Sir.—I am writing to respond to the review by Dr Hossein Ghadimi (Am J Dis Child 130:340, 1976) of the book entitled Intravenous Nutrition in the High Risk Infant, edited by Dr Eileen Hasselmeyer and me.
In addition to the accepted roles of scientific critic and proofreader, with which I have no quarrel, Dr Ghadimi has assumed the role of pundit in making allegations that cannot be substantiated from the contents of our book.
Thus he states that "Dr Winters remains the staunch defender of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and pharmaceutical companies." Evidence to justify the intent of this sentence is nowhere apparent in the book. In fact, the only place where the FDA or the pharmaceutical industry is even mentioned occurs on page 247 in an open discussion following a formal paper by Dr Halvor Christensen. In his paper (page 240), Dr Christensen suggested, "Some means