Jenny Craig Weight Loss among those named in diet drug lawsuit

American Home Products, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories and Robins Company are the manufacturers named as defendants in the suit filed in Washoe County District Court in Reno.

The combined use of the drugs - Pondimin (fenfluarmine) and Redux (dexfenfluarimine) - never was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. But many diet centers and weight loss clinics promoted the use of Fen-Phen anyway as a rapid and safe way to lose weight.

The companies stopped making the drugs nearly two years ago after a Mayo Clinic study linked them to potentially fatal heart valve damage.

The plaintiffs in the suit are identified as Earl Keller and Allura Smith of Reno and Lourdes Fuentes, Peggy Mendez and Barbara Miller all of Las Vegas.

Other diet centers named as defendants include the Advanced Medical Weight Loss Center Incorporated.

Lawyer Geoffrey White of Reno said diet centers named in the suit were chosen because they actively promoted the diet drug combinations.

The suit says the manufacturers knew the use of the drugs, either by themselves of in the combination popularly known as Fen-Phen, posed "an unacceptable risk of harmful and sometimes fatal side effects."

No court date has been set on the suit filed in Judge Janet Berry's court.

Several class action lawsuits have been filed across the country seeking reimbursements for the cost of ongoing medical check ups for people who used the diet drugs. To his knowledge, this is the first filed in Nevada, White said.

Earlier this month, the first individual case to reach a jury resulted in a 36-year-old Texas woman being awarded $23 million for her heart-valve damage. White's partner, David Meany, is representing a Steamboat Springs woman who says Fen-Phen caused her primary pulmonary hypertension, which is a potentially fatal disease. The case is scheduled for trial Jan. 30.

If the Nevada class action is approved, it would require manufacturers to establish a court supervised medical monitoring program paid by the defendants.

People who used the diet drugs were advised by the federal government in November 1997 to see a doctor for a physical examination to determine if they had symptoms of heart or lung disease. Anyone who took the drugs for an extended period of time also was advised to have an echocardiogram, a test which can detect heart valve damage.

The suit could "force the defendants to provide millions of dollars for ongoing medical testing, such as echocardiograms," White said.

"It just turned my world upside down," said Keller, 54, one of the five plaintiffs in the class action suit.

An echocardiogram showed Keller, a Reno custodian who lost 50 pounds during the year he took Fen-Phen, has a leaking heart valve.

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