The writer of Distributing With the Truth, Alicia Mundy, is the Washington agency head for Media week and a conducive editor at Washingtonian magazine. She has written for U.S. News & A; World Report, GQ, Philadelphia Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She is best known for her fact-finding study which originally broke the 1992 dirt uncovering that top United Way executives were stealing money from the organisation’s histories ( Brown, 2001 ) . Alicia Mundy is the victor of several news media awards for commentary and fact-finding coverage. She presently lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Distributing With the Truth began as an article assigned by Glamour magazine, but was finally published in U.S. News and World Report ( Brown, 2001 ) .
Distributing With the Truth is about 400 pages mentioning legal papers, surveies, corporate electronic mails, depositions and interviews. Author Alicia Mundy fastidiously proves that the pharmaceutical company Wyeth-Ayerst knew that its fen-phen diet pills, including the drugs Pondimin and Redux were unsafe. Even with this cognition, they kept them on the market anyhow. This book tells what the drug companies truly knew about its drugs and the ways it kept this information from the populace, physicians, and the FDA. Distributing With the Truth goes on to depict and the monolithic legal conflicts that occurred as the victims and their lawyers searched for the truth. Wyeth-Ayerst’s parent company, American Home Products, was the mark of one of the largest and most successful civil wrong cases in American history. Alicia Mundy writes about corporate greed and puts a rough limelight on the FDA functionaries who were asleep at the switch. Soon about a 3rd of the 1000000s of fen-phen users will finally endure some grade of bosom and lung harm from these drugs. Throughout the book Alicia Mundy sheds visible radiation on the interior workings of the pharmaceutical companies and how the fen-phen calamity unfolded.
The dramatis personae of characters is long and involved get downing with the victims, their households, and the attorneies of the victims who put the drug companies and their patterns on test. The drug companies: American Home Products, parent company of Wyeth-Ayerst, Fisons, and Interneuron, the company’s functionaries, and the attorneies for the drug companies who repeatedly tried to falsify the truth. The FDA functionaries who were caught in the center of seeking to pacify the drug companies and protect the consumer and eventually the Judges and jurymans in the tests all have a voice in this book.
It all began with Mary Linnen and her tragic, yet preventable decease. In 1996, Mary Linnen was an average-sized miss. She was ever healthy, but she wanted to lose a few lbs before her nuptials twenty-four hours. What she didn’t know was that a diet fad? a popular diet drug called fen-phen wouldn’t lead her to a slender waist, alternatively it would take her to decease in the weaponries of her fiance , months before her nuptials twenty-four hours ( Mundy, 2000 ) .
Consumers beware! Distributing With the Truth is an inside expression at the drug companies? chief motive? money. Fen Phen was approved in 1996 despite noted concerns about safety. American Home Products made the? fen? in fen-phen, a drug called fenfluramine. It sold the drug under the trade name name Pondimin along with a chemical cousin called Redux) . The drug companies worked against the FDA, the one bureau in topographic point to modulate the safety of their merchandises. These pills were targeted to specific a consumer. The drug companies counted on tap neckband adult females, who were non genuinely corpulent, or old, merely desiring to lose 20 or so uneven lbs.
The companies carefully orchestrated a diet drug craze that made them 100s of 1000000s of dollars. When studies started deluging in approximately serious side effects of the drugs these companies systematically downplayed the warnings. Alternatively the companies chose to contend the recommendations of the FDA to include? black box? warnings, which would set clear labeling alarming consumers and physicians to possible hazards. They besides hired experts and conducted surveies to seek to turn out their merchandise safe. Ultimately American Home Products pulled Pondimin and Redux off the market in 1997 after a Mayo Clinic survey linked fenfluramine to potentially fatal bosom valve harm and pneumonic high blood pressure ( Doctor’s Guide, 1998 ) . American Home Products began a about $ 100 million public dealings spin in order to guard off paying amends and put on the lining penalty by the authorities. During the summer of 2000, American Home Products agreed to settle the major category action case pending against the company for about $ 12 billion. Persons harmed by fen-phen will have between $ 5,000 and $ 1.5 million each, depending on the badness of their fen-phen related hurts. The company expects 1000s of claimants to come frontward over the following several months .
The information in this book was good documented. Mundy relied on papers from the FDA, Wyeth-Ayerst, American Home Family, Servier and Interneuron. Other information was gained at the depositions of the drug company functionaries and during test testimony. Close contact with the victims, their households, and the attorneies who waged the war against the Goliath drug companies added a human component to the book. She besides drew from intelligence narratives in The Wall Street Journal and studies in Newsday. The American Journal of Medicine, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Obesity Research were besides listed as beginnings ( Mundy, 2001 ) . Concern was raised after fen-phen users started to go ill. That fact that this calamity has unfolded over the last five old ages is proof to the truth and relevancy contained in this book.
Personally this book has opened my eyes to the misrepresentation that is out at that place. I? ve learned that I need to be disbelieving of merchandises released onto the market. Claims that sound excessively good to be true likely are, and I should be wary of put on the lining my wellness. Personal research into claims given by a merchandise could be done easy over the Internet or by inquiring for a 2nd or 3rd sentiment from a doctor.
Bibliography
- Brown, Janelle. May 16, 2001. The Poison Pill. Solon.com. Oct. 12, 2001.
- hypertext transfer protocol: //www.elslaw.com/redux_articles_5-16-01.htmDoctor’s Guide. Dec. 1, 1998. Phen-Fen May Pose Threat For Heart Valve Disease.
- Doctor’s Guide Publishing. Oct. 22, 2001. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.pslgroup.comInjuryboard. 2001. Fen-Phen.
- Injuryboard.com. Oct. 22, 2001. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.injuryboard.comGoodman, W. June 17, 2000. Obesity Inc.
- Press Journal. Oct. 12, 2001. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.tcpalm.com/vero/opinions/17v214.shtmlMundy, Alicia. 2000. Distributing With the Truth: the Victims, the Drug Companies, and the Dramatic Story Behind the Battle Over fen-phen. St. Martin Press.
