Libel Suit Attacking Stare Postponed Until November

Action on a libel suit brought by the Boston Nutrition Society against a Harvard professor, originally scheduled for the week of Oct. 16, has been postponed until November at the earliest.

The Society has claimed that Dr. Frederick J. Stare, professor of Nutrition, made libelous statements in the March, 1959, issue of McCall's magazine. In that issue, Stare attacked some of the charges made in one of five "open letters" the Society had written to President Pusey about standards of nutritional research at the University.

After two lower courts found no basis for the suit, the Society took its case to the Massachusetts Supreme Court last spring. The Supreme Court unanimously decided to allow the suit, but no action has yet been taken.

Stare stated yesterday, "I think those people know by now I'm not worried about them. . . . It will be somewhat embarrassing to them if the suit ever comes up."

The Boston Nutrition Society is no longer listed in the telephone directory. Stare said he first heard of the group about four years ago, when it sent five fourpage letters to Pusey. The letters to Pusey. The letters were shocking," Stare said, and one of their main contentions was that "the people in the Nutrition Department were Communists."

In a letter sent last July 26, the Society claimed, ". . . the trial in the Superior Court next fall may result in great improvement of the Nutrition Department of Harvard University, now partly financed by drug and chemical interests. . . ."

Presumably answering questions sent in by the general public in McCall's, Stare attacked the "open letter" from the Society that blamed white bread for making America "a nation of sick people."

His answer read: "These scare tactics are typical of the food-faddist organizations. The name 'Boston Nutrition Society' sounds good, but if you were to telephone them, you would discover, as we did, that the phone number is the same as for the Copley Square Diet Shop. Surveyors of so-called 'health foods.'"