This is the story of how the Food and Drug Administration failed in its mission to protect the national health during the years of the Reagan-Bush presidencies. Undeterred by the FDA's notorious secretiveness and its penchant for treating critics as pariahs, the novelist and investigative journalist Herbert Burkholz has unearthed a wealth of damning information about the FDA. The book shows how a decade of indifference turned this vital agency responsible for ensuring the safety of our food and drugs into a partner with industry - and the consumer's worst friend. The FDA Follies is a fascinating saga, revealing in full for the first time: how a few generic drug manufacturers bribed FDA reviewers into getting their products to the marketplace early, how a determined band of AIDS activists took on the FDA and forever changed the way our drugs are approved and marketed, how the FDA and the blood bank industry let precious years slip by while the nation's blood supply was contaminated with the HIV virus, how the agency approved faulty heart valves that killed and silicone breast implants that flattered women while maiming them, and how those famous killer grapes from Chile were actually poisoned in the FDA's own laboratories. The book concludes with an analysis of how a reformed agency under new and active leadership in the 1990s is struggling to retrieve its credibility and authority and become once again the proper guardian of the national health.

A flock of rejected suitors -- A clear and urgent need -- The man in the coonskin cap -- A mess in Rockville -- Toys 'R Us -- Vitamins, hurricans, and killer grapes -- The AIDS gridlock -- "Penicillin couldn't get through that fast" -- Thicker than water -- Eat it, it's good for you! -- The wunderkind -- Commencement day.