Word: fda
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Early this month, doctors at a Manhattan hospital suspected that the substitute salt might have played a part in the death of a patient with heart disease. The Food & Drug Administration began experimenting, and found that heavy doses of lithium chloride killed laboratory animals. Then the FDA checked up on human patients taking the salt, found that they were suffering variously from drowsiness, weakness, loss of appetite, nausea, tremors, blurred vision, unconsciousness...
Whether the symptoms were due to the patients' diseases or to the lithium chloride, no one could positively say-at the time. But to play safe, the FDA ordered the Foster-Milburn Co. and two other manufacturers* of similar products to take them off the market...
...Crile Clinic sent in another report: two patients (one 70, the other 60) had died and five others were ill, apparently from the salt. Dr. Fishbein asked newspapers and radio stations to issue warnings. Planning to reclassify lithium chloride as a drug instead of as a special dietary food, FDA heard of the deaths and warned: "Stop using this dangerous poison at once...
Merely spotting the deadly tubes was not enough, for the FDA could not prove that they had entered interstate commerce. Selling such drugs inside Texas is not a federal offense, and the state of Texas did not seem to care. For years, the FDA kept an eye on Faiman...
Late one night last January an inspector tailed the "doctor" to an express office and watched him address a package to a Louisiana doctor. When opened, it proved to contain abortion paste ($5 a tube, enough for three perilous abortions). An FDA man followed the package to its destination and seized it as evidence. Later, another package was trailed through the mails to Arkansas...