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In a partial draft report released yesterday, the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) says menthol cigarette use is on the rise among minority teenagers. Over 80 percent of African American and more than half of Hispanic teenagers who smoke, smoke menthol cigarettes, which the committee says is “very high.” As part of an advisory panel to the FDA, TPSAC will hold a public meeting on Thursday and Friday to discuss their findings.

Back pain sufferers unable to find relief from physical therapy or pain medications may look to alternative therapies for a solution, particularly acupuncture. If you are considering acupuncture, you may want to consider the results of a new meta-analysis showing that the procedure may pose more risks than benefits.

ACSH would like to issue a correction to yesterday’s Dispatch item regarding the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) draft report, which noted the incidence of mentholated cigarette smoking among American teens.

What good are drugs if patients don’t take them? That’s exactly what reporter Katherine Hobson asks in her article for The Wall Street Journal, “How Can You Help the Medicine Go Down?” According to the World Health Organization, half of chronically ill patients in the developed world don’t take their drugs properly, while another study estimates that 90,000 premature deaths in the U.S. are due to poor adherence to high blood pressure treatment alone.

Alzheimer’s disease is a condition afflicting about 26 million people worldwide, a number that is estimated to markedly increase as a greater proportion of the population ages. Unfortunately, there are very few, if any, effective treatments to counter the disease, and scientists are still trying to figure out what causes it.

The results of a study released last week conducted by researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix found that 47 percent of beef, chicken, pork and turkey samples were contaminated with Staphylcoccus aureus (S. aureus), a bacteria linked to illnesses ranging from mild skin infections to life-threatening diseases.

When it comes to treating elderly patients in hospitals and nursing homes, Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician at Brown University, believes doctors should adhere to the mantra “less is more.” In a recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Dr. Dosa and his colleagues analyzed the medical records of 172 residents of two Rhode Island nursing homes who had been diagnosed with urinary tract infections (UTI).

The National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association are issuing new medical guidelines today that divide Alzheimer’s disease into three stages. The first stage, which may be considered pre-clinical — meaning before any mental dysfunction is apparent — is the most recently characterized phase.

Hopefully the recent whooping cough epidemic in California and now a measles outbreak in Europe will convince anti-vaccine activists that their propaganda is putting thousands of lives at risk.

Anti-vaccine hysteria is coming to Times Square. CBS has sold ad space to the so-called National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) on its Times Square JumboTron. That group — whose mission is to spread anti-vaccine hysteria far and wide — will, if CBS allows it, run a video clip sponsored by known anti-vaccine activist Joe Mercola.

ACSH staffers would like to take our hats off to Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, who announced in an annual company meeting Wednesday in Atlanta that he does not believe there exists sufficient scientific evidence to stop using BPA in the epoxy linings of the company’s iconic cans.

One in sixteen U.S. preschoolers has a vision problem, according to a study published in Ophthalmology.

While sports drinks add calories to kids’ diets, so-called “energy drinks” may introduce an unsafe amount of caffeine into their systems. Holly J. Benjamin and Marcie Beth Schneider, specialists in adolescent and sports medicine, published a study on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, stating as much.

Look no further than the warnings on your prescription drug labels, and you'll find the side effects of defensive medicine.

An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times reveals the extremes to which desperate parents will go to help their autistic children. These all too often include alternative and unproven therapies, purveyed by charlatans seeking to exploit their legitimate fears and even guilt.

ACSH gives two cheers to the New Zealand Ministry of Health for acknowledging that electronic cigarettes are “far safer” than traditional cigarettes. This statement was made to Members of Parliament (MPs) as they prepare to vote on the Smoke-Free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill, which includes a proposal to legislate electronic cigarettes containing nicotine as a tobacco-related product.

Listen to ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross talk chemophobia, radiation scares, and the promotion of sound science with beloved chemistry professor and radio show host Dr. Joe Schwarcz on The Dr. Joe Show.

Measles cases in the U.S. this year are at their highest since 1996, the CDC reports. In only the first four months of 2011, 118 cases have already been reported, 89 percent of which can be attributed to importation of the disease — and, significantly, 105 of those cases occurred in unvaccinated people. Travelers returning from Europe and Southeast Asia make up the bulk of the diagnoses. Although the disease has been considered eliminated in the U.S.

U.S. health secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced the World Health Organization (WHO) assembly decision not to recommend the destruction of the last known smallpox virus stockpiles — located in Russia and the U.S. CDC in Atlanta — for at least another five years.

What to say of the humble potato? Beneath its skin is potassium, vitamin C, fiber, B vitamins, Thiamin, Niacin, Riboflavin, Folate, B6, fiber, and a full complement of eight essential amino acids. It’s also among the cheapest items in any grocery store. So why has the potato been made a member of the U.S.

Yet another new study will have people questioning the safety of medications long believed to be as harmless as rainwater. Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle studied about 65,000 older men and women in Washington state and asked them about their use of painkillers in the past decade.

A large study from the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that regularly drinking even one cup of coffee daily may reduce a man’s risk of developing high-grade prostate cancer. Published in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the study monitored nearly 48,000 U.S. men from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study to evaluate a potential association between coffee consumption and prostate cancer risk.

For some comic relief applied with a dose of common sense, we recommend Deborah Blum s recent blog entry over at the Public Library of Science online. In Chemical-Free Crazies, Blum makes much of the absurdity inherent in advertising claims like chemical-free minerals and chemical-free chickens.

Infectious diseases that used to claim the lives of one in six children before their fifth year are making an alarming comeback in the US, writes ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross in yesterday s Guardian. Dr. Ross, along with ACSH friend Dr. Henry I. Miller of Stanford s Hoover Institution, observes, The culprits are parents who should know better and the politicians who bend over backwards to accommodate them. In their op-ed, Drs.