DISPENSING WITH THE TRUTH: The Victims, the Drug Companies, and the Dramatic Story Behind the Battle Over
Alicia Mundy, . . St. Martin's, $24.95 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-312-25324-0
"You are going to hear about a diet pill combination that was a craze... one of the most remarkably profitable pharmaceutical undertakings in the history of the United States," said Alex MacDonald, as quoted here by Mundy, in his opening statement during the Mary Linnen case. Beginning with the death of Linnen, a young woman who took Fen-Phen for less than a month to lose a few pounds before her wedding and died of primary pulmonary hypertension less than a year later, Mundy's book reads like a medical thriller. But the story of the lives affected by the flawed obesity drug is all too true: approximately 45,000 women "were believed to have developed one of two different diseases linked to their lungs or their heart from taking the drugs"; 300,000 women were prepared to sue the manufacturer to pay for tests to determine if they were ill. Mundy, an investigative journalist and contributor to both
Reviewed on: 04/30/2001
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 400 pages - 978-1-4299-7846-0
Paperback - 416 pages - 978-0-312-27071-1