Diet Drugs: Thin on Success

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WASHINGTON: There's no easy way out: if you want to squeeze into that size six, you'll have to sweat for it. TIME medical correspondent Christine Gorman reports that the Food and Drug Administration's recommendation to yank the diet drugs Redux and fenfluramine off pharmacy shelves proves once again that working out and eating right is the safest way to lose the fat. "If you look at the history of diet pills, they've tended to start off with tremendous acclaim and then something goes wrong," she says. "Before it was amphetamines, which proved to be addictive, and now it's Redux and fenfluramine, which have been linked to heart trouble. What most overweight people really need, therefore, is a better diet and more exercise." Sound advice. But as long as drug companies continue to tout magic weight-loss solutions, health club memberships and orders at the salad bar aren't about to increase.