ng research priorities. A sugar industry report submitted to the NIDR became the basis for the research priorities published in the first NCP RFC.
While not officially recognized as participating in the NIDR Caries Task Force, the sugar industry effectively contributed to the research priorities developed for the launch of the NCP. Research priorities identified in the first NIDR NCP RFC focused on sugar harm reduction strategies, as opposed to sugar restriction, and were strongly aligned with sugar industry research priorities. The NIDR, like ISRF, took the position that sugar restriction was impractical.
The first policies related to the declaration of conflicts of interest for federal advisory committees were implemented in the early 1960s . Prior to that, concern that industry interests were a threat to scientific integrity was not a majority view . Significant consumer concern about corporate influence on expert committees would not surface until the 1970s, after the launch of the NCP. By contrast, in 2015, the NIH had an entire program dedicated to ethical contact within its institutes  because of the greater awareness of industry conflicts of interest and how they can adversely impact the scientific enterprise.
The 1970s Missed Opportunity
The majority of the research priorities promoted by the sugar industry and those selected for the 1971 NCP RFC failed to lead to widespread application . By 1976, clinical studies of dextranase mouth rinses in humans had failed to duplicate the success of using dextranases to inhibit new dental caries in experimental animals . The NIDR found that the pharmaceutical industry had limited interest in research, development, and distribution of antimicrobial agents, because of the high cost of regulatory approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and doubts about identifying an agent that would be successful on a large scale . By 1977, NCP researchers had found that their plan to substitute sucrose with a mixture of glucose and fructose “would effect little reduction in food cariogenicity” . In addition, by 1978, the NIDR had terminated clinical trials on phosphates added to foods because they were ineffective .
The most successful interventions selected for funding following the 1971 NCP RFP were topical fluoride and sealants . While a 1980 prevalence survey found that the burden of dental disease in children had decreased by more than 30% since the last survey in 1971–1973, 64% of children still exhibited dental caries, far short of the NCP’s founding goal of eradicating the disease .
It is not clear why the NIDR adopted the position in 1969 that reducing sugar intake as a public health measure was impractical. Proposals centered on ways to limit sucrose consumption were just around the corner. In its multi-year review of foods generally recognized as safe initiated in 1969, the FDA deemed sucrose consumption at 1976 levels as unsafe for teeth . In the coming years, the FDA would consider food labels “to warn against the hazards to the teeth of consuming a particular product” and debate whether warning labels should be placed on foods based on the percentage of sugar content, or on some measure of cariogenic potential .
When reflecting on the NCP in 1990, Basil Bibby, a member of the Caries Task Force Steering Committee, noted that the NIDR approved only “one or two small research grants” related to food cariogenicity compared to the “hundreds of generous awards [that] were made for investigations with so-called high scientific content” . He also noted that since the NIDR was the major funding source for dental research in the US, “the failure of the National Institute for Dental Research to support research on foods meant that there was no group of investigators in the United States who had enough financial support to undertake significant research on food cariogenicity” .
In 1977, the NIDR finally moved to develop a standardized animal model to identify the tooth-decay-causing potential of foods “with the objective of its being widely accepted in industry, and in regulato