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The Food and Drug Administration has finally taken action against pharmacies that sell so-called bio-identical hormone therapy. Last week, letters from the FDA were sent to seven compounding pharmacies, instructing them to stop using false and misleading terminology such as "bio-identical" when selling their products. Furthermore, the FDA told the pharmacies to discontinue the use of estriol, a form of the hormone estrogen, which is essentially an unapproved drug.

November 16, 2007 -- New York, NY. Scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health analyzed the natural foods that make up a traditional holiday dinner -- and have found that they are loaded with "carcinogens": chemicals that in large doses cause cancer in laboratory animals. None of these chemicals are made by man or added to the foods. Indeed, all of these "carcinogens" occur naturally in foods. But ACSH scientists have good news: these natural carcinogens pose no hazard to human health.

Bupropion, a drug taken for smoking cessation and prescribed most often for adults, is yielding only short-lived results in adolescents according to an article in the November issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. Each year 1.5 million adolescents in the U.S. light up for the first time and 416,000 of those go on to make it a daily habit. The numbers are staggering and unfortunately our current cessation treatment methods are showing little success, and even that success is often short-lived.

A November 7, 2007 piece by the Business & Media Institute's Jeff Poor quoted ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava on a study of energy drinks:
On November 7, American Morning reported on a small study conducted by the American Heart Association with only 15 participants. They concluded energy drinks “may pose risks” for people with high blood pressure and heart disease.
But the study wasn’t conclusive enough to say energy drinks are a danger to just anyone.

A November 8, 2007 "Planet in Peril" piece hosted by CNN's Anderson Cooper featured ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan responding to anti-chemical hype:
COOPER: Elizabeth, let's start with you. You think a lot of this is overblown. Most of it -- the presence of chemicals doesn't necessarily mean...

Nora Ephron's many-faceted career includes acclaim as a film director, producer, screenwriter, and novelist. Now she may also claim fame as an intuitive epidemiologist -- thanks to her recent column in the New York Times ("The Chicken Soup Chronicles" ).

A November 19, 2007 article by Steve Mitchell notes the opposition of ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan to a Devra Davis book and a separate report blaming industrial chemicals for disease:
Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science andHealth, a group funded in part by industry, told PTCN she disagreed with both the Collaborative report and Davis' book.

Some parents may be sending their children to school with brown bag lunches this week, and who could blame them? The Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. based in California recently issued a recall of 143 million pounds for all of its raw and frozen beef products since Feb 1, 2006. It is the largest-ever meat recall in the U.S., the previous record being set in 1999 when another company -- Thorn Apple Valley -- recalled 35 million pounds of ground beef.

February 11, 2008: Artificial Jarvik, Troubled Ledger, Fat Twins, Menaced Babies
¢Quote to Note: "I'm confused. The way they do these studies shouldn't the rats have died from cancer or something before they could become obese?" -- Comment by "OceanLover" on Lucianne.com News Forum about a study linking saccharin consumption to obesity in rats.

DISPATCH 6/13/08: Scary Curtains, Diarrhea, Expired Medicine, Floods, and Fat

Scare after scare appears in the popular press -- with news blaming traces of all sorts of chemicals and "toxins" for causing cancer. But it is becoming ever more apparent that many types of cancer are in fact linked more to lifestyle-related choices such as smoking and, now, obesity.

It may be hard to believe, but apparently there really are officials in both the UK and France who are not afraid of the use of biotechnology to improve and expand the food supply.

Originally devised to help hypertensive patients lower their blood pressure, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) dietary pattern includes relatively large amounts of plant-derived foods, moderate amounts of low-fat dairy foods, and low amounts of animal protein. A new study by Dr. Teresa Fung and colleagues (Arch Intern Med 2008; 168:713) indicates that women who adhere to such a dietary pattern may lower their risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke as well.

Whether you are traveling around the world or relaxing at home, a safe, healthy vacation will add to your enjoyment.

A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine (2008;168:928-35) paints a rather bleak picture of the future health of obese Americans. Dr. G.L. Burke and colleagues confirmed earlier studies that found a high prevalence of overweight and obesity in most American ethnic groups. But of even more concern was their finding that many obese people who were apparently healthy with respect to current symptoms of cardiovascular disease (CVD) had signs portending future heart problems.

Even after all the studies denying any link between vaccines and autism, last week we read an unbelievable headline: "U.S. Government Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism."

New York, NY -- May 7, 2008. The American Council on Science and Health today presents the first Henry I. Miller Award for Excellence in Public Health Education to Dr. Henry Miller, research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

A few interesting nutrition-related items brought to our attention this summer:
As the Olympics began, the group Consumer Freedom noted some amusing differences between champion swimmer Michael Phelps -- a voracious living proof of the calories in/calories out equation for weight maintenance -- and head food nanny Michael Jacobson of the perennially worried Center for Science in the Public Interest.
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The current issue of Newsweek chronicles the history of influenza with pictures and illustrations dating back to the eigheenth century. The slideshow of images is available online. "It really puts things in perspective," says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. "The flu is serious stuff and something we still need to worry about."
The flu kills 30,000 to 40,000 Americans every year, and as ACSH's Jeff Stier points out, "Most of those deaths are preventable through widespread use of the flu vaccine."

Yesterday was World Toilet Day , inspiring the Los Angeles Times to pose an interesting question: "If you had to live without toilets or electricity, which would you choose?" While ACSH staffers find the idea of life without electricity to be a dim prospect, we would certainly forgo its convenience in favor of all the public health benefits of toilets.

While it has been known for decades that people with HIV have an increased risk for certain types of cancers (such as Kaposi's sarcoma), a new study suggests that they are also more likely to develop cancers that haven't been traditionally associated with AIDS.

•"The Scariest Health Threat You've Never Heard Of: Autoimmune Disease," from the September 2008 issue of Glamour, quoted Jeff Stier saying, "People want to blame chemicals where they don't have another explanation for the cause of a disease. I think we need more psychologists rather than more toxicologists."
•The September 29, 2008 New York Sun piece "Salt Is Next on City's Hit List" quoted Dr. Gilbert Ross likening New York City's anti-salt plans to the trans fat ban.

This piece first appeared on September 8, 2008 in the New York Post:
If the city Health Department gets its way, government officials -- local, state and federal -- will soon be deciding what you can and can't eat.

France is trying to sell surplus doses of H1N1 vaccine that they purchased under the impression that everyone would need two doses for full immunity.
"They have 65 million citizens, and they ordered 94 million doses," says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. "It turns out only 5 million of them were vaccinated. I'd say they overestimated."

The notorious anti-vaccine activist Barbara Loe Fisher filed a lawsuit against pediatric immunologist and vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit, writer Amy Wallace, and Wired magazine publisher Condé Nast for an article in Wired wherein Wallace quoted Dr. Offit saying of Fischer, "She lies."