Morgan Spurlock wanted to be in a movie. And he was in a movie one he made himself which he then presented to the world at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The subject of the movie was the fattening of Morgan himself he managed to gain 25 pounds in a month by overeating at McDonald's restaurants. The name of his documentary, "Supersize Me," should serve as a warning to the rest of us that eating too much will make us fat (which we might have heard before).
Search
"I cannot explain to my mother any longer why she should pay twice or two-thirds more than what is paid in Canada and Mexico. I'm switching my position." United States Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.), March 11th, 2004.
Dear Sen. Lott:
It pains me to hear that your concern for your aged mom has caused some confusion on your part about the risks and benefits of importing drugs from Canada and elsewhere. You suggest that your inability to explain your earlier position to your aged mother is justification for your change in position
How in the world did so many people get so fearful of the very science and technology that have lifted humanity out of malaria and mud huts? That's the fundamental question asked and discussed at length in the new book by ACSH's Thomas DeGregori, Origins of The Organic Agriculture Debate.
Morgan Spurlock, the moviemaker whose claim to fame is that he ate his way to obesity at McDonald's, seems to have padded his ego in addition to his midsection. In an interview with The Today Show's Katie Couric, Mr. Spurlock said, in part "I think that this film had a tremendous impact on their decision to eliminate supersized portions." Leaving egos aside for a moment, Mr. Spurlock is basically exhibiting his ignorance of the world of food service. Any change, whether in portion size or in menu choices, takes months of planning and figuring of costs and procedures.
An April 16, 2004 article by Arnold Kling on regulation notes an article from Reason magazine by ACSH's Todd Seavey:
The animal rights radicals who used Dr. Atkins' private medical records to out him as a fat guy, the PETA-affiliated Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, don't really care about human diets too much. They just want to make sure animals are not part of those diets. But animal rights are a tough sell, so PCRM feigns concern over the deadly dangers of meat consumption instead.
There's something odd about the photo of the man PETA just declared the "sexiest vegetarian alive," as ACSH's Jeff Stier noticed. Twenty-one year-old Zachery from Yale is a vegan and thus probably thinks himself purer than thou for avoiding meat but what's that impure thing in his mouth...?
http://www.peta.org/feat/sexiestVegVote/
Yesterday, I received a cloning update newsletter that contained the title "Hollywood clunker spreads fear and misconception." At first, I was confused as to how a film as God-awful as the new sci-fi film Godsend could spread anything other than contempt among those who paid to sit through it. But after exploring the movie's elaborate marketing, the confusion was easier to understand. A website for the Godsend Institute, which looks as real as Ebay, offers that fictional organization's cloning services.
Once again it seems Hollywood "scientists" and so-called environmentalists (tied closely to advocacy groups) are trying to sell a bill of goods to a gullible public, in the guise of science fiction. Hollywood, of course, uses fiction to get huge audiences and big-buck bottom lines. The motives of the activists are far more devious. We all enjoy science fiction movies (except, I suppose, for certain scaredy-cats like my wife who hide under their seats when monsters threaten).
America's technological prowess and enviable high standard of living are now under unprecedented assault by an array of self-appointed "consumer advocates" who claim our food, water, air, and consumer products are making us sick.
The brain hungers to place things in simple categories: good for you, bad for you...safe, risky. But the stomach hungers for French fries, salmon, meat substitutes, and other things that have been hastily labeled "bad" by activists, so the brain has some work to do: putting the activists' warnings (about food and other things) in context, weighing those tiny or imagined risks against other risks from everyday life. Ten lessons for the discriminating risk-assessor:
Research shows that while European consumers are getting drug prices up to a third below U.S. levels, their nations are paying a cost by losing research and development jobs to countries where better profits are being made. Price controls and slow approval processes are viewed by drug companies as hurting Europe's ability to compete with the U.S., and in the long term, the study shows, Europe will pay an economic price for lower drug prices.
Financial Times (London), April 28
Recently, I attended a meeting in Trinidad dealing with counterfeiting not of currency, which is what most of us associate with the word "counterfeit." This conference dealt with counterfeit drugs fake pharmaceuticals and I was one of the speakers. I was supposed to speak about "consumer aspects" of drug counterfeiting, but in truth I spoke mainly about the wild and wooly world of the Internet, and its relationship with drugs real, counterfeit, and in-between.
ACSH's Whelan v. CSPI's Wootan over vending machines on CNBC
Last Thursday, there was wide coverage of the fact that cancer rates have fallen according to a new report. There was extensive coverage in many news and TV broadcasts but not in America's newspaper of record.
There were actually two stories about cancer death and incidence rates, and perceptions about these important items, contained in the New York Times' coverage: one about health statistics and one about how little some in the press care about stories that can't be spun as scary.
New York's Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has accused the British-based drug giant Glaxo-SmithKline of consumer fraud because of the manner in which GSK promoted Paxil, an anti-depressant, for children and adolescents. He has accused GSK of misleading consumers by suppressing studies which did not support the drug's efficacy, especially for teenagers with depression.
From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel (http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/8841087.htm):
June 4, 2004
A Super Size Distortion
It's amazing how many people feel comfortable blaming the food industry for the obesity epidemic in the United States. Less surprising is that having blamed industry, people seek to regulate what types of food can be marketed toward children. But refusal to take personal responsibility for eating misleads us into thinking that Americans are fat because of junk food. It also perpetuates the nonsensical claim that food can be separated into two categories: good and bad.
Economists told a Department of Health and Human Services panel on April 27 that allowing reimportation from Canada of pharmaceuticals so that they can be purchased by Americans at the low prices mandated by Canadian would hurt the research and development of new drugs in the lung run.
The juxtaposition of two recent items in the New York Times was striking.
First, there was the Sunday, June 13th frontpage photo of Presidential candidate John Kerry, helmetless, riding a motorcycle (accompanying the article "Behind the Scenes, a Restless and Relentless Kerry").
An August 31, 1992 National Review piece by Peter Samuel was reprinted by http://nationalreview.com on June 10, 2004 and contains the following ACSH reference:
These are good times for those who grow and sell organic foods. But there may be trouble in paradise.
Former President Bill Clinton's heart disease and its treatment have been in the headlines of late, and no wonder: heart disease due to atherosclerosis (fatty deposits also containing cholesterol) is the leading killer of Americans, with a death toll of over one-million annually. But for many of us in his age range, the reasons we are so interested are complex: aside from humane concern for his health, we also think: if heart disease can sneak up on an apparently healthy and robust ex-president, who among us is immune?
The Senate is currently considering a piece of legislation, already approved by the House, to legalize the importation to the U.S. of pharmaceuticals from dozens of countries around the world. Like some pharmaceutical bill from hell, it would undermine the foundations of modern pharmaceuticals -- the safety and efficacy that have made the U.S. drug industry the envy of the world and the source of the majority of the world's new pharmaceuticals for decades.
We spend the summer weekends on a barrier island off the southern coast of New Jersey. Our eighteen-mile long island is extremely vulnerable to the effects of tropical storms and hurricanes. Thus, this weekend we kept a close eye on Charley, wondering if the hurricane would re-energize as it swept northward.
As we checked the weather forecast on 1010WINS.com and other sites, we came across this advertisement:
Pagination
ACSH relies on donors like you. If you enjoy our work, please contribute.
Make your tax-deductible gift today!