FDA: Codes of Honesty in SUGAR BLUES

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Kraig,

 

Note that the FDA has a long sordid history of censorship on foods,

drugs and healthcare products dating all the way back to the 1920s

which is detailed in two books:

* 1975 best-selling classic - SUGAR BLUES by William Dufty - which

details the genesis of the FDA and the censorship about our toxic

foods from the 1930s to present. Duffy explains how the FDA really

works for the food and drug industry and not the public by allowing

our foods to contain thousands of harmful chemicals, additives,

flavorings, colorings, emulsifiers, preservatives, surfactants, and

other adulterants. These food chemicals are known as GRAS -

Generally Recognized As Safe - by the FDA and the GRAS list goes back

to the 1920s. Today, the GRAS list has become so lengthy that the

average American ingests five pounds of chemical additives every

year, together with approximately another fifty pounds of hidden

sugar.

 

* 1929 classic - THE HISTORY OF A CRIME AGAINST THE FOOD by Dr.

Harvey W. Wiley, the Ralph Nader of his day and the first head of the

FDA's predecessor called the Bureau of Chemistry. Dr. Wiley pursued

the poisoning of our food supply by the junk food processing industry

with a vengeance. Coca-Cola was at the top of his hit list from 1907

into 1920s when his agency was effectively scuttled and Dr. Wiley was

run off by the junk food industry. His 1929 book disappeared from

bookstores and libraries in an example of classic censorship, so it's

not available today.

 

Neil Carman, Ph.D.

 

The 1975 best-selling classic - SUGAR BLUES by William Dufty - which

details the genesis of the FDA, provided the basis

for much of this editorial column. Here are a few excerpts from the

relevant chapter:

 

Codes of Honesty

 

The Pure Food and Drug Laws are frequently regarded as landmarks in

the history of social legislation. Certainly, government can

have no higher aim than to attempt to protect the health of the

people. Perhaps biological decline was well along when it became

necessary to pass laws to prevent people, out of excessive devotion

to moneymaking, from poisoning one another.

 

" When people lost sight of the way to live, " wrote Lao Tsu. " came

codes of love and honesty. "

 

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The campaign for passage of the Pure Food and Drug Laws had been

conducted out in the open. Its undoing was accomplished

in the dark. Food processors and rectified whiskey makers formed a

united front to sabotage Wiley and his bureau.

Representatives of the food business camped on the doorsteps of

legislators, cabinet officers, and the president of the United

States, complaining that sacred capital was being confiscated,

praying, begging, and blackmailing for relief from the policies of

Wiley and his bureau.

 

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Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle had helped turn the tide in favor of

the Pure Food and Drug Laws. After he left government, Dr.

Wlley wrote a book telling the whole sordid story of how those laws

had been scuttled from within government. He knew where the

bodies were buried, and he resolved to tell it all and let the

American people get riled up once again. However, he was no

politician. Again he underestimated the forces arrayed against him.

Wiley, undertaking to finance his book, turned his precious

manuscript over to a printer. That manuscript mysteriously

'disappeared " and has never been found to this day. Just how these

things are done is rarely uncovered.

 

Shattered but unbroken, Dr. Wiley valiantly returned to work,

rewriting his book from scratch. This chore occupied him totally for

ten

years. He tried to update matters, but by 1929 many of his shocking

revelations were already old hat. Some of the villains were

dead. Most of the politicians had passed on or at least out of power.

Still, his volume The History of a Crime Against the Food

Law was a primer on government corruption, quite unlike anything that

bad ever been written before. This time, be tried to protect

himself. He took no chances on the manuscript getting lost again.

Every facet of its production and printing was personally

supervised by Wiley. When distribution began in 1929, it looked like

a best seller. Books disappeared rapidly from bookstore

shelves. Yet no letters were received from readers, no

congratulations, no kudos, and virtually no reviews. The books kept on

disappearing, yet copies could not be found anywhere.

 

In desperation, Dr. Wiley put the few remaining books in libraries

around the country - they disappeared from libraries as quickly as

they had vanished from the stores. Try your neighborhood library

today and see if you can find a copy. It should surprise no one

today that these things can happen, when the advertising budget for

one food conglomerate is larger than the entire annual

budget of the government agency charged with policing the industry.

 

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The Bureau of Chemistry was finally legally dismantled. In its place,

the Food and Drug and Insecticide Administration, precursor of

the Food and Drug Administration was established. The Poison Squad,

that group of healthy young men on whom Dr. Wiley had

tested proposed new food additives before allowing the foods to be

turned loose on the public at large, was ultimately replaced by

the FDA's GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) list - a list of food

colorings, additives, and adulterants. Manufacturers and food

processors were given carte blanche to use practically anything in

its products until evidence turned up that it might be injurious to

the public health. The whole intent of the Pure Food and Drug Laws

had been turned on its head.

 

The Poison Squad was enlarged to include everybody in the country.

Today, the GRAS list has become so lengthy that the

average American ingests five pounds of chemical additives every

year, together with approximately another fifty pounds of

hidden sugar.