80016-X.
Director Alfred Hitchcock heard about this invasion while working on his adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier novelette "The Birds" for his feature film The Birds (1963), and asked the Santa Cruz Sentinel for any further news copy as "research for his new thriller." See also
Diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP)
Neurotoxic shellfish poisoning (NSP)
Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP)
Harmful algal blooms (HABs)

References
External links
Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Domoic acid and Pseudo-nitzschia references at Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning, Domoic Acid, and Pseudo-nitzschia links at the ISSHA website
Domoic acid at International Programme on Chemical Safety
DOMOIC ACID — A MAJOR CONCERN TO WASHINGTON STATE’S SHELLFISH LOVERS at Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Crisis off our coast at the International Bird Rescue Research Center
Domoic Acid Poisoning Linked to Recent Marine Strandings and Deaths at Heal the Bay
Domoic Acid Information and History at the Channel Islands Marine and Wildlife Institute