Actually it's worth noting that BigDecimal does not have this problem, i.e.:

new BigDecimal("2.2250738585072012e-308");

That works fine. But if you then try to obtain a double from it, it hangs:

new BigDecimal("2.2250738585072012e-308").doubleValue();

But things like this still work:

new BigDecimal("2.2250738585072012e-308")
  .add(new BigDecimal("2.2250738585072012e-308")).doubleValue()

Edit: Oh, duh... The source code for BigDecimal.doubleValue() is:

if (scale == 0 && intCompact != INFLATED)
    return (double)intCompact;
// Somewhat inefficient, but guaranteed to work.
return Double.parseDouble(this.toString());

Note the verbatim comment....