Nutrition activists like the Center for Science in the Public Interest are scaring Americans away from technology that could help us lose weight.
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Ah, it's spring again when our fancies are said to turn to romance. And with Earth Day upon us (April 22nd), the Greens' romantic fantasies turn to the environment, as they promote nineteenth-century Romantic ideologies to deal with twenty-first-century problems. Increasingly, the food sections of many newspapers have become year-round bastions of these romantic ideologies, touting the virtues of local produce, heritage varieties, and of course organic agriculture.
California's legislature is now debating whether to ban a chemical found in plastic consumer products of many types, Bisphenol A, based on the so-called precautionary principle. This principle asserts that if a substance is suspected of being harmful, it must be banned or restricted until it's proven "safe."
But how does anyone go about proving a substance completely safe, and to whose satisfaction must it be proven?
While the ongoing tension between Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields as well as a book by the latter have recently drawn attention to postpartum depression, the issue of depression during pregnancy is often neglected. Roughly the same percentage of women (14.5%) experience depression during pregnancy as after giving birth.
Ideology scored another victory over public health and sound science last week when seven New Jersey legislators obtained a court order barring needle exchange programs in the state. The crusading seven, led by Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union) claim that such programs, which allow drug users to exchange their dirty needles for new sterile equipment, encourage the use of illicit drugs and do nothing to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.
ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan wrote an article for TechCentralStation.com criticizing attacks on breakfast cereal. That in turn inspired comments from two dentists, below (and remember you can easily add your own comments, to this or any other Fears item, by signing in at the right margin):
Dr. Whelan,
A study on prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests released in yesterday's Journal of the American Medical Association confirms what ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan has been saying since 1992 -- PSA tests promise more than they can deliver. For years, men have been conditioned to think that if their PSA result is below 4.0 ng/mL, they do not have to be concerned about prostate cancer. But in fact, there is no cutoff PSA value that is reliable for accurately ruling out cancer in some patients and detecting it in others.
Recently, I posted a piece on the discovery of the potential for a serious allergenic response from a foodstuff that was being promoted as a non-genetically-modified (non-GM) alternative to GM soybeans. There was almost total media silence on this matter even though the research itself was published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal. ACSH Nutrition Director Dr.
Recently, the FDA issued an edict advising sperm banks to bar as donors men who have had sex with other men within five years prior to donation. I have searched through the medical literature for a sound scientific basis for this directive, yet the only reasoning behind the recommendation is the fact that homosexual men are at high risk of HIV. If this were the rationale, though, it follows that the FDA should bar other high-risk donors such as men who have used IV drugs or have had sex with prostitutes. This, however, is not the case.
Activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is known for confusing the notion of being kind to animals (which most people I know support) with animal rights extremism (which most people find absurd).
A May 4, 2005 column by dietician Cinda Williams Chima in the Cleveland Plain Dealer notes ACSH among voices cautioning that "functional foods" are overhyped:
When reading the medical news, you might want to start asking for a second opinion. A report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that it is not unusual for medical studies to contradict one another: 16% of highly-cited original clinical studies were contradicted by subsequent ones, and another 16% were shown by later trials to have overstated results.
A June 14, 2005 article by Jeanne Whalen in the Wall Street Journal describes an ad campaign by the Lung Cancer Alliance designed to draw attention to lung cancer sufferers who were never smokers -- a strange and possibly misleading tactic given that virtually all lung cancer is attributable to smoking; the article mentions ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
Fears welcomes aboard cartoonist Marvin Winter, who'll regularly put a thousand words worth of ACSH-related ideas on science and scares into one funny image...
This cartoon may be freely reproduced, so long as Marvin Winter and ACSH.org are credited.
Maybe you're a smoker. Maybe you used to smoke a pack a day but quit twenty years ago (congratulations!). Maybe you're not a smoker but you've lived with one for many years. Maybe you've never touched a cigarette, but you're alarmed that Dana Reeve, a never-smoker with a healthy diet, was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Should you get screened?
It's no secret that crystal methamphetamine is oozing eastward, into urban areas, and up the socioeconomic ladder. But with all the recent media coverage, one has to wonder...is the meth epidemic something novel, or is it just the same old story with a new drug playing the lead role? Skeptics and critics of the "War on Drugs" point out that as long as demand exists for a drug, law enforcement is practically powerless to prevent its use.
A five-year-old autistic boy died Tuesday after receiving chelation treatment, a controversial therapy approved only for cases of acute heavy metal poisoning -- but a treatment sought with increasing frequency by parents who think it will help their autistic children. While the cause of death will not be known until after an autopsy, the tragedy is a reminder that doctors providing chelation therapy are acting irresponsibly and in a manner inconsistent with their role as healthcare providers.
On March 29, 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a revised set of Guidelines for Carcinogenic Risk Assessment to replace those adopted in 1986. The revisions reflect a gradual evolution of the process by which EPA performs risk assessment for possible cancer-causing agents.
For anyone that cherishes good health and values straight facts, the oft-cited statistics of 630,000 American babies born every year with elevated levels of mercury in their blood and potentially damaged brains, if true, ought to be mind-boggling. These American babies are said to have been poisoned before birth when their pregnant mothers consumed fish with trace levels of mercury, and after birth when they were breastfeeding.
For over a year, the FDA has held adamantly to its stance that repeated delays in deciding whether to approve the over-the-counter sales of the "morning after" pill, Plan B, have nothing to do with abortion politics. Much of the science community, however, is finding this harder and harder to believe.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs, circumcision, and growth hormones seem like unlikely heroes in the fight against HIV/AIDS, but three new studies (1) suggest that they may be just that.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has come under fire recently over a study it published that reported that fetuses probably cannot feel pain before the 29th week of pregnancy. It is not the science itself that is being called into question. Rather, it is the employment history of the study authors. One of the authors, Dr. Eleanor Drey, performs abortions and is the medical director of an abortion clinic. Another author, Susan Lee, is a medical student who worked at one time in the NARAL Pro-Choice Legal Department.
An August 25, 2005 dispatch from ChemWeek.com describes ACSH's petition to stop the EPA from using high-dose rodent tests alone to dub things "carcinogens" (and a longer version of the piece appears in the August 24/30, 2005 issue of the affiliated print magazine Chemical Week):
In January 2005, New York governor George Pataki issued an executive order mandating the use of so-called "green" cleaning products in all state agencies and authorities; he later extended his order to New York schools. According to an Associated Press notice, the governor signed legislation putting his orders into law, effective September 1, 2006. So now we can all breathe a sigh of relief when standing for hours in a queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles or any other state offices, right?
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