RESOLUTION OF Sorosis Club of Cleveland, OHIO Hon. ROBERT CROSSER, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. CLEVELAND, OHIO, DEAR SIR: The Cleveland Sorosis Club, an organization of nearly 175 members, endorses the Federal Food and Drugs Act, Bill S-1944 and asks that you support it. We would appreciate having our resolution included in the official record of the hearing on the bill. Very sincerely yours, (MRS. LEWIS) FLORABELL WINTERMUTE, Corresponding Secretary. 17601 WINSLOW ROAD, Shaker Heights, Ohio. STATEMENT OF MARCUS KASAN, OF THE KASAN, ANDERSON & KASAN, ATTORNEYS FOR THE CHICAGO PROPRIETARY PACKAGE MEDICINE ASSOCIATION Mr. KASAN. A thorough consideration and investigation of the Food and Drugs Act of June 30, 1906, and its amendments thereto, wherein "Regulation 1 gives the title of the act as an act for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for the regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes", proper interpretation of these words covers every conceivable form of violation and for the purposes of authority leave no additional powers that can be properly granted to the administrators of the act. Regulation 2: Scope of the act: The provisions of the act apply to foods and to drugs which have been shipped or delivered for shipment in interstate commerce or which are exported or offered for export to foreign countries, it will readily be seen from this provision that the scope of the act is unlimited. Regulation 3: Collection of samples and evidence for action under sections 1, 2, and 10. Section 3 of same provides a sample for examination by or under the direction and supervision of the Food and Drug Administration shall be collected by an authorized agent of the Department of Agriculture and in a subsequent amendment it is also provided for seizure of any article in transit that may be of a questionable nature. Regulation 4 provides for a method of analysis of the seizure. Regulation 5 provides for hearings and trial and criminal prosecution. Paragraph c of regulation 5. Regulation 8 provides for standards for drugs. Regulation 14: Label, section 8, paragraph a, the term "label", as used in the act, includes any legend and descriptive matter or design appearing upon the article or its container, and also includes circulars, pamphlets, and the like which are packed and go with the article to the purchaser, and such letters, circulars, and pamphlets to which reference is made either on the label attached to the package or on the package itself; the most perfunctory glance at this section demonstrates a profound insight into the practical end of the patent medicine business formidable and complete in every detail, a thing conspicuous by its absence in the proposed Tugwell bill. Regulation 23 provides certain adulterations not corrected by label, section 7, proper labeling alone will not remove an article from the operation of the law. Certain forms of adulteration, e.g., the addition of a poisonous or deleterious ingredient which may render the article injurious to health, cannot be corrected by any form of labeling. This section demonstrates the wide scope of this act. Regulation 24: Substances required to be stated on the label. Regulation 25: Method of stating quantity or proportion. Regulation 26: Statement of weight, measure, or count. Regulation 27 provides for articles intended for export. Regulation 31 provides for alterations and amendments of regulations. These regulations may be altered or amended at any time without previous notice, with the concurrence of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Commerce. The foregoing rules and regulations are hereby adopted, effective on this date, and all previous regulations for the enforcement of the Federal Food and Drug Act are hereby rescinded. WASHINGTON, D.C., October 31, 1930. A. W. MELLON, Secretary of the Treasury. From the foregoing it is evident to anyone that cares to read and who has some knowledge of law and of the modus operandi of the Department of Agriculture in its handling of these matters that within their hands rest the civil life of the manufacturer or seller, via analysis after purchase or seizure of the questioned article, trial, finding, and postal fraud order which if put into execution obliterates the manufacturer or seller as though he never existed supra regulation 3. Regulation 5 provides for criminal prosecution of the one charged with an offense against these laws, with a punishment running as high as 1 year imprisonment and a $1,000 fine, which if analyzed means that in lieu of the defendant possessing the necessary $1,000 he may be compelled also to serve 4 years in prison. These punishments seem to us severe enough to even satisfy a lust for blood should one be so fastidious in his just indignation; these remedies which include the high prerogative writ of extra-judicial injunction, i.e. the fraud order stopping all business relations with the world at large with imprisonment added, make it seem to us like the execution of a man plus a 10-year sentence at hard labor and in our humble opinion legal verbiage inflicting any additional tortures for purposes of making one more ethical are almost impossible of conception; insofar as punishment is concerned the proposed bill has added nothing to it. The same is true of the regulations heretofore prescribed with reference to the conduct of the business; its language cannot be more severe or direct or demanding of a higher code of ethics in any business. In contradistinction to the intriguing and mysterious title given the proposed bill, whose ramifications under section 1, title 1, in its finish "and for other purposes" transcends all of the realms of fable and mystery. Plus section 2 (j). Whose definition of the term advertisement (includes all representations of fact or opinion disseminated in any manner or by any means other than by the labeling) surely reaches the ethereal and lacks every compliment to the intelligence of the American public and Congress, its palpable vagueness being so patent that the proponent of this bill must justly be deemed to be a deep student and reverencer of the late Barnum and Bailey and its definition of humanity. Another literary gem is section 3 of the proposed act, which provides as follows: Adulteration of food. A food shall be deemed adulterated (a) (1) if it is or may be dangerous to health. Also section 4 (a) similarly relating to adulteration of drugs. Also section 5 (a) similarly relating to adulteration of cosmetics, and by the wide spaces for interpretation left in same demonstrates to the unwary and uninitiated how careful they should be before they sign on the dotted line. The foregoing three comments on the life's-blood definitions in the bill proposed will hardly be seriously questioned by the makers and best friends of same, and for the purposes of review we shall conclude with this statement: We represent a group of proprietary package medicine firms who directly and indirectly employ some 3,000 people at the present time. This number has but lately been reached; to within 4 or 5 months ago it did not exceed 500, and it is their voice that I am asking you to listen to. We can only guess at the motive of the bill in question that is contemplated, from exhibit 1 hereto attached known as the "Tabloid News", November 24, 1933, volume 1-issue no. 8, a publication that has but recently come to life and which seems to be working with the American Medical Association and a subsidiary named the Consumers Research League, Inc., of Washington, N.J., wherein the family of the President of the United States, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Mrs. Anna Dall, are drawn into this controversy on behalf of the American Medical Association and the various doctors espousing this bill, and there is great capital made in this issue of the fact that an excessive price was paid for a cure for diabetes, same having been exhibited to the astonished ladies aforesaid at Dr. Tugwell's showing at his chamber of horrors, wherein they also exhibited death certificates of the users of these remedies; the expounder of this article, which is headed Rout the Medicine Makers!, failed to add that the ladies in question, if they had been more perceptive than horrified and had looked at the death certificates and noted the ages upon them, they would have found that the users of these remedies, instead of dying from diabetes, die from old age. The above-exhibited at the World's Fair, plus the public platform, the radio, the newspaper, and the all-powerful moving picture, as propaganda for the passage of this act, makes one doubt the merits of this bill, of its sincerity, as in human experience a thing that is reasonable will stand of its own weight, without all of these supporting columns and crutches advanced for this bill, and makes it seem as though the medical profession were heavily affected by the late depression and in their just energy and ambition were seeking a new source of revenue by compelling people to resort to them for prescriptions, purchases of medicine, and medical treatment in the most trivial matters. This would of course be very good for the doctors but a trifle exacting upon the said John Public, whom the proponents of this bill are with such vim and vigor protecting and saving from disintegration. And by its context renders it liable at the hands of persons who are not so charitably inclined to be the recipient of that undesirable public comment so colloquially used in this modern age and termed "a racket", which has been known to conclude many public careers and measures and, of course, it is but right to assume that everyone connected with this measure desires to give no room for such reference. Therefore in keeping with out first comment that we represent close to 3,000 people of the common strata of life, just the average workman and his family that are holding jobs at the present time, we know they do not rate very high in a social scale, but we also feel that they are here and once born have the same right any other person has under the Constitution; they are not here because they sought # to come here and they will go without wanting to go when the time comes; we cannot order them executed because they are too many, and we have no sterilization act that may perform that function for us, therefore, we must provide a living for them and they have the right to the enjoyment of an honest day's work for a fair day's pay; they want no dole, these people whom we represent tasted the bitter bread of charity all of last winter, it did not go over so big. The experience of an able-bodied man walking the streets with a family at home without food and without food himself, with no money in his pocket and in reality not a place to sleep, are such as, I am sure, the gentlemen of this committee are unacquainted with, but the endurance and the suffering of the people engaged in the trade on whose behalf this brief is filed are beseeching you gentlemen not to hurl them back into the street by the passage of your mysterious bill, as the old act is more than sufficient to cover everything that you propose in your new act and the people in whose behalf we speak are but a very small part of the mass involved in this legislation, and the day you pass this Tugwell bill giving dictatorial power wholly unnecessary and un-American to the Secretary of Agriculture to destroy any patent-medicine firm in America, you want to be sure, as an act of courtesy, that you also attach a rider to said bill providing a reasonable upkeep per week for close to half a million people, as that many would be affected directly or indirectly and they would have every right in the world to look to the Government that enacted this bill, to provide something suitable in the way of a livelihood to take the place of their present means of sustenance. ROUT THE MEDICINE MAKERS [The Tabloid, Philadelphia, Pa., Nov. 24, 1933] Dispatches from the Nation's capital indicate that no less a personage than Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt has interested herself in the drive to make advertising untruths illegal. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rex Tugwell, author of the proposed Tugwell bill, which will be presented to the next Congress as a means of providing Federal control over advertising of food, drug, and cosmetic products, is declared by George Durno, International News Service correspondent at Washington, to have enlisted the aid of Mrs. Roosevelt and her daughter, Mrs. Anna Dall, in his campaign. The First Lady and Mrs. Dall motored to the Agricultural Building wherein Tugwell has set up his "chamber of horrors." They were astonished at the significant display. They viewed with alarm the "cure" for diabetes, which sells for $12 a pint. Alongside the carton containing the nostrum they saw a group of testimonials from persons reputedly cured by the faked "cure." And on the other side they saw the death certificates of the same persons. They also saw the picture of a truly beautiful woman who ranked high socially in a Midwestern town. Later, they saw a horrible photograph of her sightless eyesthe result of having her eyelashes dyed with a certain preparation in anticipation of attending a testimonial banquet her grateful clubwomen were tendering. That particular preparation was exposed as a fraud in a recent issue of the Tabloid. Mrs. Dall will comment on the startling exhibition in her Liberty Magazine column. Mrs. Roosevelt vowed she would lecture on the subject. Both ladies were honestly horrified. And well they might be. The United Medicine Manufacturers of America, in their recent Chicago convention, drew up imposing regulations condemning the proposed Tugwell bill, outlining 17 specific points to which they objected. With their battle cry calling attention to the "inalienable right to self medication" being sounded, the organization drew plans for a concerted drive to nullify the Tugwell bill. Extensive propaganda, a lobby on Congress, and the enlistment of allied industries will be used to defeat the proposed law. The medicine makers must not succeed. The Food and Drug Administration, whose powers would be greatly increased under the Tugwell bill, answer the medicine makers' complaints with the single argument: "Is the right to self medication denied by requiring that drugs be labeled with directions for use under which they will not be dangerous to health? Or requiring that drugs actually possess the remedial value ascribed to them in their labeling? "Will the right of the consumer to medicate himself be abrogated by requiring the identity of drugs to be revealed on the label, so he can have full knowledge of what he is getting and whether it is habit forming?" The answer to these questions is, of course, no. FAKE SHAMPOO SELLS FOR $1.05 BOTTLE BUT IS ONLY SALT WATER BY HARVEY LEROY Mix together 5 ounces of water, a pinch of salt, and a couple drops of perfume and what have you? A preparation worth nothing? No, kind reader, you have a bottle of "Oyloff Dry Shampoo." And you'll pay $1.05 for it, too. At least that is the contention of the makers of this nostrum, who advertise the water-salt-perfume mixture as the finest shampoo on the market. The Godefroy Manufacturing Co., of St. Louis, who make "Oyloff Dry Shampoo" did a rushing business until the American Medical Association got wise to them. The manufacturers were not a bit bashful in their unusual claims for their salt and water product as is evidenced by the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The article quotes an advertisement which appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal, as follows: "Amazing new liquid makes shampooing quick, easy, right at your dressing table. "Here is what you have always wanted, a thrilling new way to shampoo your hair in 15 minutes without washing out your wave." The A.M.A. purchased a bottle of the stuff to find out what it contained. (Article doesn't say whether or not the Medical Association was thrilled.) The cost of the bottle was $1.05, the liquid coming "in a most modernistic container, characteristically of the present high-hat tendency in the cosmetic trade." The chemical laboratory of the A. M.A. analyzed the preparation and announced that "Qualitative tests indicated the presence of sodium and chloride. No heavy metals, carbonates, sulphates, alkaloids, and soap were found. The specific gravity, etc. * * * "From the foregoing tests it was concluded that Oyloff is essentially a colored solution of dairy salt (commercial table salt) with a dash of perfume.' The A.M.A. article continues: "From the chemists' report we learn that this 'amazing' product that reveals the 'romance of your hair' and that will 'thrill you' is, essentially a pinch of salt in 5 ounces of water-incidentally the bottle states 'net contents, 6 ounces.' Paying $1.05 for 5 ounces of salt water would seem, under present economic conditions, to furnish a text for a discussion on certain phases of modern business." Senator HOMER T. BONE, Washington, D.C. NATIONAL SANIPRACTIC ASSOCIATION, HONORABLE SIR: Nearly 1,500 people, incensed at the autocratic attempt of the American Medical Association, in reality the biggest trust in America, to become dictator in health matters through Rexford G. Tugwell and his so-called food, drug, and cosmetic bill, gathered at the Masonic Temple here Friday evening to give voice to their objections. |