Kim Kardashian Under Fire for Pitching Controversial Morning-Sickness Pill on Instagram

For business-savvy reality television star Kim Kardashian, even pregnancy pays.

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, who is pregnant with her second child with rapper husband Kanye West, has entered into a paid partnership with the makers of morning-sickness medication Diclegis.

Kardashian used her Instagram account to pitch the medication to other pregnant women earlier this week:

https://instagram.com/p/5Vr42NOS0B/

“OMG. Have you heard about this?” Kardashian captioned a photo of herself holding up a bottle of the pills. “As you guys know my #morningsickness has been pretty bad. I tried changing things about my lifestyle, like my diet, but nothing helped, so I talked to my doctor. He prescribed me #Diclegis, I felt a lot better and most importantly, it’s been studied and there was no increased risk to the baby.”

Even though Diclegis has been FDA-approved and has been on the market since 2013, the drug was once offered on the pharmaceutical market under the name Bendectin in the 1980s, reports the New York Post. Bendectin was reportedly pulled from the market in 1983 after its use became associated with birth defects.

And while Bendectin was never officially proven to cause birth defects, many of Kardashian’s social media followers questioned the wisdom of hawking a morning-sickness pill to nearly 40 million women when doctors have advised that some pregnant women should not take the medication. For example, the medication can reportedly make some women drowsy, and those suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, an extreme form of morning sickness, should not take the medication.

“Kim I wouldn’t advise 39 million women to take a pill,” one Instagram user responded. “You dont know the side affects it will have on your fetus. Women should know they more than likely will have morning sickness and just deal with it [sic].”

“Dont use it people. Shes just tryin to advertise,” another follower warned, while yet another raged that Kardashian getting “glammed up from head to toe from the beginning of this pregnancy tells me tells me she isn’t suffering nearly as bad as a lot of women do w/ morning sickness.”

Kardashian, for her part, was open with the New York Post about her partnership with the drug’s manufacturer, Duchesnay.

“[My morning sickness] was so bad I talked to my OBGYN, who prescribed me Diclegis and I felt so much better after starting treatment,” she told the paper. “Duchesnay connected with me after I’d been taking Diclegis for some time. Since I had such good results, I wanted to work with Duchesnay to tell other pregnant women that Diclegis is a safe and effective option to treat morning sickness symptoms.”

According to the New York Daily News, Kardashian’s acknowledgement of her business relationship with the drug-maker isn’t just good taste: it could protect her from liability if Diclegis comes under fire in the future.

For now, though, it looks like the drug is still safe for use by most pregnant women.

“She did people a very big favor – Dicelgis is quite safe,” Dr. Jill Maura Rabin of Hoftra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine told the Daily News. “It is the only anti-nausea medication approved for use in pregnancy by the FDA.”