ee

ake STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
e STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 © (415) 321-1200

 

Stanrorp UNiversiry SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Department of Genetics

February 17, 1970

Hon. Gaylord Nelson
United States Senate
Washington, D.C.

Dear Senator Nelson:

May I offer my enthusiastic encouragement in support of your pro-
posals to establish a national saftey testing laboratory and to set up
rigorous requirements for testing. food additives, drugs, and other con-
sumer products for chronic biological effects. Gene mutation, cancer,
and fetal damage are xnxaxdxa insidicus but important hazards that must
be scrutinized in advance of release of. widely used, and often highly
dispensable, products. Once a product is released, it becomes very
difficult to trace its injurious effects on the population whichis al-
ready exposed to such a complex array of other environmental insults.

The cyclamate affair brings out another crucial requirement. Secre-
tary Finchts decision to ban cyclamates from general use must be congra-
tulated. But I must condemn the kind of public information that was as-
sociated with the announcement of the decision. Many neople were led to
believe that the decision was an arbitrary one, necessitated only by the
rigorous language of the Delaney amendment, and that cyclamates might in
fact be regarded as unlikely to cause any harm in man. No effort was made
to educate the public about the cogent scientific reasons for prohibiting
the general consumption of cyclamates, or about the experimental difficulties
of testing such products in animals to verify their safety in man.

Unless ways can be found of improving public information on these
subjects, there will not be the underatanding of the problems on which
wise, democratically viable decisions can be reached and enforced. I
look forward to hearings on your bills as one approach to this difficulty.

One source of the difficulty in the cyclamate case is the clumsiness
and delay in conventional scientific publication. To this date, there is
still no convenient way xnxwkisk for a scientist to read the details of
the experiments on bladder cancer that have underlain the administrative
actions. I can suggest two administrative expedients that also deserve
legislative endorsement: 1) to make the facilities of the technical report
distribution services of the DOD and other governmental agencies available
for the prompt documentation of laboratory studies relevant to public
health, or to set up a comparable service through the National Library of
Medicine; 2) require that data furnished by additive and drug manufacturers
that bear adversely on a product be available for detailed publication and
general critical scrutiny.

Yours cordia pe

Sasaa rent y-
Professor of Geneti

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE