Instead of modeling his analyses on fen-phen, Krensavage points to a different dangerous drug: nicotine.
Called lorcaserin, it stimulates production of serotonin, the same brain chemical that fen-phen did.
Arena's pill was born from one of the drug industry's biggest disasters: the diet combo fen-phen.
In this case it was fen-phen, the diet drug with potentially devastating side effects.
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That's what happened in the 1990s with fen-phen, another diet drug combination that includes phentermine.
Studies have since shown that stimulating the latter receptor was the reason fen-phen caused heart valve problems.
The fen-phen case, in all its turns, illustrates the conflicts and collusion that are inherent in mass-tort litigation.
FORBES: Superlawyer Chesley Sucked Into Kentucky Disciplinary Probe
Chesley probably regrets getting involved in the Kentucky fen-phen case now, but he was eager enough back in 1999.
Redux and Pondimin caused damage to heart valves when used with the diet drug phentermine as part of fen-phen.
Regulators and companies remember the fen-phen disaster, when a drug from Wyeth resulted in the biggest pharmaceutical tort ever.
The weight-loss busts are plenty: Meridia (heart attacks, strokes), Fen-phen (heart risk), Rimonabant (suicidal thoughts), ephedra (heart attacks, strokes).
These medicines, fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, caused heart valve damage when used alone and with another drug, phentermine, in the infamous fen-phen combo.
When fen-phen was pulled from the market in 1997, Fleming was ready.
But Arena argues that fen-phen hit more brain receptors than was necessary.
You're to be forgiven if you thought the fen-phen crisis was over.
Its APD356 is far more specific, and so far the heart valve damage that led to fen-phen's withdrawal has not reared its head.
's latest attempt to settle tens of thousands of fen-phen lawsuits appears to have suffered the same fate as those that came before--failure.
Daniel Becnel is a Louisiana lawyer who's been involved in most of the big class-action lawsuits of recent years: tobacco litigation, fen-phen, Vioxx.
Both respected lawyers and thoroughbred horse owners who were well-known in Kentucky before they got involved with fen-phen litigation, they have appealed their convictions.
Some 12, 000 fen-phen lawsuits started going to trial in Philadelphia in July, two to six cases per trial, five or six trials a month.
Fen-phen was effective but proved deadly, and many doctors say it was overused on patients whose obesity was cosmetic and not a health risk.
Over the years he has taken cases involving penile implants, Vioxx, drug-coated stents, breast implants, fen-phen, pollution-spewing fertilizer plants, an Alka-Seltzer ingredient and hog farms.
He has 8, 500 lawsuits pending against Wyeth claiming that the appetite suppressant fen-phen, a combination of Wyeth's Redux (dexfenfluramine) and generic phentermine, caused heart problems.
Kentucky lawyers Shirley Cunningham, William Gallion and Melbourne Mills, Jr. recruited some 440 clients after reports that fen-phen, a diet-drug combination, could cause life-threatening side effects.
FORBES: Superlawyer Chesley Sucked Into Kentucky Disciplinary Probe
That's what happened with fen-phen, where Wyeth was swamped with far more expensive cases of heart-valve damage than lawyers--or scientific knowledge--would have suggested was possible.
For the next several years he was consumed with the fen-phen cases, but argued he worked under the authority of partners who made the key decisions.
FORBES: Superlawyer Chesley Sucked Into Kentucky Disciplinary Probe
Unlike Xenical, previous diet drugs, such as Redux and Phenfluramine, best known as the "phen" in Fen-Phen, worked on the brain to control the body's feeling of "fullness".
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He said that one of the problems with fen-phen, a diet drug combo that wound up causing heart-valve problems, was that doctors were too eager to hand them out.
That shoves the ever-spreading Gulf spill firmly out of what we know about traditional tort law and into the strange world of mass torts like asbestos, fen-phen and Vioxx.
In 1996 he converted the centers into clinics for doctors to prescribe fen-phen diet drugs, only to run into the little problem that these drugs can cause fatal heart problems.
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