Profits First
MacEoin, Gary
Profits First HUNGRY FOR PROFITS: U.S. FOOD AND DRUG MULTINATIONALS IN LATIN AMERICA, by Robert J. Ledo-gar. IDOC/North America, 235 East 49th Street, New York, 10017. 209 pp. paperback....
...Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the U.N...
...A tin of food designed to last for a few days is stretched out for two or three weeks...
...in girls, an increase in body hair, male-pattern baldness, deepening of the voice, and clitoral enlargement...
...In the words of D.B...
...in boys, premature enlarging of the penis and increased frequency of erections...
...policy...
...Drugs of this kind, the AMA warns, "should not be used to stimulate growth in children who are small but otherwise normal and healthy...
...Even more shocking are the techniques described in Hungry for Profits to persuade low-income mothers to bottle-feed their children...
...Gary MacEoin is the author of "No Peaceful Way: The Chilean Struggle for Dignity, " which focuses on the role of the transnationals in destabilizing the Allende government...
...and European transnational drug companies vie fiercely with each other to promote consumption of drugs for purposes which are either prohibited in the United States or allowed only in last-resort situations...
...Disturbances in girls are "usually irreversible even after prompt discontinuance of therapy...
...Winstrol's FDA-approved packet insert warns that Winstrol can cause serious disturbances of growth and sexual development in young children...
...They can do this, in part, because of inadequate regulation and policing and because of their power to override or ignore the regulations...
...This is done," Ralph Nader notes in his introduction to Hungry for Profits, "in the familiar context of corruption and gross underregulation by the government...
...4.95...
...GARY MacEOIN Winstrol is the brand name of a synthetic male sex hormone marketed by Winthrop Products (a subsidiary of Sterling Drug Co...
...Ledogar concludes with the important point that, while international control of the food and drug industries is of extreme urgency, the giants cannot be reformed in isolation...
...Boxes of Winstrol tablets bought in Brazil in 1973 and 1974 recommended them for "appetite loss and malnutrition," also for "thinness" and "alterations in nutrition and growth in children...
...The related area of soft-drink and food processing suffers from similar distortions...
...They have demonstrated that a society hungry for profits can produce only societies hungry for nourishment and well-being...
...Dangerous drugs such as Winstrol are sold in the United States only on a doctor's prescription and with FDA-approved warnings as to their dangers...
...In their search for profits, the drug companies push over-medication of the upper classes, while pricing needed drugs beyond the means of the masses...
...It is harsh, but correct, to consider some of these children as suffering from 'commerciogenic malnutrition'—that is, caused by the thoughtless promotion of these milks and infant foods...
...Similarly, locally produced fruit-based soft drinks are being steadily displaced by zero-nutrition Coca-Cola and Pepsi, thanks to massive capital input combined with the ability to modify laws in favor of the mass producers...
...The insert in the Winstrol boxes in the Dominican Republic recommends the drug for an even wider range of conditions, promising improved appetite, vigor, and the sensation of well-being...
...While many Brazilians suffer from vitamin C deficiency, Brazil exports 97 per cent of its orange crop to companies such as Coca-Cola...
...The U.S...
...A favorite technique is to supply drug products free in the hospital, causing the mother's milk supply to decrease, so that she is unable to satisfy the infant when she gets home...
...In Latin America, it is generally possible to buy such drugs without prescription, and—as Robert J. Ledo-gar and his research team, in Hungry for Profits, confirmed in many countries—the inserts in the drug packages give no adequate warning of the dangers...
...premature stunting of growth in both sexes...
...Meaningful controls would cut profits, shift the capital to areas of higher yield, and result in stagnation in these industries in poor countries, not necessarily lower prices or provide more availability of benefits to the poor...
...The huge food companies have the demonstrated technology to provide nutritious foods and drinks for the starving masses, but higher profits are made by growing food for export, or transferring land previously used for cheap high-protein plants to feed grains for poultry that only middle-class people can afford...
...And that must begin with a radical change of official U.S...
...General Assembly in August 1975 that the very controversy over the role and conduct of these corporations is "itself an obstacle to development...
...Control of the food and drug transnationals must be coherent and all-embracing, if they are not to continue the kind of distortion illustrated in this book...
...in the United States and many other countries...
...Jelliffe, head of the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute, the results are "starvation and diarrhea, too often leading to death...
...In this rigorously documented book, Ledogar shows that U.S...
...A special pediatric version of the drug is recommended for "alterations in nutrition and growth of children of preschool age...
...The transnational pharmaceutical industry must compete with other industries for investment capital...
...Credit is due the Consumers' Union of the United States for financing the research for Hungry for Profits and to Ledogar's associates: Bernardo Kucin-ski, Susan Gross, Alan Howard, Rick Edwards, and Laurie M. Kramer...
...Food and Drug Administration limits its use to treatment of aplastic anemia and pituitary dwarfism, and as a supplement in treating a bone disease, osteoporosis...
Vol. 40 • October 1976 • No. 10
