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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The long-running scandal over a fen-phen case gone awry has already destroyed the careers of at least three lawyers as well as the Kentucky judge who oversaw the original lawsuit.
The closest thing to a real success, a two-drug combination known as fen-phen, helped people lose as much as 30 pounds a year by making them feel satiated, but it caused heart valve problems in some and pulmonary hypertension in others.
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.
That's what happened in mass-tort settlements involving asbestos, Vioxx, fen-phen and other products, where lawyers cleverly bundled hundreds or even thousands of claims that might not stand a good chance in court with a few that threatened blockbuster verdicts.
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.
For example, tens of thousands of asbestos claimants probably have lungs injured from smoking, not asbestos--and physicians were accused of deliberately fiddling with the controls to make echocardiograms look like heart-valve damage to collect more money from the fen-phen trust.
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.
Wyeth (nyse: WYE - news - people ) hoped the plan would cap its spiraling liability for fen-phen, the diet drug combination that has been linked to potentially fatal heart conditions.
The weight-loss busts are plenty: Meridia (heart attacks, strokes), Fen-phen (heart risk), Rimonabant (suicidal thoughts), ephedra (heart attacks, strokes).
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
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.
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