Concerns mount over popular diet drug combination.(Originated from Knight-Ridder Newspapers)

MIAMI _ In a sense, what could be more all-American than fen-phen?

Pop open a bottle, pluck out a few cheerily hued pills, wash them down with a slug of water. And watch the pounds melt away.

``In this society,'' says Dr. Judi Woolger, a University of Miami internal medicine specialist, ``you want fast food, fast novels to read and a fast cure for something that has developed in people over years.

``People want the magical answer.''

The question is, could the pursuit of a slimmer, healthier body end up maiming you? Where does the promise of diet pills _ specifically, the combination of fenfluramine and phentermine _ collide with the peril?

This week's Journal of the American Medical Association adds to the growing welter of concern about diet pills, distilling three decades' worth of research into fenfluramine and its cousin, dexfenfluramine, marketed as Redux.

The scientists' conclusion: Those drugs cause depletion of a vital brain chemical in animals. And fenfluramine, the researchers report, can cause a rare albeit potentially fatal lung condition.

This latest study emerges six days after the Dade County, Fla., medical examiner concluded that the fen-phen combination likely contributed to the heart attack that killed Pat Mishcon, a prominent activist in North Miami Beach and wife of that city's mayor.

And in July, researchers from the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Minnesota reported a disturbing finding: Two dozen women, previously…