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WELCOME Donald S. Fredrickson President Institute of Medicine On behalf of the Academy and its Institute of Medicine, I would like to welcome you to the second day of the Academy Forum on sweeteners. I was reminded last year in London, by a ruddy-faced and tweed- enwrapped general practitioner from the Highlands, that it was Henry Fielding who said that the best sweeteners for a cup of tea were "love and a little bit of scandal." It was an appropriate occasion for such a reminder. I was there to participate in a debate, which the BBC was filming as part of its regu- lar controversy series, on the proposition: "Sucrose causes most of the early coronary disease." The affirmative was taken, as you might expect, by Professor John Yudkin, and I joined several young British physicians in the negative. It was a long program, held in the Royal Institution and behind the desk where Faraday did his demonstrations. During the filming, my informant again leaned over from the gallery, which was packed with people who all looked very much like herself, and said, "You know, with regard to Fielding's prescription, now that I have gotten so old, I have got to make do with a few lumps of the 'pure white' meself." I do not know whether we won or lost the debate. This byplay with the audience, however, did make me more sympathetic than I had been to some aspects of the greater problem with which this Forum seeks to deal. Peter Hutt, the very able Counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, and I have had a number of small discussions -- over unsweetened coffee -- about the tremendous mandate of the FDA and its limited resources for fulfilling it. For some time it has been my view that what the FDA must be concerned with, or what it chooses to be concerned with, has too much to do with the excesses of a self-indulgent and over-consuming society in relation to the industries that profit from these foibles. ll9
l20 I would like to see the regulation of those matters turned back to the principals so that the government can get on with the more important matters of health and safety. However, I do not think that many people share my view, and I do not deny at all that the subject of this Forum is an extremely important one. Indeed, I am very glad that the Insti- tute of Medicine has been able to participate in one of the studies related to it. Without any further welcome, I would like to introduce the cochair- man of this meeting and your chairman for today, Dr. Carl Pfaffmann from the Rockefeller University.
