It s enough to make us sick to our stomachs all the shoddy food-related public health articles and pseudo-science we see sometimes. And we re not the only ones in Reason.com, Baylen Linnekin, president of a Washington-based issue organization called Keep Food Legal, has a very thorough expose citing articles and naming names. In one example, California was praised by USA Today for perhaps bringing us to the turning point in combating childhood obesity.
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We've seen it before reports of reports of near-immediate reductions in heart attacks after smoking bans were enacted indoors. Now a new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine repeats the same errors of statistical analysis in an even more egregious manner.
Although the danger from salmonella-contaminated mangoes appears to be over, the Food and Drug Administration has labeled them a high risk fruit. Last summer a total of 143 people in 15 states were sickened by two strains of salmonella, and more than 30 were sick enough to require hospitalization. Both the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the FDA found that the source of the problem was Mexico.
Who is really behind the articles published in the New England Journal of Medicine? A review by the Washington Post attempted to find out, and they decided to assess each study s funding sources to get an idea.
Just in time for the approaching flu season, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the first seasonal vaccine from Novartis manufactured by using animal cell cultures. All previous flu vaccines were produced by growing the virus in chicken eggs.
You may want to think twice before you drink that glass of grapefruit juice with your morning medications. A new study appearing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal noted that there has been an increase in the number of medications being sold that may cause serious side effects when combined with grapefruit juice. ACSH s Dr.
Activists are yet again trying to demonize high-fructose corn syrup, this time with a new study that purports to find a higher prevalence of diabetes in countries whose populations seemingly consume more of the sweetener than other countries. The study found that the rate of type 2 diabetes was 20 percent higher in those countries where HFCS was used commonly.
Just as all of us here at ACSH were taking our regular seats at today s morning meeting, we became aware of two new studies on the dangers of sitting which made us all consider resuming the meeting in a slightly different way standing.
It s like adding insult to injury: Taking antibiotics for an infection, only to end up with a severe case of diarrhea. Now a new meta-analysis suggests that probiotics taken alongside antibiotics can dramatically cut one s risk of getting a bad case of diarrhea associated with a certain nasty type of bacteria, called Clostridium difficile or C.diff.
Maybe public health researchers should have to apply for a permit before spouting bad ideas? A professor in Australia has proposed requiring smoking licenses that would force addicted smokers to seek permission from the government and get educated about the dangers of smoking before they could legally buy cigarettes no more than 50 sticks a day.
Last month, in his blog on Medical Progress Today, ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom expressed his surprise over a provocative new study suggesting that beta-blockers less effective than previously thought or maybe even useless.
He s expanded on those thoughts in a more comprehensive article for New Scientist magazine, entitled Beta blockers are busted what happens next?
The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 the largest systematic effort to quantify world health levels and trends has released its comprehensive review of life expectancy and global health threats.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the World Health Organization agree that thimerosal should be used in vaccines, countering the ban contained in a draft treaty from the United Nations Environment Program.
A new smartphone app has been developed that allows patients to detect an irregular pulse caused by atrial fibrillation (AF). Lead investigator Dr. David McManus of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, explained that patients with AF often wear Holter monitors, portable devices used to continuously monitor electrical activity of the cardiovascular system, for up to 30 days to capture an AF event, but physicians may often choose not to use the monitors due to the infrequency of paroxysmal events.
Last week, the respected scientific journal Nature published a superb editorial castigating the Breast Cancer Coalition, a nonprofit ostensibly devoted to reducing the toll of breast cancer. The editorial pointed out that the goal put forward by the BCC, to cure breast cancer by 2020 was irresponsible, given the complexity of cancer in general and breast cancer specifically.
Sarah Kavanaugh, a 15-year-old Mississippi high school student, is making headlines with a petition she began that calls on PepsiCo. to stop using brominated vegetable oil in its Gatorade brand of sports drinks.
Kids can be mean, especially if you stick out from the crowd. A new study, published in Pediatrics, suggests that nearly half of kids with food allergies have been bullied,with a third reporting the bullying was food-related. One-eighth had been forced to touch the food that triggered their allergy, and one-tenth actually had the dangerous food thrown at them.
It's enough to give us a headache. Aspirin and statins can be an effective preventive regimen and treatment for patients suffering from peripheral arterial disease (PAD) inadequate circulation to the legs and feet, commonly caused by fatty deposits but too many aren't being prescribed the treatment, a new study has found. PAD causes pain in the legs upon walking, relieved by rest.
MRI testing may provide an accurate noninvasive surrogate for invasive tests to discriminate Alzheimer s disease from frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), new research suggests.
The rate of patient readmission to a hospital may not be associated with a shorter hospital stay, according to a new study. This counters the concern which led to this study, which was that excessive LOS (length of stay) reduction may be harmful because discharge before medical stability may result in increased hospital readmission or use of emergency department services.
Cigarette smoking among American teenagers dropped to a record low in 2012, according to a national study released Wednesday.
The annual survey of about 45,000 students in the eighth, 10th, and 12th grades found that the number of teens who reported smoking cigarettes in the prior 30 days fell to 10.6 percent this year from 11.7 percent in 2011 the lowest number recorded since the survey began in 1975.
According to a new report from several public health organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and the American Cancer Society, in 2013 states will spend less than two percent of their annual tobacco tax and revenues from the Master Settlement Agreement to combat smoking. The report states that from the approximately 25.7 billion dollars states collected from the 1998 MSA, only 460 million dollars will go to smoking prevention and treatment programs.
Although the legal age for purchasing tobacco products is 18, everyday more than 3,800 pre-teens and adolescents ages 12 to 17 smoke their first cigarette, among whom 1,000 go on to become addicted smokers. In response to these disturbing figures, researchers explored the effect of behavior-based interventions on preventing smoking initiation among young people who have not become regular smokers, as well as behavior-based interventions aimed at promoting cessation.
As the year comes to an end, the scares keep coming, today as often before in the form of pesticides and cosmetics. These alarmist stories are simply baseless and raise needless consumer concerns based only on the precautionary principle.
We re facing a critical shortage of new antibiotics that may lead to an inability to practice modern medicine, according to Dr. Carl F. Nathan, chairman of the department of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He explains, in a New York Times op-ed, how economic and scientific factors are to blame.
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