Don't give diet
pills a shortcut to store shelves
September 26, 2004
The FDA should resist pressure to rush inadequately tested weight-loss drugs to market.
Drugmakers eager to make a buck from Americans' widening waistline are shamefully seeking the government's complicity in potentially putting patients at risk by seeking lower testing standards for weight-loss drugs.
As many as 70 companies are testing up to 180 drugs developed to burn fat, curb appetites and block weight gain. As part of the rush to develop new drugs, the pharmaceutical firms are pushing the Food and Drug Administration for less rigorous testing and more expeditious FDA approval. The FDA should resist industry pressure and protect consumers. After fen-phen, a weight-loss treatment that was pulled from the market in 1997 after it caused life-threatening heart-valve problems, the FDA should realize the need to protect the public by carefully evaluating and regulating weight-loss drugs.
Just as the agency is appropriately tightening warnings on anti-depressants taken by young people, it is being urged to approve drugs that will affect far greater numbers of people, but using safety data from only one year instead of the current two. That's unacceptable.
Pushing the weight-loss
drug revolution is a belief by a growing number of scientists
and doctors that fighting fat will require exercise
and proper nutrition along with an assortment of drugs
taken perhaps for life, much in the way heart disease
or cancer patients take combinations of drugs.
To prepare for the anticipated onslaught of weight-loss drugs, the FDA is reviewing for the first time in nearly 10 years the way it assesses new obesity medications. The agency should not ignore advocates who fear the rising demand for diet drugs could produce unsafe diet pills reminiscent of addictive amphetamines of the past.
As obesity becomes a greater public health concern, it will increasingly require government intervention. In doing so, the government should honor its obligation to place public safety over the interest of industry bottom lines.
Source:www.roanoke.com
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