Word: jacobson
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...Science in the Public Interest have come out against approval. Despite scores of clinical trials in animals and humans and hundreds of thousands of pages of studies, they argue that no one can be certain that olestra won't be a danger to public health. Besides, says Michael Jacobson, cspi's executive director, "we don't need olestra potato chips. It's crazy to add a substance to the food supply that makes people sick...
...free fat falls under the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938 and the food-additives amendment of 1958. According to those laws, olestra can be approved if it carries a "reasonable certainty of no harm" when used as intended. If olestra really makes people sick, as Jacobson and others assert, the agency might well reject it. But after much fretting over the precise definition of harm (and diarrhea as well), a majority of advisory-committee members decided that while the gastrointestinal and nutrient-blocking effects may be inconvenient and even unpleasant, they're almost certainly not harmful...
...enough. "Drugs have to produce evidence of benefit, but food supplements do not," he points out. He is also troubled by the fact that the FDA has no money to do its own studies and thus has to rely almost entirely on research done by the petitioners. cspi's Jacobson too is concerned that responsibility for demonstrating a food's safety is shifting to the wrong hands. He notes, "Judging from the FDA's handling of olestra, it appears that to prevent approval, there would have to be absolute proof that a food additive is harmful. It shifts the burden...
...enough evidence that this product is safe," says TIME's Alice Park. "Olestra seems to deplete the body of essential vitamins, and its use raises some questions about other health risks that we need to know the answers to before it is released to the public." Michael Jacobson, the Center's director, says olestra not only depletes the body of vitamins A, D, and K, and causes unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms, but actually chases cancer-fighting nutrients out of the body. Procter & Gamble, olestra's manufacturer, defends the product, claiming that 8,000 people have tested olestra in food safety studies...
...counted in the Chronicle's comparison were the million dollar salaries earned by some Harvard Management Company (HMC) officials. Jonathan S. Jacobson, a vice president managing the equity portfolio, received...