Chapter Twenty-One
THE PROTECTION RACKET

Cartel agents in the FDA and other agencies of government; the CFR as a control structure over U.S. foreign policy; scientific ineptitude at the FDA; and the growth of FDA power.

In 1970, Dr. Herbert Ley made a statement that, coming from a lesser source, easily could be dismissed as the ranting of an uninformed malcontent. Considering that Dr. Ley was a former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, however, his words cannot be brushed aside so lightly. He said:

The thing that bugs me is that the people think the FDA is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day.(1)

1. San Francisco Chronicle, Ian. 2, 1970, as quoted in Autopsy on The A.M.A., (Student Research Facility, Berkeley, 1970), p. 42.

What is the FDA doing? As will be shown by the material that follows, the FDA is "doing" three things:

• First, it is providing a means whereby key individuals on its payroll are able to obtain power and wealth through granting special favors to politically influential groups that are subject to its regulations. This activity is similar to the "protection racket" of organized crime: for a price, one can induce FDA administrators to provide "protection" from the FDA itself.

• Secondly, as a result of this political favoritism, the FDA has become a primary factor in that formula whereby cartel-oriented companies in the food-and-drug industry are able to use the police powers of government to harass or destroy their competitors.

• And thirdly, the FDA occasionally does some genuine public good if that does not interfere with serving the vested interest of its first two activities.

To appreciate the extent of cartel influence within the FDA, let us look briefly at the larger picture - at evidence of that same influence in other agencies and at all levels of government. Previously we outlined the degree to which the cartel succeeded in placing its friends and agents into such areas of government as the office of the Alien Property Custodian, the Attorney General's office, the State Department, and the White House itself.

In addition to the names previously mentioned, there are such dignitaries as

• Secretary of State Dean Rusk (former head of the Rockefeller Foundation, as was John Foster Dulles)

• Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon (a member of the board of the Chase Manhattan Bank)

• Eugene Black, Director of the U.S. International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (also Second Vice-President and Director of Chase Manhattan)

• John J. McCloy, President of the UN World Bank (also Chairman of the Board of Chase Manhattan, and trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Chairman of the Executive Committee for Squibb Pharmaceutical) (1)

• Senator Nelson Aldrich (whose daughter married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and whose son, Winthrop, became Chairman of the Chase National Bank and also was appointed as Ambassador to Great Britain)

• President Richard Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell (Wall Street attorneys for Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical),

...and many others. The list of men who are or were in key positions within the Rockefeller group reads like a "Who's Who in Government."

1. McCloy had been Assistant Secretary of War from April 1941 to November 1945. As High Commissioner in West Germany after the war, he was instrumental in making Konrad Adenauer, his brother-in-law, Chancellor of West Germany. He also was Chairman of the Board of the Ford Foundation and chief U.S. disarmament negotiator.

It is impossible to appraise the extent of Rockefeller influence within the federal government without knowing a little bit about the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR has come to be called "the hidden government of the United States," and as we shall see, that is a fairly accurate description.

The CFR is semisecret in its operation. It shuns publicity, and members are sworn not to disclose to the public the proceedings of its conferences and briefings. It has a formal membership of approximately three-thousand elite personalities.

In Harper's magazine for July, 1958, there was an article entitled "School for Statesmen," written by CFR member Joseph Kraft.

Boasting that membership in this obscure organization had become the magic key that opens the door of appointments to high government posts, Kraft explained that, even then, CFR membership included:

... the President, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Board chairmen of three of the country's five largest industrial corporations, two of the four richest insurance companies, and two of the three biggest banks, plus the senior partners of two of the three leading Wall Street law firms, the publishers of the two biggest news magazines and of the country's most influential newspaper, and the presidents of the Big Three in both universities and foundations, as well as a score of other college presidents and a scattering of top scientists and journalists.

This list - impressive as it is - was soon to be dwarfed by the avalanche of CFR members who have since moved into control of literally all of the nation's power centers.

It now rules through hidden control over such power centers as government, media, education, and finance. To see that this is not an exaggeration, take a moment and wade through the tedious list that follows.

In government, CFR members include:

Presidents Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush, and Clinton;(1) Secretaries of State Stimson, Stettinius, Acheson, Dulles, Herter, Rusk, Rogers, Kissinger, Vance, Muskie, Haig, and Schultz.

1. According to Dan Smoot's The Invisible Government, President Kennedy also had been a member. The basis for this is a personal letter from the president in which he claimed membership. I have not seen that letter, however, and the CFR staff, in a letter to me dated June 11, 1971, stated flatly: "the facts of the matter are that President Kennedy was invited to join the Council but, insofar as our records indicate, never accepted that invitation either formally or informally through the payment of membership dues." In view of this, I felt it was best to omit President Kennedy's name from the list, which is impressive enough without it.

Since 1953, there have been 21 presidents and Secretaries of State. Seventeen of them have been members of the CFR. That's a ratio of 81%. This seems to be a magic number. It is the same ratio that holds for all the rest of the highest government positions in the land.

In other words, since 1953, more than 81% of the following posts have been in the hands of CFR members: Vice Presidents, Secretaries of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA directors, National Security Council, Secretaries of the Treasury, members of the President's Cabinet, Under-Secretaries, Ambassadors to the UN and major countries, and presidential advisors.

When it comes to the Federal Reserve System, virtually 100% of the board members have been CFR since 1953 - which tells us something about how important it is to these people to have control over our monetary system.

By the end of President Clinton's first term of office, more than 166 CFR members were holding key government posts. So much for government. Now let's look at the media.

CFR members include top executives and journalists for the:

• New York Times

• New York Post

• Washington Post

• Washington Times

• Chicago Tribune

• Los Angeles Times

• Boston Globe

• Dallas Morning News

• Parade

• Forbes

• Christian Science Monitor

• National Review

• Harper's

• Look

• Time

• Life

• Newsweek

• U.S. News and World Report

• Newsday

• Business Week

• Money

• Fortune

• Harvard Business Review

• Wall Street Journal

• Atlantic Monthly

• Encyclopedia Britannica

• ABC

• CBS

• CNN

• NBC

• MGM

• the Associated Press

• Hearst News Service

• Reuters

• the Motion Picture Association of America,

...and scores of others.

Let us emphasize that CFR members do not merely work for these media giants as subversive agents hiding within the working staffs, they control them at the top. They are the owners and the key executives who determine content and editorial policy. It is through these channels of communication and entertainment that members of the CFR have been able to manipulate America's perception of reality.

We have previously covered the role of the tax-exempt foundations in furthering the objectives of the pharmaceutical cartel, so it should not come as a surprise to learn that these foundations also are dominated by members of the CFR. They include directors of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Fund, Heritage Foundation, Kettering Foundation and Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. These are the organizations which have provided CFR funding.

For many years, David Rockefeller was the chairman and principle benefactor of the CFR. Its continuing leadership consists of proven and trusted lieutenants who are firmly within the Rockefeller financial interlock.

The CFR is not the subject of this study, so let us cut it short. Virtually all of the nation's largest universities and corporations and banking houses and insurance companies are also run by members of the CFR. And remember, the entire organization has only about three-thousand members. The average person has never heard of the CFR, yet it is the unseen government of the United States.(1)

The glue that binds members of the CFR together is the plan for world government and the personal power they anticipate from that. But making money is not far behind as a secondary motive, and it is that motive that comes into play in cancer research. So let us forget the CFR for now, skip over the issue of foreign policy, and return to domestic policy.

In particular, let us take a close look at how the pharmaceutical cartel has captured control over the FDA.

Let us begin by acknowledging the obvious. The FDA could not have achieved the public confidence it now enjoys if it did not accomplish some good. The FDA has nipped many a medical racket in the bud and has clamped down on firms that had been guilty of unsanitary processing, of selling putrid or contaminated food, and of distributing adulterated or misbranded drugs. In these accomplishments it deserves to be commended for its diligence. As we shall see, however, this showcase aspect of the FDA record pales by comparison to its other record of ineptitude and corruption.

In March of 1972, after repeated inquiries from concerned Congressmen, the FDA made public its official cleanliness standards as applied to the food processing industry. To everyone's horror it was learned that the FDA allows approximately one rodent pellet per pint of wheat, ten fly eggs per eight and a half ounce can of fruit juice, and fifty insect fragments or two rodent hairs for three and a half ounces of peanut butter.(2)

For years, the FDA defended the use of the hormone Diethylstilbestrol (DES) as an artificial fattening agent for cattle. Then, after the evidence became too overwhelming to ignore, it was finally banned because even trace amounts of this substance as residue in the meat was shown to be a possible factor in inducing cancer in humans who consumed it.(3)

1. For an overview of this subject, including a list of members and the positions they have held, see The New American (Conspiracy Report), September 16,1996. Also Shadows of Power; The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline by James Perloff, (Appleton, WI: Western Islands, 1988). Also The Capitalist Conspiracy, by G. Edward Griffin (American Media, Westlake Village, CA, 1971)
2. Consumer Reports, March, 1973, p. 152.
3. DES is an artificial female sex hormone. The logic for the higher incidence of cancer is implicit in the role played by estrogen in the trophoblast thesis of cancer. Here is one more grain of evidence added to the mountain.

However, the same week that it banned DES from cattle to make sure that none would find its way into human consumption, it gave its approval to the "morning-after contraceptive" - a pill containing fifty milligrams of the same drug to be taken daily for five days. As one cattleman commented bitterly:

"It turns out that a woman would have to eat 262 tons of beef liver to get the same amount of DES as the FDA makes legal for the next-morning medication."(1)

There are approximately 3,000 chemical additives currently being used by the food industry for the purpose of flavoring, coloring, preserving, and generally altering the characteristics of its products. Most are safe in the quantities used, but many of these chemicals pose a serious health hazard with prolonged use.(2)

As in the case of DES, the evidence is strong that many of them are harmful, particularly if consumed over a prolonged period of time. The FDA response to this situation is interesting. Instead of rushing into battle to "protect the people," as it has done in the case of those "dangerous" health foods and vitamins, it warmly embraces and defends the cartel food processors and chemical firms that otherwise might be damaged by loss of markets.

The following statements, taken from official FDA "Fact Sheets," tell the story with no need for further comment:

In general, there is little difference between fresh and processed foods. Modern processing methods retain most vitamin and mineral values...

Nutrition Research has shown that a diet containing white bread made with enriched flour has nearly the same value as one containing whole grain bread...

Chemical fertilizers are not poisoning our soil. Modern fertilizers are needed to produce enough food for our population...

When pesticides on food crops leave a residue, FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) make sure the amount will be safe for consumers...(3)

Vitamins are specific chemical compounds, and the human body can use them equally well whether they are synthesized by a chemist or by nature.(4)

1. "On Science," by David Woodbury, Review of the News, June 13,1973, p. 27.
2. See Toxics A to Z, by Harte, Holdren, Schneider, and Shirley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
3. The reader is reminded that the chemical fertilizer and pesticide industries are, like the drug industry, subsidiaries of the larger cartelized chemical and petroleum industries.
4. "Nutrition Nonsense - And Sense," FDA Fact Sheet dated July, 1971.

In November of 1971, the FDA issued another "Fact Sheet" on the subject of "quackery."

It says:

The term "quackery" encompasses both people and products... Broadly speaking, quackery is misinformation about health.(1)

1. "Quackery," FDA Fact Sheet dated November, 1971.

If the preceding hogwash about DES and the glories of processed foods, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and synthetic vitamins is not "misinformation about health," then there is nothing that could be so labeled! The Oxford Universal Dictionary defines a quack as "one who professes knowledge concerning subjects of which he is ignorant." By either definition, FDA spokesmen are the biggest quacks the world has ever seen.

There is an important distinction between a quack and a charlatan. A quack may be presumed an honest man who truly thinks he is helping his patients. A charlatan, on the other hand, is fully aware of the inadequacy of both his knowledge and his treatment. A man, therefore, can be a quack, or both a quack and a charlatan. Unfortunately, there is a lot more than mere quackery within the FDA.

In 1960, during the much publicized investigation of the drug industry conducted by the Senate, it was revealed that many top FDA officials had been receiving extra-curricular "incentives" from some of the very companies they were supposed to regulate. For example, Dr. Henry Welch, director of the FDA Antibiotic Division, had been paid $287,000 in kick-backs (he called them "honorariums") that were derived from a percentage of drug advertising secured for leading medical journals.

His superiors were fully aware of this conflict of interest but did nothing to terminate it. It was only after the fact was made public and caused embarrassment to the administration that Welch was asked to resign.

In 1940, an incident occurred that, if it been widely publicized, perhaps would have shocked the nation into realizing that the FDA was not protecting the people, but was protecting the cartelists instead. It was at that time that Winthrop Chemical was under fire for shipping 400,000 tablets labelled as "Sulfathiazole," which were found later to contain five grains of Luminal each. One or two grains of Luminal puts people to sleep.

Five grains puts some of them to sleep permanently. These tablets are known to have killed seventeen victims in various parts of the country.

Winthrop Chemical failed to notify the public immediately of the fatally poisonous character of the pills. Instead, the company, with the aid and approval of the A.M.A. Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association, continued to push the sale of the Sulfathiazole pills, thus increasing the number of fatalities. The FDA was sympathetic toward Winthrop Chemical and extremely helpful.

Exercising their bureaucratic powers, Dr. Klumpp, head of the FDA drug division, and his superior, FDA Commissioner Campbell, refrained from prosecuting for the deaths. They helped to hush up the matter and merely revoked Winthrop's license to ship Sulfathiazole for three months, after the market had been glutted with the product. The suspension of shipment for three months was a meaningless gesture. Commenting on this episode, Howard Ambruster adds:

Dr. Klumpp, by this time, had moved onward and upward. He had accepted a position awarded him by Dr. Fishbein and became Director of the A.M.A. division on food and drugs and secretary of its Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry (the same council that had "accepted" Winthrop's Sulfathiazole and approved its advertising). And Dr. Klumpp kept moving.

Not long thereafter, Edward S. Rogers, chairman of the Board of Sterling Products, announced that Dr. Klumpp had been elected president of Winthrop.(1)

1. Ambruster, Treason's Peace, op. cit., p. 213.

Some years later, an antibiotic drug by the name of Chloramphenicol was manufactured and distributed by Parke-Davis and Company. Shortly after it was released, reports began to appear in the medical literature to the effect that Chloramphenicol was responsible for blood toxicity and leukopenia (reduction of the white blood cells), and that it had caused several deaths from aplastic anemia.

The man who was director of the FDA's Bureau of Medicine at that time - and the man who could have ordered Parke-Davis to withdraw this drug from the market - was Dr. Joseph F. Sadusk. Instead of clamping down on Parke-Davis, however, Sadusk used his official position to prevent the drug from being recalled, and even ruled against requiring a precautionary label.

Finally, in 1969, after the drug had earned a substantial profit for its producer, and after it had been replaced by a newer product, Parke-Davis was allowed to get off the hook merely by sending a letter to all physicians stating that chloramphenicol was no longer the drug of choice for any of the infections it originally had been designed to cure.

Soon afterward, Dr. Sadusk left the FDA, supposedly to work at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University. But, within the year, the pay-off was complete: He became vice-president of Parke-Davis and Company.

Dr. Sadusk's successor was Dr. Joseph M. Pisani who shortly resigned to work for The Proprietary Association, the trade association that represents the manufacturers of non-prescription drugs - a part of the very industry Dr. Pisani had "regulated."

Dr. Pisani was replaced by Dr. Robert J. Robinson, whose stay was even shorter than that of his predecessor. He became a top executive at Hoffman-LaRoche, a leading manufacturer of prescription drugs.

Omar Garrison continues the list, in his splendidly researched book, The Dictocrats:

• Dr. Howard Cohn, former head of FDA's medical evaluation, who made a profitable transition from the agency to Ciba Pharmaceutical Company;
   

• Dr. Harold Anderson, chief of FDA's division of anti-infective drugs, who terminated his government employment to take a position with Winthrop Laboratories;
   

• Morris Yakowitz, who felt that a job with Smith, Kline and French Laboratories would offer greater personal rewards than his post as head of case supervision for FDA; and
   

• Allen E. Rayfield, former director of Regulatory Compliance, who chucked his enforcement duties (including electronic spying) to become a consultant to Richardson-Merrell, Inc.(1)

1. Garrison, The Dictocrats, op. cit., pp. 70, 71.

In 1964, under pressure from Congress, the FDA released a list of its officials who, during the preceding years, had left the agency for employment in industry. Out of the eight hundred and thirteen names appearing on that list, eighty-three - better than ten percent - had taken positions with companies they previously regulated.

Many of these people, of course, were from the very top FDA echelons of management - men who were charged with making decisions and issuing directives. While these men were with the FDA, they had access to information regarding the research and processes of all companies. When they went to work for one of those companies, therefore, there is no reason they couldn't have taken that information with them which, obviously, could put the firm that hired them at a tremendous advantage over its competitors.

Here, again, we find the classic pattern of government bureaucratic power being used, not for the protection of the people as is its excuse for being, but for the aggrandizement of individuals holding that power and for the elimination of honest competition in the market place. The voters approve one extension of government power after another always in the naive expectation that, somehow, they will benefit.

But, in the end, they inevitably find themselves merely supporting a larger bureaucracy through increased taxes, paying higher prices for their consumer goods and losing one more chunk of personal freedom.

There are almost no exceptions to this rule, as will be obvious if one but reflects for a moment on the results of government entry into such areas of economic activity as prices and wages, energy conservation, environmental protection, health care and so on.

As the Frenchman, Frederic Bastiat, observed over a hundred years ago, once government is allowed to expand beyond its prime role of protecting the lives, liberty and property of its citizens; once it invades the market place and attempts to redistribute the nation's wealth or resources, inevitably it falls into the hands of those who will use it for "legalized plunder." There is no better way to describe the governments of the world today - and the government of the United States is no exception.

The FDA was added to the ever-lengthening list of government regulatory agencies in 1906, largely as a result of the crusading efforts of a government chemist by the name of Harvey Washington Wiley. Spurred on largely by the organized dairy industry which wanted the government to pass laws which would hinder competition from non-dairy substitutes, Wiley became nationally famous through his books and speeches against "fraud and poison" in our food.

Pioneering the pattern that was followed many years later by Ralph Nader, Wiley succeeded in drumming up tremendous support from both the public and in Congress for government regulation and "protection. " The result was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which created the FDA and gave it wide powers over the food and drug industries. Wiley became its first director.

The first major revision of the Food and Drug Act came in 1938 as a result of a fatal blunder made by the chief chemist at the S.E. Massengill Company of Tennessee. The previous year, one hundred and seven people - mostly children - had died from ingesting an anti-biotic substance known as "Elixir of Sulfanilamide."

The chemist had tested the compound for appearance, flavor and fragrance, but had not tested it for safety.

The attendant publicity resulted in public acceptance of increased powers to the FDA requiring all drug manufacturers to test each new compound for safety and to submit the results of those tests to the agency for approval prior to marketing. The FDA also was empowered to remove from the market any existing substance it believed to be unsafe.

From a strictly theoretical point of view, the first part of this law was beyond reproach, but the second part was a colossal mistake. It is logical to require a food or drug manufacturer to take reasonable steps to insure the safety of his product. It is also logical to require him to place appropriate warnings on his product labels where there is a possibility that its improper use could result in harm.

But to give a government agency the power to prohibit the marketing of a substance because it feels it is unsafe - this was the crack in the dike that eventually destroyed the barrier against the rushing flood waters of favoritism and corruption. After all, most drugs could be removed from the shelves on the truthful assertion that they are unsafe; and, as we have seen, the process by which some are removed and others allowed to remain is not always a scientific one.

As Science magazine reported: The FDA is not a happy place for scientists to work... Several researchers showed the students [who were gathering data on the FDA] atrocity logs in which they kept detailed accounts of assaults on their scientific integrity... The most common complaint was that the FDA "constantly interferes" with medium and long-range research projects, at least partly from fear that the results will embarrass the agency.

The students also criticized the FDA for retaliating against scientists who disagree with its position.(1)

1. "Nader's Raiders on the FDA: Science and Scientists "Misused"' Science, April 17, 1970, pp. 349-352.

Granting the government the power to suppress products because of allegedly being "unsafe" was bad enough. But it was nothing compared to the fiasco that was enshrined into law as the Kefauver-Harris amendments to the Food and Drug Act on October 10, 1962.

Following in the wake of the publicity given to the deformed babies born to European mothers who had taken the drug thalidomide, the new law gave the FDA the power to eliminate any drug product that it claimed was ineffective as well!

The thalidomide scare had no bearing on the new law. First of all, thalidomide was not being used in the United States. And secondly, the birth defects were not caused by a lack of the drug's "effectiveness," but lack of adequate testing to determine "safety" and long-range side effects.(1)

1. Thalidomide has since been shown to be highly effective in the treatment of leprosy patients and has been credited with saving many lives. But, because of government restrictions on its manufacture and use, many leprosy patients are being denied the drug which, to them, could mean the difference between life and death. See "Thalidomide Combats Leprosy," (AP), Boston Globe, June 29, 1969, p. 50. Also, "Horror Drug Thalidomide Now Used to Save Lives of Leprosy Patients," National Enquirer, Nov. 25, 1973, p. 50.

It is almost impossible to prove that any particular drug is effective. What will work for one may not work for another. The test of effectiveness often is a subjective evaluation on the part of the user. Effectiveness can be determined only by the patient either alone or with consultation with his physician. Putting such power into the hands of political appointees with their almost unbroken record of corruption throughout the years is madness.

And, as we shall see in a following chapter, it is precisely this aspect of the "protection racket" that has prevented Laetrile from being available in the United States and, thus, has been responsible for the needless suffering and death of millions.

Perhaps it should be mentioned for the record that most of the employees of the FDA are honest and conscientious citizens who are not participants in fraud, corruption, or favoritism. Most of them, however, are at the lower echelons and have no voice in the policies of the agency they serve. But the higher one climbs within the structure, the greater become the temptations, and the very highest positions of all are reserved for those who have demonstrated their talents, not in the field of science where truth is king, but in the field of politics where truth, often as not, is chained in the deepest dungeon as a dangerous enemy to the throne.

The result of concentrated government power, however, is almost as deadly when wielded by honest men as it is in the hands of those who are dishonest. This point was brought home quite convincingly by Lynn Kinsky and Robert Poole in an analysis prepared by them for Reason magazine.

Discussing the impossibility of determining drug "effectiveness vs. ineffectiveness" for populations as a whole, they wrote:

The uppermost concern of the bureaucratic mind is rules and procedures expressed in countless official forms and paperwork. The inference, in the FDA's case, is that if the bureaucrat does not know how to ensure that a drug is "effective," the next best thing is to require such a mountain of paperwork that the bureaucrat is "covered" at every possible turn.

 

As a result, since the FDA began requiring "effectiveness" documentation, the length of time it takes to get a New Drug Application processed has tripled. Preparing the monumental paperwork adds millions of dollars to a drug firm's research budget - which has the effect of discouraging smaller (perhaps more innovative) firms from even attempting to get new drugs approved.(1)

1. "The Impact of FDA Regulations on Drug Research in America Today," by Lynn Kinsky and Robert Poole, Reason, Vol. 2, No. 9, reprint, pp. 9,10.

It bears repeating that the FDA could not long maintain public confidence if it did not occasionally go after a few genuine villains.

Most of these culprits, however, are small-time operators. The industrial giants often are guilty of the same offenses, but the FDA extends to them an unofficial favored status. One of the reasons for this double standard is that the larger companies have the financial resources to challenge the FDA's actions in the courts, a procedure that often reveals the shabbiness of the agency's work, thus damaging its public image. Since the FDA is especially interested in the favorable publicity resulting from its efforts to "protect the people," it quite naturally prefers to pick on the little guy who cannot afford to fight back.

In 1962, for example, the FDA, in cooperation with state health officials, seized a supply of safflower oil capsules in a small Detroit store on the basis that they were being used to promote the book, Calories Don't Count, by Herman Taller, M.D. It is widely accepted today that, indeed, in a dietary program, calories do not count for many people nearly as much as do the carbohydrates.

But, in 1962, the FDA had declared that this book should not be read by the American people, and especially that safflower oil capsules could not be sold in any way that connected them with the theme of the book. This, in their great wisdom, was declared as false labeling.

Following standard procedure, the FDA tipped off the local news media that a seizure was about to take place and, as a result, when the officials arrived on the scene, members of the press were on hand to fully document and photograph the great raid. Needless to say, the public was both impressed and grateful to learn that their FDA was on the job "protecting" them from such unscrupulous merchants of fraud.

The main point, however, is that the city's largest department store also had been displaying the books and capsules. But, prior to the raid on the smaller store, the FDA had called the officials of the larger store, advised them of the pending seizure, and suggested that they could avoid embarrassing publicity if they would merely remove the offending merchandise quietly and voluntarily.

The agency had correctly reasoned that it could accomplish its goal better by picking on the little guy and avoiding a confrontation with a firm that had the resources to fight back.

Sometimes the failure to treat the big operators with the same harshness as the small is due, not to the fact that they are large, but because they are "in." They are part of the cartel establishment. For example, during the 1970 hearings before the House Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, it was revealed that a small journal was forced by the FDA to publish a retraction of certain statements contained in an advertisement for an oral contraceptive. But the large and prestigious New England Journal of Medicine which carried the same ad was not required to publish any retraction at all.

When asked about this discrepancy, FDA Commissioner Charles Edwards replied that the larger magazine "didn't really mean to offend."(1)

1. "Who Blocks Testing of Anti-Cancer Agent?," Alameda Times Star (Calif.), Aug. 3, 1970.

This is not to say, of course, that the FDA never tackles a larger firm, for occasionally it does. But, when it does, you can be sure that the cards are stacked against the defendant.

Regardless of one's financial resources, unless he is part of the international finpol interlock, he cannot hope to match the unlimited resources of the federal government.

Private citizens must hire attorneys. The government has buildings full of attorneys on the tax payroll just waiting to justify their salaries. It matters not in the least to the FDA how long the litigation drags on, because the delays, postponements, and continuations actually are part of its strategy to bankrupt the defendant with astronomical legal expenses.

In the court proceedings against Dr. Andrew Ivy, for example, the trial lasted for almost ten months. Testimony of 288 witnesses filled 11,900 pages of transcript - enough to make a stack seven feet high. It is estimated that the FDA spent between three and five million dollars of the taxpayers' money. There is no way that the average citizen can hope to match that kind of legal offensive.

On top of this financial handicap, the defendant must face the fact that there are few judges or juries who will have the courage to decide a case against the FDA, whose attorneys are adept at planting in their minds that if they should do so, and if they are wrong, they will be personally responsible for thousands of deaths.

Under this kind of intimidation, a judge or jury is almost always inclined to conclude that they will leave the scientific questions up to the scientific experts (the FDA!), and that they will concern themselves strictly with the questions of law.

However, even in those cases where the court's verdict is favorable to the defendant, he often must face the wrath of FDA officials who then make it a point to harass him and, hopefully, to initiate additional law suits.

Commenting on this aspect of the protection racket, Omar Garrison writes:

During the course of a legal battle which appeared to be going against the government, a ranking FDA official told the defense attorney:

"If this case plays out, we will just work up another lawsuit, you know."

It was not an idle threat. There is documented evidence to show that, in case after case, a respondent exonerated by the court has emerged from the ordeal (often exhausted and bankrupt) only to be faced with a second or even third indictment...

 

The dictocrats seem to reason that sooner or later a defendant will exhaust his financial resources and lose the will to defend himself when he realizes that he is pitted against the limitless potential of the national government.(1)

1. Garrison, op. cit., pp. 153, 156.

The limitless potential of the national government includes a lot more than a battery of tax supported lawyers. Once an individual has incurred the wrath of the FDA, he can expect to find himself the target of harassment from other agencies of the government as well. Probably first at his door will be the man from IRS to scrutinize his tax records with a determination to find something wrong.

If the defendant sells a product, the Federal Trade Commission will take a highly personal interest in his operations. If he has programs on radio or television, the stations that carry his message will be contacted by the Federal Communications Commission and reminded that such programming is not in the public interest.

The man from OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration surely will want to examine his facilities for possible (inevitable) violations of obscure safety and health codes. The Fair Employment Practices Commission may suddenly discover unacceptable employment or hiring practices. If he is a physician, he can look forward to closer attention from PSRO (Professional Standards Review Organization) to evaluate his judgment in the care of his patients.

As a last result, he may even find himself the object of Post Office action resulting in the denial of such a basic business necessity as the delivery of mail. And superimposed upon all these actions there has been the constant and conscious effort of the FDA to secure maximum exposure in the mass media for the dual purpose of perpetuating its own image of "protecting the people" while at the same time destroying the reputations and businesses of those it has singled out for attack.

The advance notice to the press corps of a planned raid or arrest thus becomes an essential part of the FDA's strategy. Even if the defendant eventually is exonerated in court, he will be viewed by the general public as criminally suspect because of the lingering impact of the dramatic news stories and pictures of his arrest.

The economic damage done to the defendant as a result of this carefully contrived publicity often is far greater than any fine or penalty that could be imposed in court.

Lest this sweeping indictment sound too harsh or exaggerated, let us turn our attention next to specific examples and actual cases.
 

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