Medicine: Watchdogs at Work

¶ The Food & Drug Administration, watchdog of U.S. pantry shelves and medicine chests, announced last week that it had seized a shipment of "Slimettes" dietetic candies because of misleading labeling. They were marked "No salt added" and "No sugar added," yet they had a "substantial" salt content and were high in calories.

¶ The Federal Trade Commission forbade the Hayr Chemical Co. of Newark to claim that its product "Hayr" will grow hair and check baldness. In 90% to 95% of baldness, medical science knows no cure, the FTC ruled, and in the remaining cases, (caused by disease) Hayr would have no effect. About the only thing it and similar products may accomplish is to grow a crop of lanugo — a colorless fuzz that never turns into true hair.

¶ Nutritionists meeting at New Jersey's Rutgers University worried about the addition of a synthetic form of lysine (an amino acid) in a commercial infant food called Lactofort. The average U.S. child gets enough lysine in an ordinary diet, said New York University's Pediatrician L. Emmett Holt Jr. Too much may be harmful because it causes the body to lose other amino acids (the so-called "building blocks" of flesh and blood).