Editor's note: Tiki the Eco-Penguin's website has been updated since Andrew Apel wrote this article criticizing him for ACSH two years ago, but Tiki, alas, is still online and Apel's criticisms are still insightful.
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Just as the Stonewall riots of 1969 are remembered as the start of the gay rights movement, so too will July 27, 2002 be remembered as the start of New York City's smokers' rights movement.
At least, that was the plan of the group NYC C.L.A.S.H. (NYC Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment) as they organized a petition drive against proposed New York City laws that would banish smokers from restaurants and even bars a petition drive launched on the site of the pro-gay rights Stonewall riots.
The September 4, 2002 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has both good and bad news for the health of American women and girls. One article (the good news) presents the results of a study on post-menopausal women showing that regular physical activity diminishes the risk of heart disease. The bad news is that a second article in the same issue reports that as girls advance from childhood to mid-adolescence, their levels of physical activity drop precipitously. This pattern does not bode well for their health.
"I'm OK with it, but it'll be a drag if I don't make it until the next James Bond movie comes out."
Warren Zevon, fifty-five year-old singer of "Werewolves of London," on being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, as reported September 12 by Associated Press, which did not mention Zevon's smoking, and Reuters, which did.
That's the finding of the recently-completed study "Electromagnetic Fields and Breast Cancer on Long Island: A Case Control Study," published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study, part of the ten-year Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project (LIBCSP), is the latest study to come from the project that fails to show a correlation between a perceived environmental risk factor and an actual increased risk for breast cancer. Previous studies discovered no significant association between breast cancer development and exposure to PCBs or to organochlorines found in pesticide.
This summer saw the comic book character the Incredible Hulk turned into a so-so movie. It strikes me that the beloved gamma-irradiated behemoth combines two common but false fears about biology: (1) that radiation causes completely unpredictable, bizarre transformations and (2) that extra body mass can somehow materialize without any extra mass being consumed by the body.
Suppose your gracious new neighbor took you aside one day and quietly warned that serving non-organic fruits and vegetables to your family was endangering your kids' health. Suppose she offered a professional-looking "index of danger" showing your supermarket's peaches, apples, spinach, celery, and potatoes were all too dangerous to eat. You'd probably be devastated.
You've heard that quote, "The trouble is not what we know, it's what we know that isn't so?"
Well, one of the things I do at the Reason Public Policy Institute is argue for safety, health, and environmental policy that is rooted in the sound use of science, and more often than not "what we don't know" is glossed over in favor of unsupportable statements of certainty. Time after time, we hear that this policy or that policy is based on "sound science," and that the "debate over the science is done, now it's time to implement!" But it's virtually never that simple.
Interested in losing weight? Want to do it without: (1) moving, (2) counting calories, (3) restricting food intake, or (4) any change in lifestyle whatsoever, and do it without any detrimental health effects? Well, step right up there are many products designed just to help you accomplish that goal. Then I have some Enron stock to sell you.
One of the nice side effects of last month's elections was the defeat of a proposal in Berkeley that would have sentenced people to jail for selling non-organic coffee beans.
We're pleased to see the esteemed British journal The Lancet noting the American Council on Science and Health in the conclusion of its February 1 article on the tumultuous debate over acrylamide in food. The Lancet emphasizes the unknown but at least recognizes that there's no evidence of harm:
Bullies would call people sissies for being afraid of swing sets, but some of those same bullies probably grow up to complain about chemicals in their environment, which are far less dangerous than swing sets. Take the case of pressure-treated wood.
Robert Palmer died suddenly of a heart attack last week at the age of fifty-four, which is a bit young to die of a heart attack -- at least for non-smokers. But Palmer, who performed "Addicted to Love" and other hit songs of the 1980s, was a smoker.
Beef is a wholesome, safe food that makes nutritious contributions to the American diet. This is the conclusion of a literature review recently conducted by physicians and scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).
The scientific facts on beef and health are detailed in a new ACSH publication, The Role of Beef in the Diet.
A new journal is needed. It should be titled The Journal of Obvious Results and Unwarranted and Spectacular Conclusions. The readers of ACSH's webpages have by now seen headlines that read "Organically grown foods higher in cancer-fighting chemicals than conventionally grown foods." Like souls in a Hollywood hell, forced to sit through a bad movie for eternity, we will undoubtedly be having this "finding" thrust at us ad infinitum, as we are in the case of this latest article meant to prove the superiority of "organic" food.
This 2005 report by the American Council on Science and Health reviews the evidence and finds that low doses of bisphenol A (BPA) aren't a threat to human health.
Michael Crichton -- Michael Crichton, M.D., to be precise -- is of course well known for his techno-thrillers The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, plus more than a dozen other novels and non-fiction works. State of Fear (HarperCollins, 603 pages, $27.95) is a little different. While constructed as a novel, it is also a guide to environmental issues and their advocates, principally the problem of climate change.
Scientists may have some hope to offer newly elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko in his efforts to combat his reported recent dioxin poisoning. It's not a freshly discovered wonder drug. It's not an all-natural diet of organic fresh fruits and vegetables. Indeed, Yushchenko's relief may come in the form of potato chips.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently released a set of guidelines calling for stricter control of marketing of foods and beverages to children, in an effort to address increased obesity rates in kids. The guidelines call for all companies, advertising agencies, schools, and other organizations to eliminate any sort of marketing to children that directly or indirectly endorses foods CSPI deems unhealthy.
Seeing a previously healthy baby begin to withdraw, lose language skills, and become averse to physical or social attention is a nightmare for any parent. A diagnosis of autism can then lead parents down a long road of feeling guilty, trying frustratingly unsuccessful treatments, and searching for an answer to their questions about the cause of their child's disorder. But when parents turn their quest for answers into a blind-faith crusade against public health initiatives, they may actually end up hurting more than they help.
The belief that some foods are better than others indeed that some foods are inherently good while others are inherently bad has become a well-accepted underpinning of current nutrition lore. What does it mean to speak of a food as being good or bad? How can you tell if the food you are eating is good or bad? Is it helpful or even possible to think about foods as being good or bad?
The Good, the Bad, and the Confusing
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).
Shaun of the Dead, the funniest movie of the year so far (since the momentous marionette parody Team America has not yet opened), depicts a boring, underachieving British man named Shaun going on with his humdrum life, oblivious to the monstrous army of the walking dead that is taking over the world all around him.
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