Diet Pills America is a nation with a problem, a weight problem. Over one third of the United States population is over weight (Cameron 202). To combat this problem many people have chosen to take prescription diet pills. While medical experts continue to affirm that diet and exercise should remain the first line of defense in treating obesity, the use of drugs continues to receive attention in both the lay and professional literature. In fact, by 1996 doctors had written eighteen million prescriptions for the drug combination fenfluramine and phentermine. The major concern regarding the use of these drugs are their potential for producing life-threatening changes in cardiac valves (Gray 70). Diet drugs are far more dangerous than being slightly over weight, yet doctors continue to write prescriptions for drugs they know little about for people they know even less about.
Many doctors feel that any side effect from any diet pill is safer than the risks that come with being obese.
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An artificial heart valve may be used to surgicall...?Doctors, who have met with patients only once, will give out prescriptions for diet pills without a complete medical history, stating that there are many more side effects from being over weight than there are from taking diet drugs:? (Adato 43+). Many of these doctors feel that even a small weight gain is reason enough for some patients to take the drugs because ?the loss of five to ten pounds reduces insulin resistance and lowers diabetes patients? already elevated risk of cardiovascular disease?(Welch42).
However, some of the doctors giving out these prescriptions are giving them to people who do not need them. The people receiving the prescriptions for diet pills are mostly white women who are not more than ten to fifteen percent overweight. ?A woman who wanted to lose fifteen pounds before she was to be married...