Word: verrette
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...Jacqueline Verrett's version of what precipitated the cyclamate brouhaha of 1969-70 is not correct. Like other scientists, Dr. Verrett likes to think it was she who sank cyclamate...
...overruled when they recommended against approval of new drugs they had tested. Another devastating blow to the FDA was the publication of the book Eating May Be Hazardous to Your Health (Simon & Schuster; $7.95). It is an exposé of the agency by one of its own employees, Biochemist Jacqueline Verrett, who got her doctorate at Fordham University...
...outspoken book, Verrett charges that the American people are ill protected against both known and suspected harmful effects from the 3,000 to 10,000 food additives, dyes and substitutes now in use. "The FDA'S performance, certainly of late, has been outrageous," she asserts. As she sees the FDA, it is a regulatory agency charged by law to protect the public's health but too much concerned with the interests of big business. It flouts the law by covering up health hazards with evasions, distortions and misstatements. (See the top 10 bad beverage ideas...
Danger to Fetuses. Recounting the cyclamate flap that shook the agency in the late 1960s, Verrett notes that as early as 1954 a National Academy of Sciences panel voiced doubts about the safety of the sweetener, which Abbott Laboratories had been authorized to market in 1951. But no further steps were taken by the FDA, and by 1968 a total of 17 million pounds of cyclamate was being consumed annually. Japanese researchers had already reported finding that in some people's bodies cyclamate breaks down in part to cyclohexylamine (CHA), which is known to be dangerous, especially to fetuses...
...then the scientists had, in effect, been overruled by a bureaucratic device. FDA referred the question of cyclamate safety to the National Academy of Sciences and its working arm, the National Research Council. The prestige of these bodies gives a false aura of objectivity to their findings, says Verrett, because the NRC passes the buck to an advisory panel of "experts," most of whom are partly supported by the industry concerned or institutions that it finances. Such men, says Dr. Verrett, "are sometimes jokingly referred to as 'Hertz Rent-a-Scientists.' " (See nine kid foods to avoid...