THE DIET INDUSTRY TAKES A HIT

Despite numerous studies that dieting is dangerous (and even increases risk of heart disease in obese people!), we are encouraged daily to chase after the super thin model figure. (Most models, 25 percent underweight, are in the high risk category but this fact is not generally known nor is the diet industry rushing to tell us this fact!)

The fact is, the diet industry which has recently made big headlines by offering us the opportunity to watch Carnie Wilson's Weight Loss Surgery on the Internet, seems to care little about anything except the bucks rolling in which were more than 40 BILLION last year.

However, yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus and the last diet industry fiasco, Phen-Fen, a combination of medications prescribed to the tune of 80 million a month, many to people who were not overweight is - shall we say - backfiring on the manufacturer, the pharmaceutical, Wyeth-Ayrest (who also gives us Premarin and whose sister company Hoelst, produces the abortion pill).

In a landmark decision, a jury awarded $23.3 million in damages on Friday to a Texas woman for heart problems caused by the diet drug combination of phentermine-fenfluramine (phen-fen).

The jury of eight men and four women found that American Home Products had acted negligently and with malice by marketing fenfluramine, sold under the brand name Pondimin, officials of Van Zandt County Court said. The jury also found that the company's negligence had caused Debbie Lovett, 36, to develop valvular heart disease.

Debbie Lovett was awarded $3.3 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages, Lovett's attorney told the press.

But this is not the end - the Lovett case is one of 3000 lawsuits to be settled, all for people who became disabled from taking the diet drugs. American Home Products is the marketing wing of Wyeth-Ayrest (remember the folks who said that Wyeth-Ayrest was in their rights to withhold the negative parts of the research on Phen-Fen because 'everyone in the industry does it' i.e. falsification for the purpose of selling the drugs?).

Understandably, American Home Products was not happy about the results. They muttered something about there being no studies showing a relationship between Phen-Fen and valvular heart disease, however, I don't think many people were listening. And between you and me, those relationships between the drugs and heart disease were only not 'found' because they ended up on the 'cutting room floor' along with any other negative results of the studies. Afterall, Wyeth-Ayrest did tell us that 'everyone does it'!
 

by Sue Widemark

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