Word: fens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Unless medical science provides a quick fix, that is. So far, the record on diet pills has been pretty dismal. Amphetamines, which speeded metabolism and suppressed appetite, looked promising in the 1950s and '60s but turned out to be physically harmful and powerfully addictive. Drugs like fen-phen and Redux, which alter the brain's chemistry, had scary side effects. Newer drugs like orlistat and food substitutes like olestra keep fat from entering the body, but they cause serious bowel discomfort...
AMERICAN HOME PRODUCTS Fen-phen maker cuts $3.75 billion settlement for injuries. Talk about belt tightening...
...enough to give a pharmaceutical company CEO heart trouble. A Texas woman who claimed she suffered heart-valve damage from using the diet-drug combination fen-phen was awarded $23 million by a jury Friday in the first verdict involving the controversial drug. It may not be the last. "This could definitely open the floodgates for suits related to this drug," says TIME legal correspondent Adam Cohen. And you don?t even need heart-valve damage to bring a suit -- in Trenton, N.J., this week, jury selection began in a class-action lawsuit involving healthy plaintiffs. They want money...
...doesn?t look good for the drug's makers. The lawyers for Debbie Lovett, 36, sounded like they?d watched a tobacco trial or two in their time. They claimed that Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, a subsidiary of American Home Products, knew the dangers of fen-phen?s dangerous half, fenfluramine, long before the FDA yanked it off the market in May 1997 -- and hid their research from an unsuspecting public. Which left the defense spluttering that Ms. Lovett?s obesity carried its own risks; she knew what she was getting into. The jury didn...
Americans looking for another quick weight-loss fix may soon be tempted by orlistat, a new diet drug that's nearing approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Hopes previously pinned on Redux and the drug combination Fen-Phen were dashed by revelations that they can cause heart valve damage. But a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association says that orlistat has no such life-threatening side effects. Where Redux and Fen-Phen worked in the brain to suppress appetite, orlistat, made by Hoffman-La Roche, blocks the absorption of some fat in the intestines...