Millions of Americans turn to pills and supplements every year to help them lose weight. Everyone knows that no pill alone can help you to lose weight if you do not change your lifestyle first.
However, clever marketing schemes keep customers coming back looking for a “miracle pill” that will help them shed the pounds. Recently, a federal advisory panel rejected a highly-touted weight loss pill amid lingering safety concerns for users.
The Food and Drug Administration advised that there was not enough data to offset concerns that Vivus Inc’s new prescription weight loss pill Qnexa was safe enough. The pill has been rumored to cause depression, memory-loss, and has the potential to cause birth-defects if taken by pregnant women.
The decision was a surprise to most investors, who had bet that the safety concerns would only add warning labels to the product, and would not keep it off of the market. The decision is a huge blow to Vivus, a company that has not had a new product approved for open-market sale since 1996. With their most recent rejection, they are facing very dire times indeed.
Shares for the company have ballooned more than 100 percent over the course of the last twelve months as investors prepared for the release of their weight loss pill. Now, with the pill having been rejected, many investors are upset that the company was unable to put forward a product that could be approved.
It will be interesting to see how the company is able to bounce back from their recent rejection, and whether or not they will continue to work on their current weight loss pill to make it FDA-compliant, or move on to a new venture.