Wednesday, April 21, 1999
Fen-phen's makers sued over death of woman, 40
BY PHILLIP PINA
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The family of a Preble County woman is suing the makers of “fen-phen,” saying she died from injuries caused by the weight-loss drug.
Lois Simpson, 40, died on Sept. 22, 1997. The lawsuit says she suffered personal injuries and “ultimately suffered her death due to taking diet drugs popularly known as fen-phen.”
The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, accuses American Home Products Corp. and its subsidiary Wyeth Laboratories of Philadelphia of negligence, breach of warranty and fraud. The family seeks unspecified punitive and compensatory damages in excess of $75,000.
The lawsuit says the drug Pondimin — generically named fenfluramine and paired with phentermine in fen-phen — posed a serious risk of injury and death, and that the drug makers knew from published reports and clinical tests that Pondimin posed such risks.
The Simpson suit says the drug makers knew by at least March 1997 that patients using Pondimin developed heart valve abnormalities, but took no action to notify users. Instead, defendants waited six months, until a recall required by the Federal Drug Administration.
Mrs. Simpson started taken Pondimin to lose weight for several months beginning in February 1996. In April 1997, she suffered acute congestive heart failure and was diagnosed with sever mitral insufficiency and other cardiac abnormalities.
She suffered cardiac arrest and died in September, the same month as Pondimin was recalled over concerns that it caused heart-valve damage.
Doug Petkus, spokesman for Wyeth Laboratories, would not comment on Mrs. Simpson's case, or any other pending lawsuits against the company.
So many lawsuits were filed following the recall of Pondimin and its chemical cousin Redux that the federal courts established a committee to consolidate the cases.
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