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Fenfluramine and Phentermine, known as fen-phen, became a popular prescription weight-loss drug in the late 1990s, but it became a deadly one when everyone from manufacturers to doctors to government regulators dispensed with the truth in the name of profit.
In chronicling this saga, Alicia Mundy, an experienced investigative journalist who lives in Washington, D.C., finds few true heroes or heroines. If there is a leading character in the book it is probably Alex MacDonald, a plaintiff's lawyer with the Boston firm of Robinson & Cole. His client, Mary Linnen, started taking fen-phen during spring 1996 on the advice of a Boston endocrinologist in order to lose weight before her wedding. After less than a month, Linnen, only 30, began experiencing health problems such as shortness of breath and dizziness. And even though she stopped taking fen-phen, the 23 days worth of pills had destroyed her lungs. She died in1997.
It seemed inevitable that MacDonald, retained by Linnen's family, would draft a lawsuit involving American Home Products, the parent company of pharmaceutical manufacturer Wyeth-Ayerst; Fisons, a company selling Phentermine; and Interneuron, a company involved in the invention of drugs that came to be prescribed for weight loss.
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Still, MacDonald is not always easy to like. Mundy concedes that he possesses "an enormous ego" and that at times during the Linnen case he "blew up, screwed up, or seemed foolish." By the time MacDonald is standing before the jury on page 310, Mundy has introduced so many lawyers, physicians, scientists, government bureaucrats, etc., on both sides of the Linnen suit - not to mention other litigation in other states involving other victims of fen-phen - that the mind reels....