Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [183]
The Elixir of Sulfanilamide scandal of 1937 was another important event in the history of food and drug legislation; it strengthened the hand of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which administered the act. “Sulfa” was the great wonder drug of its day, the first true antibiotic, an amazing cure for many diseases. But some people had trouble swallowing pills. A drug company, the Massengill Company, wanted to sell the drug in liquid form. The drug, it turned out, could be dissolved in diethylene glycol, without ruining its taste and appearance. Unfortunately, as tests would have shown, this “elixir” had one small drawback: it was a deadly poison. More than a hundred people died before the FDA managed to pull the “elixir” off the market. But the law, as it then stood, did not allow for criminal prosecution, despite the deaths. The FDA could only fine the company for mislabeling. Congress, aroused by the scandal, gave the FDA much greater power. After 1938, no one could market any new drug without prior approval from that agency.46
FDA, the federal agency, became the dominant force in controlling the marketing of food, drugs, and cosmetics, and in protecting the public from dangerous products. But the states did not leave off legislating. They created their own little FDAS. By the late forties, some twenty-two states had adopted acts more or less patterned after the federal law.47 A model state act, coordinated with the federal version, was drafted; and Indiana adopted it in 1939.48 Every state had food laws, usually many of them, covering food in general, or particular foods, or some combination. Hardly a session went by in any state, without some fresh contributions. In 1929, Wyoming outlawed the sale of eggs “unfit for human food,” eggs that were “addled or mouldy” or containing “black spot, black rot, white rot, or blood ring; or ... a stuck yolk or a bloody or green white (albumin),” or eggs that consisted “in whole or in part of a filthy, decomposed, or putrid substance.”49 Milk and dairy products were particular favorites of legislation; meat and meat products were others.
Many of the hundreds of health and safety laws, like the oleo laws, were far from pure in their motivations. But this is not to deny genuine concern about health and safety. This country was enormous; society was complex and technologically advanced. There was a heightened sense of danger; we were all at the mercy of strangers: the people who made our food, built our cars, flew the airplanes or drove the buses we rode on, poured the concrete for the buildings we worked in, installed elevators, boilers, furnaces, machinery of all types. What controls were there over their behavior? We never saw these people face to face—the builders, the workmen, the designers. We relied on law to keep them honest and true; we relied on law to protect our own hides.
But dependence on strangers was only half of the story. The other half was popular faith in the magic of science and technology. Unlike our ancestors, we came to believe that there was a way to cure or prevent disease, avoid accidents, save lives—a technological fix. Not surprisingly, there were swindlers who took advantage of this faith—men like William J. A. Bailey, who sold “radium water,” a nostrum that put an end to medical problems permanently by killing the drinkers. Bailey, who was arrested in 1915, and again in 1927, also sold a belt that would “ionize the adrenal glands” by its “biopositive radiation,” along with similar devices.50 The naive people who bought radioactive belts and quack nostrums were more gullible than most; but the whole population, by and large, shared a core belief in the wonders of a scientific age. Out of this belief came a demand for more law, more rules, more