Word: finches
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Crude Guillotine. Cyclamates, given in doses 50 times greater than any likely human consumption, have caused bladder cancer in mice and rats, as well as the birth of deformed chicks. This was duly reported to the FDA by Abbott Laboratories, major producer of cyclamates. Within a week, Secretary Robert Finch of Health, Education and Welfare ordered cyclamates off the market, save for fruit already packed for distribution or foods prescribed for health reasons, for diabetes, say, or obesity...
...Department of Health, Education and Welfare has been called the Department of Wealth, Aggravation and Hellfire. Last week former HEW Secretary John Gardner and the present Secretary, Robert Finch, compared aggravations during a ceremony to unveil a portrait of Gardner in the department auditorium...
...going," said Finch, ruefully quoting an aide, "there are not going to be too many more people we can offend." He ticked off a list of the recently alienated: farmers (by the ban on DDT), the overweight (by the ban on cyclamates) and sportsmen (by the impounding of Lake Michigan coho salmon last spring). "The first problem we have," said Finch, "is 40,000 inflammable Santa Clauses. I guess HEW will be known as the department that killed Santa Claus...
...Stretching the phase-out to two years, Finch explained, would prevent the "excessive economic disruption" of an immediate ban. But even if the use of DDT were stopped now, he admitted, "it would take ten years or longer for the environment to purge itself" of the chemical...
Clearly Unessential. The vague wording and relatively leisurely pace of Finch's plan failed to satisfy some scientists who have been actively campaigning against DDT. "If you can ban cyclamates in four or five days, then you can act just as quickly against DDT," says Biologist Charles F. Wurster Jr. of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "Besides, we are already down to 'essential' uses-and they are clearly unessential for human and environmental health standards...