Washington — There will be an ever-increasing demand for vitamins, minerals and foods for special dietary purposes despite pressures to abolish alleged medical “quackery,” according to Charles O. Pratt, Washington counsel for the National Vitamin Distributors Association.

Pratt, reporting on the First National Congress on Medical Quackery, urged NVDA members to plan for expanded business, with due care for compliance with applicable food and drug laws.

The Congress on Medical Quackery, held here in October, was sponsored by the American Medical Association and the Federal Food and Drug Administration. It was designed to alert the public to the dangers and exorbitant expense which, it was said, resulted from the use of health care other than under the care of medical doctors and the use of foods and drugs whose labeling and purpose were intended to mislead and defraud the public.

Abraham Ribicoff, the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, told the congress that, to protect the public, steps were being taken to correct abuses in the manufacturing, packaging and advertising practices of the food and drug industries.

“It is a well known fact,” Ribicoff said, “that we do not always agree on every subject — the AMA and myself. But we do agree on more things than we disagree on, and there is no reason why we cannot work wholeheartedly together to do away, once and for all, with the menace of quackery.”

He said he expected a new surge of proposed restrictive legislation, but that he did not believe that the U.S. Congress would attempt to take away the right to manufacture and sell dietary food supplements. He stressed that laws now in force are adequate to provide prosecution of violators on the Food and Drug Act.

Statements to the effect that the Government should investigate the “food fad racket which is bilking the American public of some 500 million dollars a year” should not be cause for alarm for those who comply with the laws in the manufacture and sale of dietary good supplements, Pratt declared.

The NVDA, he said, will defend itself against unfair treatment from the Government, from the public and the dishonest elements in the industry itself.

But he emphasized that the Food and Drug Commissioner has always been fair to NVDA members and expressed confidence in the aims of Ribicoff.

He also cited the rising cost of high-priced drugs and medicines and the cost of medical care traceable to the shortage of doctors in many places as reasons why people will turn more and more to the use of diet supplements.