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The Politics of Purity: Harvey Washington Wiley and the Origins of Federal Food Policy. By Clayton Coppin and Jack High. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. 219 pp. Bibliography, index, and notes. $49.50. ISBN 0472109847.
Coppin and High are free market economists who believe that government often creates more problems than it solves when intervening in business affairs. In this respect, the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 is a good historical target since numerous authors over the years have portrayed the pioneering regulatory statute as a benefit to business, creating greater consumer confidence and ultimately higher sales. The authors do not address this complex historiographical dispute directly: they do so obliquely by challenging Oscar Anderson's 1958 biography of Wiley, Health of a Nation, and his overall portrait of Wiley as a principled public servant. This is akin to writing a critical biography of Bill Gates, but ignoring both the computer revolution he helped launch as well as the recent actions of the U.S. Department of Justice. Coppin and High ignore the revolution in food and drug regulation and consumer protection inspired by Wiley as well as the history of the thorny scientific issues the Food and Drug Administration continues to confront as part of his legacy.
"The real issues at stake in regulation," according to Coppin and High, were "market share, corporate profit, and bureaucratic growth. These issues, however, were hid behind a cloak of rhetoric about the public interest" (p. 34). They characterize their position as "significantly different" from that of Anderson and other public interest advocates. Given this economic orientation, the book's shortcomings become painfully obvious. To noneconomists, issues and interests other than those of the business community were and continue to be equally "real." What is in foods, what is left out of drugs, and what is on the label of a product offered for purchase: for many people, these remain equally "real" issues. The basic problem for free market economists such as Coppin and High is to explain the outcome of the legislation in terms that recognize as legitimate the expressed interests of consumers. If consumers had not supported the law, most businesses would not have...