Beware Untested Diet Pills

We've heard about the dangers of popping weight-loss pills. But there are safe ways to drop extra pounds using supplements -- yes, even ephedra -- and prescriptions.

Seventeen days of taking usnic acid to promote weight loss was all it took for Jennifer Rosenthal of Long Beach, Calif., to go from being a healthy, active 28-year-old to being in a coma on life support. An emergency liver transplant saved her life.

Rosenthal's story, though extreme, points to the problem of the many untested and unregulated products sold on the Internet and in some drug and health-food stores.

"This is a young woman who almost lost her life," said Rosenthal's transplant surgeon, Ronald W. Busuttil, MD, in an interview with The New York Times. "Although she's got her life back now, she has to be under lifelong medical care. Her life has been altered forever. The fact that you can get these things over the Internet is mind-boggling."

• Ever think of going for the gold? You can be a runner
• Got a few minutes? Work out!
• An exercise that blends mind and body? Find fitness bliss with NIA

Usnic acid is an antibacterial substance made from lichens. But online marketers sell it as a weight-loss drug and performance enhancer. Since it falls under the FDA category of a dietary supplement, its sale and use is entirely unregulated.

In that regard, usnic acid is not unlike ephedra, another weight-loss pill that is sold online and in many thousands of neighborhood health-food and drugstores. Ephedra has been implicated in the death last month of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler, who succumbed to heat stroke on a Broward County, Fla., practice field after reportedly taking an ephedra-containing weight-loss supplement.

Does all this mean there are no useful, safe weight-loss drugs?

^ back to top