Over-the-Counter Weight-Loss Drug Is Approved
By STEPHANIE SAUL
The Food and Drug Administration yesterday approved the first officially sanctioned weight-loss drug to be sold without a prescription.
Experts expect the drug, Alli, to be available to consumers in the summer.
Although the medication has been available by prescription since 1999, some experts predict that it will be more widely used as an over-the-counter product. It will be the lone government-approved alternative to unproven over-the-counter remedies.
People in the United States spend about $1 billion a year on herbal formulas and other supplements that advertise fast weight loss but have no proven effectiveness and can be dangerous.
An official of the food agency, Dr. Curtis J. Rosebraugh, called the approval important in light of the array of unproven products on the market.
“It’s rather significant that there will now be available an over-the-counter product that we do have data on, that we know is efficacious and what the safety profile is,” Dr. Rosebraugh said.
An obesity specialist in Washington, Dr. Arthur Frank, said Alli had a safe track record and could help patients lose 5 percent to 10 percent of their weight.
On the negative side, Alli can cause side effects like diarrhea and oily stools.
Panel Sees Centuries of Warming Due to Humans
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW C. REVKIN
PARIS, Feb. 2 —The world is already committed to centuries of warming, shifting weather patterns and rising seas from the atmospheric buildup of gases that trap heat, but the warming can be substantially blunted by prompt action, an international network of climate experts said today.
The report released here represented the fourth assessment since 1990 by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations, of the causes and consequences of climate change. But for the first time the group asserted with near certainty — more than 90 percent confidence — that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases were the main drivers of warming since 1950.
In its last report, in 2001, the panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists and reviewers, put the confidence level at between 66 and 90 percent. Both reports are online at www.ipcc.ch.
