Overview: Questions and Answers on AIDS in New York City
By Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan
President, ACSH
Question 1
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To the Editor:
As Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz points out (Op-Ed, March 1), many children and adults are treated with medications that do not have Food and Drug Administration approval. The doctor is responsible for using clinical judgment to insure that a drug is safe and effective for each patient. However, an equally important issue is the risk to children from potentially dangerous substances, like androstenedione, that can be purchased from a health food store or supermarket without a prescription. Unlike pharmaceuticals, these supplements have not been tested on adults.
To the Editor:
The Personal Health column on Dec.5 correctly notes the potential of genetically-improved food to help feed the world while reducing the need for pesticides ("Gene-Altered Foods: A Case Against Panic"). Genetic engineering is thoroughly regulated by at least three separate federal agencies. Scientific data reveal no cases of any human illness from GM foods, despite over four years of common use.
Philip Morris's opposition to the use of genetically modified tobacco in cigarettes ("Tobacco Fracas in Argentina," page B1, March 7) raises an interesting issue. It appears that Philip Morris's primary concern is that consumers' irrational fear of genetically modified products will supersede most smokers' irrational tolerance of the proven health risks of smoking.
Most of the recent press coverage of the Jenna and Barbara Bush under-age drinking incident has missed the main point: Making it a crime for a 19 year old to buy an alcoholic beverage is not only unrealistic and absurd but it may be an underlying cause of today's serious problem of alcohol abuse on college campuses.
Prohibiting the sale of liquor to responsible young adults creates an atmosphere where binge drinking and alcohol abuse have become a problem. American teens, unlike their European peers, don't learn how to drink gradually, safely and in moderation.
Humankind has been consuming cows' milk as nourishment for thousands of years. Such use has contributed significantly to the development of civilization. Yet outcries to the effect that cows' milk as food is unhealthful, even poisonous, to humans have occasionally been getting play in the American media. The roots of this incongruity are complex. They lie in the culture of abundance that characterizes the present-day United States. Much of the negativism toward milk relates far less to health concerns than to antagonism toward animal agriculture.
The following letter from ACSH's medical director appeared in today's Wall Street Journal
To the Editor:
Only half of Americans and few scientists believe in alternative medicine, but we're all paying to study it.
From a relatively small $2 million per year operation in 1992, called the Office of Alternative Medicine, a behemoth has grown now known as NCCAM, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Its funding has grown even more rapidly than the popularity of alternative medicine has and is now soaring over $100 million a year.
Steve Milloy in his weekly Foxnews.com column, commenting on conflicting NCI mammography advice:
"What's a woman even her physician to make of this? Is this the National Cancer Institute or the National Confusion Institute?"
The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) urges the U.S. Postal Service to consider using irradiation technology to sanitize mail and thus protect workers and the public from bioterrorism. ACSH is a public health consortium of over 350 leading physicians and scientists.
Although popular women's magazines state that they have a commitment to general health coverage, they fail to cover the number one cause of cancer death in women lung cancer according to a new study by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Further, women's magazines publish a significant number of cigarette advertisements, while neglecting to include basic information on the negative health-related consequences of cigarette smoking.
You can't blame parents for erring "on the safe side" when it comes to their children's health. Unfortunately, parents aren't always good judges of what the "safe side" is.
A recent increase in fear of vaccinations is a case in point. The journal Pediatrics reports that parents' philosophical and religious objections to vaccinations have been a factor in most of the tetanus cases encountered in a Stanford study. A growing number of parents have also become concerned about extremely rare side effects from vaccinations and are choosing not to vaccinate their children.
We don't necessarily agree with everything on these sites, but they're generally pro-science, and we like having them around (and for more links, see: http://www.acsh.org/about/pageID.14/default.asp ):
AgBioWorld: Dedicated to bringing agricultural biotech to the developing world.
http://agbioworld.org/
Blogborygmi.com: Nick Genes and company.
We learned last weekend in a front-page New York Times story that the United States poultry industry has quietly begun to "bow to the demands of public health and consumer groups" by significantly reducing the use of antibiotics that are fed to healthy chickens. Antibiotics have been used for decades as a means of preventing infection in chickens and promoting an accelerated pattern of growth.
Is this move in the interest of promoting public health? And will consumers pay a price for the elimination of these chemicals?
What in the world are the folks at the World Health Organization thinking these days? They're supposed to be devoting their energies, expertise, and considerable budget to...world health, I believe. You remember: poverty, famine, disease? Yet only a week ago their director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland, announced that the world's most important health challenges now include "junk food," cholesterol, and alcohol. What happened to malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS? (On the bright side, she also mentioned a previously under-appreciated but looming global threat, tobacco.)
"It's a prescription for panic."
Dr. William Casarella, chairman of the department of radiology at Emory University, on the idea of frequent total-body CAT scans for the general population. Casarella is one of many people who have undergone intrusive surgery to examine ambiguous but benign nodes in his body. (New York Times, May 27, 2002)
Is there a difference between objective reporting and "balanced" reporting?
Why do news reports sometimes suggest that men can lower their risk of prostate cancer with changes in behavior, such as diet modification or changing the frequency of sexual activity?
Caveat Emptor. Consumers and journalists beware Anti-biotechnology activists engaged in a week of "direct action" at Starbucks Coffee shops this week aim to target you over the next few days with false and misleading information about food safety, nutrition and the environment. The same people who brought you a long list of other false health and environmental scares including the infamous Alar in apples scare, the Dow-Corning breast implant campaign and dozens of other debunked fears are at it again.
The National Council Against Health Fraud, Inc. (NCAHF) has concluded that policies prescribed in the report issued March 25th by the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy (WHCCAMP) would lead to widespread adoption of unproven, disproven, and irrational methods and would cost the American public billions of dollars and thousands of human lives.
The 1910 Flexner Report set the standards for medical education. The WHCCAMP report does the exact opposite by outlining the agenda for establishing quackery.
The arrival of Earth Day brought a discussion of how to feed the poor. Feeding the hungry has been added to the Earth Day agenda, but the anti-technology rhetoric of past Earth Days, when the poor were forgotten, cannot easily be reconciled with this newly discovered concern.
A March 15th article in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "In Europe, Prescription-Drug Ads Are Banned and Health Costs Lower" suggests that prescription drug advertising is the reason for high health care costs. With talk of the European Union easing its ban on direct-to-consumer marketing by drug companies, many consumer groups and European officials fear that increased spending on advertising will result in higher prices on prescription drugs, squeezing already tight healthcare budgets. However, a basic economics lesson would teach them that such worries are unfounded.
Compelling scientific evidence shows that cholesterol-lowering drug therapy can reduce the risk of heart attacks by about 30 percent, according to a new report released by scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).
Yesterday's news that an American citizen had been charged with plotting with al Qaeda to obtain a "dirty nuke" is understandably causing increased anxiety in our already skittish nation. Before we start handing out radiation pills to everyone, however, we need to take a careful look at the real risks we face, and how to counter them.
Pagination
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