Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation - Hardcover

Hilts, Philip J

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 037540466X ISBN 13: 9780375404665

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

Emerging out of the era of the robber barons and Theodore Roosevelt’s desire to “civilize capitalism,” the Food and Drug Administration was created to stop the trade in adulterated meats and quack drugs. In the almost one hundred years since, it has evolved from a squad of eleven inspectors dogging dishonest tradesmen into America’s most important regulatory agency, keeping tabs on the products of about 95,000 businesses and more than $1 trillion worth of goods annually.

This book shows how the agency combats self-serving political and industrial interests and protects Americans from hazardous medicines, medical devices, and foodstuffs while enforcing rigorous scientific standards. Hilts takes us back to the FDA’s beginnings, when it confronted businesses that acknowledged no limitations on what could be brought to market or on the claims they could make for a product. With the coming of the FDA, our government, for the first time, was able to force the removal of toxic elixirs from the shelves and to insist on accurate labeling.

We see the subsequent fights the FDA waged, and won, for mandatory testing, and against such conservatives as―in our own time―Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, who tried to curtail regulation. We see how the FDA protected the American consumer from thalidomide and other lethal pharmaceuticals, how it took on the tobacco industry, and how it stumbled in confronting the deadly mysteries of AIDS. And we are given, as well, a litany of extraordinary corporate excesses that the FDA has exposed and successfully battled.

Protecting America’s Health shows society adapting to both the burgeoning of science and technology and the ascendancy of the capitalist market. It makes startlingly clear the essential role the FDA has played in maintaining and protecting the quality of life―and health―to which the American public has long been accustomed.

About this title

Review

"I commend Phil Hilts for this important work.
(Senator Ted Kennedy)"

"It is a genuinely important book, rich in history, accurate in detail, unflinching in analysis.
(Jerome Groopman, M.D., "The New Republic")"

"This fascinating look at the inside story Ýof the FDA¨ reveals how disastrous unfettered capitalism would be without reasonable regulation.
("Booklist")"

""Protecting America's Health" is a well-researched, well-documented, and well-indexed history of an agency whose policies and decisions are respected and emulated throughout the world."--"Journal of the American Medical Association"
"This fascinating look at the inside story [of the FDA] reveals how disastrous unfettered capitalism would be without reasonable regulation."--"Booklist"
"As the federal government once again starts talking about cuts, this book offers a sober reminder of the importance of maintaining vigorous protections against the dangers of profit-motivated decisions."--"Publishers Weekly"
"Because history does repeat itself, and because we depend on the FDA to ensure our safety, this book is important. Those who are curious about what the FDA can and cannot do will enjoy the revelations and thought-provoking argument."--"New England Jour

"Philip J. Hilts's book forcefully captures the complexity and the drama of the government's attempt to oversee the imperfect science of medical treatment. It is a genuinely important book, rich in history, accurate in detail, unflinching in analysis. Above all, it causes us to think differently about the FDA, which has so often served as a convenient whipping boy for frustrated constituencies across the political spectrum."--Jerome Groopman, M.D., "The New Republic"
"[Hilts] writes both with a historian's attention to dissection and analysis and with the flourish and vividness of an experienced journalist aware of the drama inherent in the story he is telling."--Sherwin Nuland, M.D., "New York Times Book Review"

""Protecting America's Health" is a history of the FDA from its origins as a tiny office within the Department of Agriculture in the nineteenth century to the battles over tobacco and AIDS during the 1990s. A lesser writer might have produced a drear

About the Author

Philip J. Hilts has written about medicine for the Washington Post and the New York Times (since 1989). He is the author of Smokescreen: The Truth Behind the Tobacco Industry Cover-Up, Memory’s Ghost: The Nature of Memory and The Strange Tale of Mr. M., and Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary Science, a finalist for the National Book Award. He and his wife live in Brookline, Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 037540466X
• ISBN 13: 9780375404665
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416