lop commercial quantities . A 1968 Montreal Gazette article, “These Monkeys May Save Your Teeth,” reported that one practical application for dextranase under consideration was “to mix it with raw sugar and use it as a powder on desserts and cakes and in soft drinks” . Cohen was described as having “little sympathy for those who would ban sweet things,” and was quoted as saying “Why should people be denied pleasure? It would obviously be far better to eliminate the harmful effects” . While at the time there was less attention paid to scientific conflicts of interest than in 2015, the article mentioned that a grant from the Nuffield Foundation funded the building of the research unit that housed the monkeys, but not that the sugar or chocolate and confectionary industries were also supporting Cohen’s work .
Setting Research Priorities for the National Caries Program, 1968–1969
At a June 1968 press conference, NIDR Director Kreshover announced the creation of the Caries Task Force chaired by NIDR Laboratory of Microbiology chief Henry Scherp to develop the NCP . A subcommittee, the Caries Task Force Steering Committee, was assigned the essential task of identifying research priorities . Task force members were largely drawn from federal agencies and academia (Table 2). Professor Basil Bibby, with a strong background in developing models that could evaluate the cariogenicity of foods, would be assigned a leading role in evaluating research supporting dietary interventions to eliminate tooth decay .
In 1968, SRF reorganized as ISRF to carry on SRF’s research mission at the global level . Existing SRF research projects, including Project 269, continued to be supported by ISRF . ISRF was also interested in engaging federal research agencies. On July 1, 1968, Dr. Philip Ross became ISRF president . Ross had ties to the NIH, having served as chief of the NIDR/NIH Research Grants Section from 1963 to 1965, then as assistant head of the NIH Special International Programs Section until 1967 . Moreover, that summer, ISRF moved its headquarters from New York to Bethesda, Maryland, near the NIH .
Industry reviews dental caries literature.
As the NIDR Caries Task Force Steering Committee began meeting to discuss research priorities in 1969, ISRF scheduled a series of meetings to select “the areas of research that [ISRF] should be attacking” . Table 3 provides an overview of the research priorities discussed by the NIDR and ISRF committees at key moments leading up to the launch of the NCP. According to ISRF President Ross, ISRF meetings would consider “critical reviews of the major areas [concerning] sugar,” including a range of public health topics: “dental caries, overweight and obesity, [and] atherosclerotic vascular disease” . Panels of outside consultants would be convened, and the results of these activities compiled and sent to ISRF Scientific Advisory Board members by December 1969 .
ISRF launched its critical review of dental caries by inviting Dr. G. Neil Jenkins, a professor at the University of Newcastle Dental School, to speak at an ISRF symposium in London in June 1969 . Jenkins’s assessment of research on interventions that reduced the harm of sugar consumption without restricting intake (Table 3, column A) was largely unfavorable . Jenkins reviewed food additives, which in preliminary studies reduced the yield of bacterial acid produced after sugar consumption, and concluded that the dose of additives needed might be so high as to render the methods impractical or cause harmful side effects . Perhaps unaware that ISRF was supporting research on dextranase and a tooth decay vaccine at the time under Project 269, Jenkins expressed skepticism about these lines of research:
Several lines of evidence have tended to emphasize, and perhaps exaggerate, the importance of dextrans.…As an enzyme its instability would limit its application, and the whole basis of this idea depends on the unresolved question of the importance of dextrans. 
On the caries vaccine Jenkins noted, that while “a successful preliminary experiment along the