Part Two of the SeaTimes' series Suddenly Sick: The hidden big business behind your doctor's diagnosis
Tami Melum, 39, took weight-loss drugs so she could feel healthier and keep up with her two boys, now 11 and 13. The drugs nearly killed her.
After being prescribed Redux and a drug combination known as "phen-fen," Melum developed heart damage so severe that in 2002 surgeons had to cut open her chest and heart and install an artificial valve.
She is a tragic testament to what can go wrong in a system where the powerful pharmaceutical industry influences what constitutes a disease, who has it, and how it should be treated.
Before taking the drugs, Melum was overweight but healthy: Her cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar were all normal.
But that wasn't enough. By the mid-1990s, the medical establishment had changed its mind about people such as Melum. Some of the world's most prominent obesity experts, with backing from the drug industry and medical societies, defined obesity as a stand-alone "disease" that caused premature death and needed to be treated with drugs.
Suddenly, Tami Melum and millions like her were, by definition, sick.
In making obesity a disease, these experts helped create a billion-dollar market for the drugs that maimed Melum, killed hundreds, and damaged the hearts and lungs of tens of thousands.
The story of obesity shows how it became acceptable for doctors to risk killing or injuring people on the premise that it would save them from illnesses they might never get.
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