Do you think the media was, in part, responsible for the fen-phen deaths?
An Allure article jump-started the craze. And, as you point out in your book, much of what we read in the media about medical studies is biased, since it’s been sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies themselves. For me, that’s one of the most important issues in this book: that the media as a general rule roll over, like my dachshund, for any medical study that comes along. They don’t check out whether these things are legitimate or not. If you’re a medical writer, these things come in to you and you don’t know what’s good and what isn’t. It’s got a big imprimatur next to it — sometimes it will say the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute from the NIH — and you don’t know whether a pharmaceutical company has in fact sponsored that by sending money or other support. After Pondimin and Redux were recalled, the first thing the drug company did was get a study launched on the first page of USA Today [showing the drugs were safe]. But when they tried to take the study to the New Eng
