Primary Pulmonary Hypertension News - Menu Webb City woman loses 'fen-phen' case Jeff Lehr The jury returned to a Joplin courtroom with the verdict in favor of drug maker Wyeth just 45 minutes after beginning deliberations at the end of a two-week trial. The lawsuit was filed by Bonnie Weston, 56, a former teacher and school counselor who now works part time at Lafayette House in Joplin. The verdict form in Wyeth's favor was signed by 10 of the 12 jurors. Nine jurors would have had to find in favor of Weston for her to prevail. Harvey Kaplan, a Kansas City attorney representing Wyeth, said the verdict shows that the evidence was not there to support Weston's claims that two of the company's drugs caused her valvular heart disease, that her disease is significant enough to pose substantial danger to her health or that the company acted improperly before the Food and Drug Administration removed the two drugs from the U.S. market. "In particular, the medical evidence just did not support the plaintiff's claims," Kaplan told the Globe after the verdict was rendered. Weston took the diet drugs Pondimin, or fenfluramine, and Redux, or dexfenfluramine, between April 1995 and July 1996 in an effort to lose weight. She was diagnosed less than four years ago with valvular heart disease. The FDA pulled the drugs from the market in 1997 after the Mayo Clinic issued a report suggesting a possible connection between use of the drugs and the development of valvular regurgitation in several of the clinic's patients. The FDA has since reported findings of abnormal echocardiograms in 30 percent of people who took the drugs. A national, class-action lawsuit against Wyeth eventually led to the creation of the National Settlement Trust, a third-party, legal mechanism through which qualifying users of the drugs who have developed valvular heart problems may receive damages or payments for medical treatments. Weston sued Wyeth as an "intermediate opt-out" of the class-action lawsuit, as others have chosen to do, and her case was tried separately. Whether she has aortic regurgitation was not at issue in the trial. What caused the valvular heart disease she has and how severe it is were at issue. G. Sean Jez, an attorney with a Houston firm representing Weston, reminded the jury during closing arguments Monday of evidence the plaintiff's attorneys had presented showing that just three months' use of the "fen-phen" drugs increased users' risk factor for valvular heart disease by 23 times. By comparison, smoking raises the risk factor for lung cancer nine to 10 times, Jez said. He pointed to evidence that was presented that his client had never been diagnosed with valvular heart disease until after she had taken the defendant's products, and that there is a 95 percent chance that her disease was caused by the diet drugs. Jez argued that Wyeth had received 86 reports of users of Pondimin who had developed valvular heart disease by the year Weston began taking the drug, and that the company did not report them to the FDA. He said the company did not even initiate a study because it was getting Pondimin's sister drug, Redux, approved for the market and did not want to jeopardize the sales it anticipated. Kaplan countered Jez's argument by pitting the testimonies of the plaintiff's experts against that of her own treating cardiologist, Dr. Francis Corcoran of Joplin. "Their job was to exaggerate her injury for the courtroom, even though her cardiologist had repeatedly told her she did not have serious valvular heart disease and was unlikely to ever require surgery," Kaplan argued. 'Fen-phen' use Bonnie Weston took 1,100 doses of the diet drug Pondimin over the course of a little less than a year in 1995 and 1996, then took 30 tablets of its sister drug Redux in July 1996, according to testimony. Weston on Monday lost her case that the drugs caused her to develop valvular heart disease and that the manufacturer should be held liable. |