ARE WE SPENDING TOO MUCH ON VITAMINS?
Sheridan, Mary
Are We Spending Too Much On Vitamins? By MARY SHERIDAN IF THE Winthrop Chemical Company is found guilty of Federal court charges of distributing adulterated drugs, the drug manufacturer, according...
...At any rate, the druggists as well as the vitamin manufacturers are making money on vitamin pills...
...After analyzing the products, the Federal investigators asked the Winthrop firm to recall all shipments of the solutions...
...In pther words, vitamin pills are almost as common as toothpaste...
...The Government contends that distilled water used with the drugs was poured into improperly cleaned tanks...
...Vitamin buying has leaped to such high peaks that Dr...
...Winthrop's Second Drug Battle Then the Federal Food and Drug Administration— our food and drug G-men, as Paul Kearney called them in his article in the July 10 issue of The Progressive— swung into action...
...Kretschmer estimated, Americans will spend about $250,000,000 for vitamin preparations...
...The four drugs are dextrose solution (used in spinal anesthesia), atabrine (used to treat malaria), phenarsine hydrochloride, and neoar-sphenamine neosalvarsan (both used to treat syphilis...
...After a Winthrop spinal anesthetic was used at a hospital in Brighton, Mass., unusal symptons developed in seven persons...
...This is Winthrop's second battle with the Government...
...Last Spring and Summer these drugs were shipped to various naval and civilian hospitals...
...Herman L. Kretschmer, new president of the American Medical Association, told the recent AMA convention that Americans are spending too much money on vitamins...
...By MARY SHERIDAN IF THE Winthrop Chemical Company is found guilty of Federal court charges of distributing adulterated drugs, the drug manufacturer, according to U. S. Attorney James B. M. McNally, will face possible fines totaling $120,000—certainly a small price to pay for carelessness which the Government charges has caused the death of one person and seriously affected 30 more...
...We have every reason to believe that the mold in question is penicillium, which is grown at our penicillin plant in Rensselaer...
...If that survey reflects national buying habits, it's good news and a tribute to the stamina and common sense of people who withstand the self-dosing advertising appeals for medical advice...
...A recent report by the New York Trust Company discloses that every third customer in a drug store buys a vitamin preparation...
...Theodore G. Klumpp, Winthrop president, has denied all Federal charges, claiming, "There is no scientific evidence that the solutions...
...However, a survey of vitamin buying habits by one national food chain revealed that 60 per cent of the people who buy vitamin concentrates buy them on a doctor's order, and the inference is that a doctor's order sends them to a drug store, not a grocery, for the buying...
...I*io not wish," he said, "to discredit the enormous progress that has been made in this field, but certainly the people of this country are not in such a state of malnutrition as to require the use of $250,000,000 of vitamins...
...are in any way injurious...
...The excessive claims made for vitamins are beyond any basic evidence," the AMA head went on...
...You don't have to take my word for it...
...One is struck by the close parallelism to the 'patent medicine' advertisement of 25 years ago...
...In 1942 the firm was convicted and fined for distributing "adulterated and misbranded" sulfathiazole tablets estimated to have killed at least 17 people...
...Vitamin Buying Habits As a vitamin crank, I liked the recent ruling of New York's attorney general that concentrated vitamins can be sold only by pharmacists...
...I wouldn't know about that, for in this part of the Middle West few grocers, to my knowledge, stock vitamin pills...
...According to Business Week, food retailers won't make a fuss about the ruling because they "have learned that so-called 'ethical' brands of vitamins are outselling the popular advertised brands usually found on grocer's shelves...
...One of them died...
...The horrible result, the prosecution claims, was that four drugs became contaminated with mold and pyrogens (fever producers...
...Those words from the president of a conservative organization are worth remembering before .spending money for vitamin pills without a doctor's advice...
...Too'Much Money For Vitamins...
...This year, Dr...
...These Winthrop drugs became adulterated, according to Federal charges, because of "faulty methods of operation and laxity of control...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 30
