(Circulation. 1999;100:e133.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.
Circulation Electronic Pages |
Diet Drug Maker Agrees to $3.75 Billion Settlement
1 Circulation Newswriter
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American Home Products, the maker of Pondim (fenfluramine) and Redux (dexfenfluramine), recently agreed to pay as much as $3.75 billion to people who took the diet drug cocktail called fen-phen or Redux, a settlement that attorneys called the largest ever involving a US pharmaceutical firm (fen-phen was a combination of fenfluramine and phentermine). The nationwide, class-action settlement is open to all who took Redux or Pondim, regardless of whether they have filed suit or not.
The settlement has yet to be approved by a federal judge, who must certify the suit. A similar attempt to settle product liability litigation by Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc, met a stumbling block last September when the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania rejected a proposed agreement between the company and the plaintiffs’ management committee on the grounds that the proposed settlement did not meet the requirements for limited fund class actions. Interneuron, which is based in Lexington, Mass, licensed dexfenfluramine from the closely held French drugmaker Laboratoires Servier SA and manufactured it for American Home Products Corp.
The American Home Products settlement will fund the following:
- A refund program for the cost of the drugs
Medical screening for future valvular problems
Additional medical services or cash payments
Compensation in the event of serious heart valve problems
Fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine were withdrawn from the
market in September 1997 after physicians identified valvular
abnormalities in people who had taken the diet drug combination.
Concerns began when investigators at the Mayo Clinic and MeritCare
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