PPH NEWS is an education-based resource site that provides information on the health issues surrounding Primary Pulmonary Hypertension (PPH), including what it is, the symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment options.
This website also provides resource to learn more about your legal rights and remedies if you or someone you know has developed PPH due to the use of diet drugs such as Fen Phen.

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On January 31, 2005, Wyeth’s shares plunged nearly eight percent after the company raised its estimate for the total cost of fen phen litigation to $21.1 billion and said protracted legal cases continued to drain earnings in 2004. Wyeth made diet drugs Pondimin and a chemical cousin Redux. Pondimin was the fenfluramine half of the diet drug fen phen that was combined with phentermine.

In September 1997, Wyeth pulled Pondimin and Redux from the market after reports of links between the drugs and heart valve damage and a rare and deadly lung condition called primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH). Fen phen was never an FDA approved combination, but millions of Americans had already used the drug by the time it was recalled. Shortly after the fen phen recall announcement, Wyeth, formerly known as American Home Products, was the target of class action suits.

The latest January 2005 announcement that Wyeth increased its litigation cost estimate is at least the fourth time the company has done so since the diet drug side effects were discovered in the ‘90s. Wyeth had warned in October 2004 that it might need to set aside additional reserves to cover liability to former users of fen phen, including tens of thousands who have filed lawsuits alleging they were harmed by the products without adequate warning of the dangers.

The $21.1 billion set aside for legal costs included a charge of $4.5 billion at the end of 2004, which resulted in a fourth quarter loss of $1.764 billion for Wyeth. Of the estimated fen phen litigation costs, $13.9 billion has already been paid and $7.2 billion remains in reserve, according to statements Wyeth made in a conference call with analysts January 31, 2005. According to Wyeth’s chairman, president and CEO, Robert Essner, the company believes, for the first time, that the remainder represents the “best estimate” of the total remaining cost of the litigation.

Very damning evidence from FDA documents showed an internal reviewer’s frustration with evidence of dangerous effects the obstacles he had with the agency to make them known. Former FDA reviewer Leo Lutwak emailed a colleague about a year before the September 1997 fen phen recall saying serious side effects linked to fen phen and the drugs’ marginal benefits “should be brought out.”

Lutwak wrote, “The company has gotten away with much manipulation these past 3 years, of the public, of the press, of the FDA,” adding, “I started getting upset about this drug in ’93 or ’94 and was running into a lot of blocks from the FDA and from the drug company.” More and more, the use of internal documents are being used to present more powerful cases in the courtrooms. Wyeth’s reported January 31, 2005 quarterly loss was, in part, because the fen phen charge was about $1 billion higher than expected, according to a portfolio manager at Victory Capital Management. Contact Us if you have sustained any deadly health complications such as primary pulmonary hypertension to collect your claims.

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