Reception
The book proved to be extremely popular and a national bestseller in the years immediately following its release, and at least 13 printings of the book were published in the first six months of publication. Public reaction to the book was very strong. Many people were shocked at the extent of food contamination and drug side-effects, and 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs (along with several other books of a similar nature at the time) came at a period when a new consumer movement emerged. It is often cited, along with American Chamber of Horrors by Ruth De Forest Lamb, as being one of the key catalysts for increased government regulation over food and drugs in the United States, and leading to the passage in 1938 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
The book was the subject of strong opposition from several quarters - not just vested interests such as the drug companies, but also from the medical fraternity. The book was frequently criticized for being sensational propaganda, and many at the time questioned the credentials of the authors (both engineers) and the accuracy of the claims. Several professionals in the medical industry also pointed to the unscientific and spurious conclusions reached, with one commenting of "data fantastically exploited and erroneously interpreted" "extreme and unrealistic conclusion" and "authors with technical qualifications more pronounced in the art of sensationalism than the sciences of biology, chemistry, or public health".
Today, many of the authors scientific conclusions are indeed thought to have been mistaken - for example they claimed that bran (roughage) had many negative impacts on the intestine, which contradicts today's view that bran in moderation is beneficial to the intestines.
However it still remains an influential book on the topic of consumer affairs. Nearly forty years later, in 1972, John G. Fuller published his expose of the food, drug and cosmetic industries, honoring Kallet and Schlink by entitling his book 200,000,000 Guinea Pigs: New Dangers in Everyday Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics. In the Introduction, Fuller wrote, "Today, nearly forty years later, the situation is worse, not better…Time bombs are ticking away in several dark corners…It is 1933 all over again — multiplied by logarithms. The difference is only a matter of form."
Read more about this topic: 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)