A popular weight loss drug sold under the brand name Belviq has been voluntarily
recalled after a strong link between the drug and certain types of fatal cancers.
And I have Steve Luongo here to talk to me about that, who's handling this case, Steve,
first of all, let me, let me clear something up. There is no such thing as a voluntary recall,
you understand that. Absolutely.
The company likes to say we voluntarily took it off the market. No, it's the FDA said,
either you take it off the market, are you going to be, have sanctions or whatever. Again, this
is another story where the FDA failed to do their job, isn't it? Take it from there. What is Belviq?
What kind of injuries are we talking about? Absolutely. So let's start from the beginning.
Belviq is a prescription weight loss drug and what it was designed to do is combat, combat obesity,
type two diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure. And what it does is it attacks the
serotonin levels in the user. So it manipulates and tricks your mind into thinking that you're
full without actually having to eat any food. Well, I handled the cases early on. I tried the
Fen-Phen cases. The Fen-Phen cases was a weight loss program that was going to be the new secret
to losing weight. It killed hundreds of women. Again, it was another situation where the FDA
had all the information they needed, failed to do their job. In this situation, Belviq was,
the FDA said no, in 2012, right? They said. 2010.
2010, they said, no, you can't sell the drug. It was, I think, five to nine on the committee that
said that. They reviewed everything said, this, first of all, it doesn't work. Second of all,
it's dangerous. And then after, so you have a political change. They come back Belviq
comes back and says, hey, you know what, we want another shot and the FDA says, oh,
sure. The one we turned down, the one we said no to, you can sell it now. Take it from there.
Right. And you're exactly right. It's the same product that was denied by the FDA in 2010 was
passed and approved in 2012. So what changed? Nothing changed except the people approving it.
And in fact, when they denied it in 2010, the issues were, does this drug even work and is it
worth the cost benefit analysis? In which time they knew based off a New York Times article
that these laboratory rats were developing cancer or tumors that potentially could be
cancerous at that time. So they were aware of back in 2010 of the cancerous and the carcinogen
nature of this drug, the lorcaserin. Yeah. And it doesn't stop there. I mean,
this is a drug where they found a history of people having suicidal thoughts, uncontrolled
bleeding, men were growing breasts from it. You had blood, you had blood sugar problems that were
putting people in, in, in, in sometimes comas. This is, this, but you had cancer. And the,
the FDA knew all of that and they come in the second time and they start taking the word
of the company. What is the company, Eisai? The, the company is Eisai. It was originally
developed by Arena Pharmaceuticals, a San Diego based company. In 2017, it was sold
to Japanese pharmaceutical Eisai in which they really pumped up the advertising, got the sales
increased to where eventually Belviq, Belviq was the number one drug in the market at that time.
Okay. So as this, you know, I'd like to say that this is just a one-off kind of situation,
but we're seeing it more and more, Steve. You handle these cases. You understand that when
you're dealing with the FDA, you may as well not have any comfort in what the FDA does.
Most people in this business say that if a drug is not on the market for more than 10 years,
don't touch it. What is your thought on that? Well, that's exactly right, because
we're dealing with the FDA and the way that they got the approval was saying,
hey, go ahead and do this five-year study. We're going to go ahead and approve you, but go ahead
and do five years and see what the cardiovascular effects of this drug are. Lo and behold,
now we know people are coming down with cancer, mostly pancreatic, colorectal and lung cancer,
but there's a variety of cancers that are being affected by the people who are taking this drug.
Totally unnecessary drug. Absolutely.
This, this drug serves no purpose whatsoever. There are drugs out that, that can accomplish
the same thing that don't kill you, but Belviq is out there saying, oh, we've got this new drug.
Look, if you're taking the drug, if somebody's out there taking the drug, what do they
need to do? How do they protect themselves? Right. Stop immediately, contact your pharma,
your, your, stop. They need to stop immediately. They need to contact their doctor
and see what the alternatives are. As far as doctors that are prescribing it,
they should have been stopped prescribing it as it was taken off the market a year ago
and to talk about the alternatives with their patients as well.
And get screened. Exactly.
How about something as just go get screened. Find out what these cancers are. Go get screened for
the cancer, especially if you've been taking it a long time. Steve, thank you for joining me, okay.
Yes sir. And finally tonight,
some good news. A court in New York has ruled that police unions can no longer hide the complaints
made about their officers. I have Farron Cousins joining me again to talk about this. Farron,
welcome back. I look at this case, I have, it's, it makes me scream
to think that doctors have the same protection where I don't care how bad they screw up, you
can't get to that information without a lawsuit. Lawyers have the same protection, again, I don't
care how bad the lawyer, how dishonest the lawyer is, you can't get to that information. So here we
finally are paying attention to police officers that have killed people unnecessarily in the past,
injured people, bad conduct. We can't even look at their files. Now we, there's a possibility, huh?
You know, and this is really great. And unfortunately, it's only for New York city or
at the moment, hopefully this does get expanded. It also applies to firefighters and other first
responders and those are the kinds of things we need to know. These are the people who are walking
around, the police officers, heavily armed. You know, we have watched them in footage over the
last year, literally just run over people because they were in their way. We need to know who they
are and more importantly, we need to be able to keep track of them because a lot of ways,
these police departments act kind of like the Catholic church does. Whenever somebody gets
caught doing something bad, well, you, you work over here now. You're in this department. You're
in this diocese. And police departments across the country do the same thing because nobody
can keep track of who they are or where they are. Okay. So they move the policemen behind a desk for
awhile and then after he at behind a desk for awhile, they move him back into the street.
Nobody knows what the person did. Here's where we really see it. When we have a horrible event,
unnecessary shooting, unnecessary injury, conduct by the police and we want to initiate a lawsuit,
you outta to see what it takes to get to the police officer's file. Unions
for the police officers have made it virtually impossible to do that.
I'm all for unions, but unions have got to have a common sense understanding about what it means
when you hide the history on people like this. Right. The, the police unions don't operate like
typical unions where it's, we're fighting for good benefits. No, you're fighting to not be
accountable is what the police unions do and it's good that they suffered this loss. It's good that
people are going to be able to see what happens because we need to know what happens and we need
to be able to check up and make sure that the person who has all these complaints against them,
whether it's, you know, unnecessary force or even sexual assault for some of these officers.
Yeah. We need to make
sure that it has been properly handled and if not, file lawsuits or whatever we can do.
Farron Cousins, thanks for joining me again. Thank you.