Word: fda
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...federal agencies regulating business and consumer affairs, none is more regularly or vehemently denounced than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Critics have variously blasted it as arbitrary, ill-organized, arrogant, inbred and inept. There is a reason for the scourging: the FDA affects both consumers and manufacturers where they are most sensitive-in the products that they can buy or sell. The agency regulates everything from lipstick to kidney dialysis machines. All told, the FDA activity touches on 200 of every consumer dollar spent. Says an agency public relations man proudly: "The FDA intrudes on your life...
Seldom has that intrusion generated the outrage caused last month when the FDA announced that it planned to ban noncaloric saccharin as a food additive (TIME, March 21). Last week the FDA decided to hedge a little. Newly appointed Commissioner Donald Kennedy announced that the agency will go ahead with the ban, probably by midsummer -but will allow saccharin to be sold, like aspirin, as an over-the-counter drug, at least until the end of the year...
...saccharin, some Canadian rats developed bladder cancer when they were fed the sweetener in amounts that would be equivalent, in a human, to 800 cans of diet soda a day throughout his life. The Delaney clause, however, makes no mention of dosage levels. By considering saccharin a drug, the FDA allowed itself to apply less rigid standards: the agency may weigh hazard against benefit in deciding which drugs can be sold. Yet, drugs must be proved "effective," so manufacturers will have until the end of 1977 to demonstrate that saccharin can actually help to control obesity. If they cannot, saccharin...
...latest ruling may add a further touch of cynicism to attacks against the FDA: If saccharin is unsafe in food, what makes it acceptable in a drugstore? Certainly, the ruling has helped to make some of the criticism more pointed...
...Homeland over to the Peabody Coal Co. for Strip Mining for $5 million and there are endangered butterflies and laetrile-smugglers (laetrile is a banned anti-cancer drug), and the Animal Bill of Rights which has received 2M. signatures in France. We learn the latest gem on ginseng (the FDA calls it an additive so it is being tested for safety...