Less than a year ago, a new generation of diet pills seemed to offer the long-sought answer to our chronic weight problems. Hundreds of thousands of pound-conscious Americans had discovered that a drug known as "fen-phen" could shut off huge appetites like magic, and the FDA had just approved a new drug, Redux, that did the same with fewer side effects. Redux would attract hundreds of thousands of new pill poppers within a few months.
But now the diet-drug revolution is facing a setback. Some of the nation’s largest organizations, including Aetna US Healthcare and Prudential Healthcare, have begun cutting back or eliminating reimbursement (退还) for both pills. Diet chains like Jenny Craig are backing away from them too. Several states have restricted the use of fen-phen. Last week the Florida legislature banned new prescriptions and called on doctors to stop current patients from using the drug within 30 days; it also. put a 90-day limit on Redux prescriptions. Even New Jersey doctor Shelton Levine, who boasted of Redux on TV and in his book, had stopped giving it to all but his most obese (重度肥胖的) patients.
The potentially fatal side effects can’t be ignored. The FDA revealed that 82 patients had developed heart problems while on fen-phen, and that seven patients had come down with the same condition on Redux.
As if that were not bad enough, physicians reported a woman who had been taking fen-phen for less than a month died of hypertension (高血压). And an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month confirmed earlier reports that both fen-phen and Redux can cause brain damage in lab animals.
The findings led the New England Journal to publish an editorial advising doctors to prescribe drugs only for patients with severe obesity. Meanwhile, FDA asked drug-makers to put more explicit warnings on fen-phen and Redux labels. So far prescriptions for fen-phen have dropped 56%, and those for Redux 36%.
All that really does, however, is to bring the numbers down to where they should have been all along. Manufacturers said from the start that their pills offered a short-term therapy for the obese, not for people looking to fit into a smaller bathing suit. When limited to these very fat patients, the drugs make sense — because severe obesity carries its own dangers, including heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Too often, however, Redux and fen-phen were sold to all comers, almost like candy. The current setback, says Levine, is a "roller coaster that never should have happened."
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