| Court Oks Fen-Phen Settlement A federal judge in Philadelphia yesterday approved a $3.75 billion settlement that will pay for medical monitoring and treatment of former users of the once-popular diet drug cocktail known as "fen-phen." The judge declared that the settlement between AHP and attorneys for the diet drugs' users, mostly middle-aged women, "is, in all respects, fair, reasonable and adequate." Either Pondimin or Redux was typically combined with another diet suppressant called phentermine to make the fen-phen slimming cocktail. AHP recalled Pondimin and Redux in 1997 after some of the 6 million Americans who had taken fen-phen developed heart problems, including leaky valves. Phentermine is still sold by other companies. The class-action settlement, which received preliminary approval from Bechtle last November, consolidates thousands of lawsuits filed across the nation by former users who claimed the company failed to warn them about possible side effects of the two drugs. The settlement offers a range of benefits to individual users of the drugs, depending in large part on the presence and extent of their heart valve damage. AHP has said the settlement would allow any former user of its drugs to share in the proceeds, regardless of whether they had previously filed suit against the company. Some 18,000 drug users sued AHP in the aftermath of disclosures that the drugs were linked to heart disease. Only those who took the drugs for more than three months are believed to have a high risk of developing serious heart valve problems. The judge said there were many "public health benefits" to the settlement, including early diagnosis via screening of potential problems and long term medical monitoring of class members. Already, more than 200,000 class members have registered for settlement benefits, and only 50,000 have opted out of the agreement in hopes of successfully suing AHP to get money damages. |