Lawyers – can’t live without them wanting a share of the profits
Sometimes, it seems as if lawyers have been running some cases for decades – in the case of the litigation against the tobacco companies, that would be true. With other drugs, it usually takes less than a decade to reach the final settlement of liability. However, there is one issue that has been rumbling through the courts for more than the magic ten year limit. That involves the combination of phentermine with fenfluramine, sometimes called Fen-phen used to promote weight loss which was withdrawn from the market in 1997. We should be very clear about the safety of phentermine on its own. This has been FDA approved since the 1950s and its record for safety and effectiveness has always been accepted without question. But, there were problems when it was combined. This month has seen a jury in Philadelphia dismiss a tort case alleging that Fen-phen caused Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH). This is a disease of the blood vessels inside the lungs and it is always fatal. The problem faced by every plaintiff is the need to prove that whatever the defendant did or did not do caused the plaintiff’s injury. When it comes to a disease or physical disorder, there is sometimes no clear scientific explanation of how people catch the disease or fall victim to the disorder. People have been suffering from diseases of the blood vessels within the lungs, and leading into and out of the heart, since the Dawn of Time. There is no convenient moment that plaintiffs can point to. Before this time, there was no Fen-phen and no PPH. A year after the introduction of Fen-phen, the first cases of PPH were diagnosed among those taking the drug combination. Without such evidence, it is difficult to prove that taking this drug rather than having this lifestyle was the cause of the problem. In this case, the deceased was morbidly obese and a heavy smoker for twenty-five years. The jury obviously preferred those choices as the cause of lung disease. Just to confirm you can buy phentermine with confidence. There has never been any suggestion that phentermine on its own has ever caused such physical problems. It is good to see that, albeit by association, phentermine has also been cleared in almost every case brought before a court alleging PPH from the use of the Fen-phen combination. Weight loss medications get a bad press sometimes. In this case, it’s all good news from the courts.