Have you ever read nutritional studies? The statistics relations are pretty minor and subject to confounding variables. The scientists publishing the studies know that. The media reporting it, does not.  Take anything of that nature with a huge grain of salt. Other studies are considerably more robust, and your job as an informed individuals is to know the difference. 

Thalidomide was an unforseeable tragedy. Even today (let alone 60 years ago) there's no simple way to know in advance if something like that will happen. To their credit they stopped it the instant the problems became apparent. 

What happened to "global cooling"? Oh, that's right, we dumped a whole bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere and overwhelmed what may have been a slight cooling process.  The Sun is still getting slightly dimmer to this day due to declining sunspot cycles, but that's hidden under anthropogenic influences.