Word: redux
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DIET DRAG It's not just dieters showing symptoms of heart trouble. Now the FDA wants anyone who has taken Redux or fenfluramine, alone or with another drug, to see a doctor...
...growing propensity to deny responsibility for one's own health and happiness and expect material goods, science and technology to take up the slack. As long as overweight people pop pills instead of taking the stairs and psychiatrists prescribe chemicals, not introspection, mistakes like those made with Redux and fenfluramine are inevitable. Our evolutionary cousins continue to be tortured in the name of science. AMANDA WILSON New York City...
Much of this legal furor is being vented against Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, a subsidiary of American Home Products, which makes fenfluramine and distributes dexfenfluramine, and Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, a small Lexington, Mass., firm founded by the M.I.T. neurologist who developed Redux. There's also talk of bringing action against the FDA--though federal law usually protects government officials from suits challenging routine performance of duties like approving drugs. Whatever the outcome of the legal battles, they leave unsettled larger societal questions--about Americans' infatuation with quick-fix remedies for whatever ails them, real or imagined, and their doctors' willingness to cater...
These cautionary words were all but lost in the hype surrounding the FDA's approval of Redux in April 1996 (after a scientific advisory panel initially voted 5 to 3 against approval). By June, U.S. doctors had scribbled nearly 2.5 million prescriptions for Redux, and the number of people exposed to the drugs rose to an estimated 60 million worldwide...
...Alarmed by the Mayo reports, other doctors began looking more closely at their fen/phen patients and found similar problems. The FDA sent a warning to physicians but stopped short of further action. Barely two months later, heart-valve problems were reported in 30% of 291 patients taking fen/phen or Redux, and the agency asked the companies to recall the drugs...