A Weight-Loss Wonderland


"On the question of obesity, physicians have been extensively involved with the pharmaceutical industry, especially opinion leaders and in the high ranks of academia. The involvement was in many instances quite deep. It involved consulting, service on speaker's bureaus, and service on advisory boards. And at the same time some of these financially conflicted individuals were producing biased obesity materials, biased obesity lectures, and biased obesity articles in major journals."

-- Former New England Journal of Medicine Editor-in-Chief Dr. Jerome Kassirer, 2004.

Dr. Kassirer's description perfectly fits ubiquitous obesity researcher D.B. Allison, who has accepted money from virtually every major business in the weight-loss industry. That includes big drug companies that make weight-loss pills like Xenical and Meridia, popular diet companies like Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, and Slim-Fast Foods, and makers of the deadly "fen-phen" appetite suppressant combination -- as well as the lawyers who defended those companies. Even the obesity scaremongers at the Center for Science in the Public Interest have demonstrated his extensive financial ties to the weight-loss industry.

Allison was the lead author of a 1999 study published in JAMA that concluded obesity was responsible for 300,000 deaths in 1990. The CDC's now-discredited study upped that number to 400,000, noting: "We used the same procedure reported by Allison et al. to estimate annual overweight-attributable deaths." But as JAMA noted when it published Allison's deeply flawed study:

Dr. Allison has received grants, honoraria, monetary and product donations, was a consultant to, and has contracts or other commitments with numerous organizations involving weight control products and services.

That's as understated as Allison's study was flawed. According to a financial disclosure he offered in a supplementary issue of Obesity Research, Allison has received money or support from an overwhelming number of companies hoping to profit from obesity hype. Here is a partial list of Allison's supporters:

• Bristol Myers-Squibb (investigating compound SLV319 for use in anti-obesity drug)
• Decision Resources (research firm focusing on pharmaceutical industry, which has advocated more reimbursement for obesity treatment)
• Eon Labs Manufacturing, Inc. (made phentermine portion of "fen-phen")
• Fisons Corporation (produced weight-loss drug phentermine half of "fen-phen" combination)
• Glaxo (Allison consulted on issues in the pharmacological treatment of obesity)
• Hoffman-La Roche (produces weight-loss drug Xenical)
• Interneuron (produced weight-loss drug Redux)
• Jenny Craig
• Johnson & Johnson (multiple weight-loss interests, including bariatric staples)
• Knoll Pharmaceuticals (made weight-loss drug Meridia)
• Ligand Pharmaceuticals (works with Lilly Research labs on obesity products)
• Lilly Research Labs (intracellular receptor technology to be used for anti-obesity drugs)
• McKenna & Cuneo LLP, Attorneys at Law (led "fen-phen" defense team)
• Medeva Pharmaceuticals (produced weight-loss drug phentermine half of "fen-phen" combination)
• Millennium Pharmaceuticals (Investigated multiple anti-obesity compounds, such as MLN 4760)
• NutraSystems (weight-loss plans)
• NutriPharma (ScanDiet)
• Ortho-McNeill Pharmaceuticals (Topamax, an epilepsy medication prescribed off-label for weight loss)
• Pfizer Central Research (currently has 24 novel compounds and 12 product enhancements in anti-obesity pipeline)
• RW Johnson Pharmaceuticals Research Institute (Topamax)
• Schering-Plough (anti-obesity drug ecopipam under trial)
• Servier Amerique (produced dexfenfluramine portion of fen-phen combination)
• SlimFast Foods
• Tanita (scales, body-fat monitors)
• Weight Watchers International
• Wellcome Trust (hormone PYY3-36 under investigation for weight loss)