ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several cases in diverse product areas, and in one case a medical test, referring to such subthemes as lack of information about risk and underreporting of injuries. In the case of caffeine, the population of the United States appears as a vast laboratory of experimental animals without the cages. In 2010 an Institute of Medicine study underlined a conclusion from a 2005 report that "there is a lack of scientific agreement about the amount of sugars that can be consumed in a healthy diet." The food and drug administration's (FDA's) caution about caution was evident in a statement indicating that, as a reporter summarized it, "there was no proof that bisphenol A (BPA) was dangerous to humans." In 2009 Congress gave the FDA power—which it had not done before—to regulate some tobacco products. In the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, it banned flavored cigarettes although excluding menthol cigarettes from the ban.
