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Banning Teratogens Credits and Politics |
According to some experts, it was the famous pediatric pioneer Helen
B. Taussig, then at the Johns Hopkins University, and the insistence of
President John F. Kennedy that prompted the FDA tao ban Thalidomide in
the U.S. In fact, the FDA was actually moving slowly toward the approval
of the drug. Credit is also due to Senator Estes Kefauver and his staff
for dramatizing the impending catastrophe through the press in order to
hurry the adoption of the 1962 amendments regulating new drugs (from J.
D. Cooper, "Purpose, Technique and Strategy" in "Regulating New Drugs",
Ed. R. L. Landay, University of Chicago Press and from R.M.Goldberg, "Breaking
Up the FDA's Medical Information Monopoly" in "Regulation, Cato Review
of Business & Government").
