Word: fda
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...Secretary Flemming's Food and Drug Administration was getting ready for another fight of the same sort last week-this time with the $80 million-a-year lipstick industry. FDA chemists charge that 17 different coal-tar dyes used in lipsticks caused either death or illness when fed to rats. The lipstick makers insist nonetheless that women never digest more than an infinitesimal speck of lipstick, and that the FDA's attack is grossly unfair. Probable next step: a public hearing to discuss FDA's ban on the dyes, now scheduled to go into effect...
...minimum of two years. Even if the critters die natural deaths, their bodies will still be dissected to see whether any damage can be traced to the additive. If there is any suspicion of cancer, studies may be prolonged to seven years. Testing will cost industry millions. And the FDA needs an additional $1,000,000 a year to check the test methods and data...
Long Way to Market. While this seems simple common sense, it took eight years to persuade Congress to enact a direct reversal of the old law-under which the burden of proof was on the FDA to 1) show that ar additive in food already marketed was dangerous, and 2) get it banned by court order. Need for the new law has been intensified by speeding changes in U.S. food growing, marketing and eating habits: less and less food is grown at home or near the point of consumption; more and more is shipped great distances, takes longer to reach...
Biggest complicating factor is a basic fact of pharmacology: there is no sharp line between poisonous and nonpoisonous substances-common salt can be a poison in excess, and arsenic can be a lifesaver. Dr. Arnold J. Lehman, the FDA's pharmacology director, quotes the Swiss Alchemist-Physician Paracelsus (1493-1541): "Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy." Some chemicals are poisonous over the years even in minute doses, and these the FDA will ban outright. But in the main, under its new legislative charter to protect...
...Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration occasionally have to step in. FTC allows harmless puffs-"ours is best"-draws the line at "youth-reviving creams" and at any inference that cells can be reborn by potions. Not only are claims sometimes false, but products downright harmful. The FDA recently ordered Ten-Day Press-On Nail Polish off the market in several states after 700 women complained that it made their nails split and break...