14 DAY TRIAL // To paraphrase the grieving mother of a 21-year-old student who died last week of an overdose caused by diet pills bought online, you might never think that diet pills, especially the kind you can purchase so easily, could kill you.
They did Eloise Aimee Parry of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, because they contained the highly toxic ingredient DNP (Dinitrophenol) and she’d taken 4 times the lethal dose without knowing.
Fiona Perry rings the alarm on diet pills available online
Eloise, or Ella, as friends used to call her, had big plans for her life, her mother writes in a statement posted on the West Mercia Police website. She dreamed of working with young people, of traveling, of finding love and of starting a family.
She was kind and smart and full of life, but secretly, she was also torn about her weight - enough so that she purchased diet pills she’d found online and took 8 of them, even though a note on the box warned her not to take more than 2.
After some research, Ella understood that 2 was a near-fatal dose, so she drove herself to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital to the emergency room, where she told staff what had happened. Her mother says she wasn’t panicking yet because she wasn’t feeling ill in the least.
Toxicology results came back and showed that the situation was beyond dire. Shortly afterwards, Ella began experimenting the symptoms of DNP poisoning, which doctors were powerless in treating.
“As the drug kicked in and started to make her metabolism soar, they attempted to cool her down, but they were fighting an uphill battle,” Ella’s mother writes. “She was literally burning up from within. When she stopped breathing, they put her on a ventilator and carried on fighting to save her. When her heart stopped they couldn't revive her. She had crashed. She had taken so much DNP that the consequences were inevitable. They never stood a chance of saving her. She burned and crashed.”
Not for one second did Ella think that buying and taking “diet pills” from the Internet could kill her.
A warning
Ella died on April 12, her mother continues. No one else has to die this way, not if she can have a say in it, so the statement doubles as a very serious warning on the dangers of buying any kind of medication from the Internet and taking it without seeing your doctor first.
DNP is very dangerous and highly toxic to humans, the West Mercia Police and The Food Standards Agency (FSA) stress. Generally speaking, all diet pills available online imply a health risk, especially if they’re administered without proper, specialized counsel from your personal physician.
“Most of us don't believe that a slimming tablet could possibly kill us. DNP is not a miracle slimming pill. It is a deadly toxin. It is similar to TNT in structure,” Fiona adds. “TNT is an explosive. DNP causes your metabolism to run at an explosive level, with potentially fatal consequences.”
Chief Inspector Jennifer Mattinson of the West Mercia Police says that an investigation is now underway into Ella’s death, to determine who sold the pills and how she may have come across them online. Meanwhile, all those thinking weight loss could be achieved through the click of a button saying “Buy now” should exercise extreme caution before carrying through their plans.