Restaurants -- fast-food and otherwise -- can breathe a sigh of relief, at least if they're located in Michigan. According to an AP story, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed a bill that bans civil lawsuits against restaurants and other parts of the food industry for serving or preparing foods that supposedly make people fat.
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It's been quite a rollercoaster six weeks for old-line pharmaceutical company Merck, based in New Jersey. As September ended, the company announced the voluntary withdrawal of its blockbuster anti-arthritis COX-2 inhibitor drug, Vioxx, due to cardiovascular toxicity. Subsequently, Merck has been embroiled in charges of a cover-up involving what they knew about Vioxx's side effects and when they knew it. The company faces legions of litigants led by tort-lawyer centurions, while TV and newspaper ads implore those "injured by Vioxx" to call for a free consultation.
Practitioners and adherents of traditional, so-called alternative medical systems often promote their practices as being more natural and safer than Western medicine. They claim that such systems have been used for thousands of years and that therefore they must be safe. But this is not necessarily the case, as reported in the December 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
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.
Some pundits concerned about health conditions linked to dietary excess are proposing draconian fixes. The problem, though, is that these drastic fixes are broken to start with. Perhaps most wrong-headed of all is the argument made for regulating the consumption of foods with added sugars as though they were cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. Sin taxes, age restrictions, food stamp limitations: as with alcohol and tobacco, so with added sugar, goes the logic.
When it comes to fats, I call for eating a smart balance of different types rather than a complete abandonment, every three decades or so, of one type of fat.
"Everything has its pros and cons," Robert M. Reeves, president of a Washington trade group called the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post article today about food manufacturers trying to get every last ounce of trans-fats out of foods like cookies and chips.
A recent article in London's Evening Standard claimed that research completed by the Irish Doctors Environmental Association (IDEA) found the first proof that cell phones cause health problems, but is this research we can rely on? The doctors ignore the lessons learned from previous research along these lines. In September of 2004, researchers in Sweden found links between cell phone usage and acoustic neuroma. The studies were flawed but created a scare nonetheless.
An article by Colette Bouchez on WebMD.com February 16, 2005 describes fear of artificial sweeteners, with some calming and cautious words from ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava, noting the list of artificial sweeteners tested and approved as safe:
A March 4, 2005 article by Kirsten Boyd Goldberg on CancerLetter.com -- about the Legacy Foundation dubbing Time Inc. an anti-tobacco "hero" despite their magazines running many tobacco ads -- quotes an article on the topic by ACSH's Rivka Weiser:
Assessing the Safety of the Chemical PFOA
Project Coordinator: Rivka Weiser
Editor: Gilbert L. Ross, M.D.
The American Council on Science and Health gratefully acknowledges the comments and contributions of the following individuals, who reviewed all or part of the longer position paper on which this booklet is based:
Larry Beeson, Dr.P.H., Loma Linda University
Hinrich L. Bohn, Ph.D., University of Arizona
Joseph F. Borzelleca, Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University
John Doull, M.D., Ph.D., University of Kansas
A prominently placed advertisement by the Lung Cancer Alliance in yesterday's New York Times conveys the important message that lung cancer, which kills more people than many other forms of cancer combined, is worthy of more attention and research than it currently receives. Unfortunately, however, the well-intentioned advertisement is also misleading and has disturbing implications.
The alternative fringe has embraced a trendy catchphrase: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." It's cute, it sounds impressively philosophical, and, technically, it actually is true. But it can be deceptive, misinterpreted, and misused.
A May 16, 2005 article by Jaine Andrews on the site of South Dakota's Keloland-TV refers to ACSH in the course of putting Peter Jennings' lung cancer into prespective:
A September 30, 2005 item in the Wall Street Journal noted ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan's role in drawing attention to the Harvard School of Public Health's award to the unscientific scaremonger Erin Brockovich:
This article appeared on the site IntellectualConservative.com.
Today, in the weekend section of the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Bernstein dubbed a donation of $10 million to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine "the Gift of the Week." The funds, presented by Leon D. Black, a founding partner of Apollo Management, L.P., were provided with the express purpose of supporting six new scientists, equipment for a stem cell lab, and a seminar series, all of which will constitute the Black Family Stem Cell Institute.
Because of improvements in the ability of scientists to measure exceedingly low concentrations of chemicals, it is now possible todetect thousands of substances in human blood, urine, and other bio-logical samples.
From the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel (http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/8841087.htm):
June 4, 2004
A Super Size Distortion
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.
Near the end of 2005, we (David W. Kuneman, a retired pharmaceutical chemist, and Michael J. McFadden, author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains) and the SmokersClubInc. Newsletter issued a press release and published the outline and results of a study (1) that should have made media headlines around the world while bringing the juggernaut of smoking bans, if not to a crashing halt, at least to a stumble.
Bis(4-chlorophenyl)-1,1,2-trichloroethane (DDT) has been shown, over the past sixty years, to be one of the few affordable and effective tools against malarial vector mosquitoes, which account for over 300 million cases of disease and more than 1 million deaths every year. However, the Review by Walter Rogan and Aimin Chen (Aug. 27, p. 763), which aims to balance the risks and benefits of DDT, consists mainly of hypothetical concerns while the reality of human suffering gets short shrift.
A January 4, 2006 column by Audrey Silk, head of NYC CLASH (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment), not someone with whom ACSH usually sees eye to eye on smoking issues, quotes ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and late ACSH Advisor Sir Richard Doll:
California may once again target innocuous beverages -- caffeine-containing sodas and energy drinks -- for labeling with the dreaded Proposition 65 warning label. According to an Associated Press article, a California advisory board is calling for a study to determine if such beverages pose a risk to pregnant women.
Some activist "watchdogs" are again attempting to manipulate parents' natural concerns about their babies, without medical or scientific evidence. A few days ago, the uproar was over baby powder and lotions alleged to be delivering toxic phthalates; today, it's baby bottles and plastic water bottles leaching supposedly-toxic bisphenol-A (BPA). Both of these attacks are false.
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