Two recent articles in my hometown newspaper show how hard a time the media have understanding and explaining science.
The "Organic Foods" Story
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There are a growing number of reasons to drink alcohol.
No, no, I don't mean because my girlfriend left me or because it's so terribly cold in the big city (the Kyoto Accord against global warming must be working perfectly). I mean that drinking appears to be associated with health benefits:
The specter of contagious disease often engenders a primal reaction based on fear, with resultant irrational behavior. SARS is no exception. Only a few weeks ago, New York's bustling Chinatown became a ghost town as a result.
Over 50 years of scientific research have established that the irradiation of foods to minimize food-borne illness and decrease waste is both safe and effective. Physicians and scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) endorse the use of irradiation to enhance safety and supplement other food protection methods.
Relatively little is known about perfluorinated acids where they are coming from, how they travel, how they get in the human body, or their long-term health effects. "We don't have the data to do more at this point than than to worry," said Dr. Gina Solomon, a physician with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
An apt summary of the default NRDC position on chemicals, in the New York Times, April 15, 2003, in an article with a title that could run in every issue: "EPA Orders Companies to Examine Effects of Chemicals"
As one might have expected, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is taking a wrong-headed approach to solving the problem of the increasing obesity of American youth. According to their latest press release, CSPI thinks that "Replacing soda and junk foods with healthful drinks and snacks...can help combat the skyrocketing rates of obesity in children and teens." Would that it were true.
Editor's note: We just received this letter, a reminder that weighing long-term risks and benefits is often hardest for the young, which is what makes them such an important market for cigarette manufacturers. To help kids get a better handle on the risks, we'll soon publish a teen version of our book Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You, and for smokers of all ages interested in knowing some of the quit-assist options, there's our book Kicking Butts in the Twenty-First Century.
[Editor's note: We admire Sandy Szwarc for pointing out some of the excesses in America's war on obesity, such as lawsuits now brewing against fast food chains. But our nutrition director, Dr. Ruth Kava, objects to Szwarc's promotion of an odd, revisionist theory about obesity: that we are neither consuming more nor exercising less but are getting fat precisely because dieting causes metabolic changes that induce obesity. TS]
During scenes from the movie The Secret Lives of Dentists, Dana and David Hurst are seen undergoing an unholy combination of adultery and viral gastroenteritis. While Dana (Hope Davis) and their three kids are all feverish and vomiting, David (Campbell Scott) responds to the illness and betrayal in his family by . . . pulling out a pack of smokes.
Orange-juice makers claim they can reduce high blood pressure and help prevent stroke. Saw Palmetto herbs boast they can "support prostate health." Dried plums (nee prunes) are touted for cardiovascular benefits. These claims are not backed up by solid scientific evidence, but under federal law they are legal.
Chefs at some of New York's finest restaurants including Blue Water Grill, Atlantic Grill and Blue Fin are practicing the latest form of culinary political correctness: banning farmed salmons from their menus, to supposedly protect their patrons' health.
The cause? A flurry of media reports that an environmental advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), found unusually high levels of PCBs the long-banned industrial chemicals that news reports claimed "caused cancer" in farmed salmon.
In light of the ongoing controversy over fast food lawsuits, the media has called upon ACSH to deliver scientific information regarding obesity and fast food. John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University is the proponent of the fast food lawsuits, which seek to shift the blame for obesity from individuals to restaurants.
It is difficult for a group like ACSH to present "hard data" on the impact ACSH's publications have on improving public knowledge on topics related to chemicals, nutrition, the environment, lifestyle and public health. But one possible measure for evaluation is the extent of coverage ACSH receives in major Internet search engines such as Google, the top-ranked Internet search engine, which accounts for over a third of all Internet searches performed.
Jury selection began last week in California in a case where employees will argue that IBM knowingly exposed them to chemicals used in the manufacturing of chips and disc drives that caused a variety of cancers, birth defects and other ailments. If found liable, IBM faces hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Last month, a company called Freedom Tobacco International, Inc. offered celebrities lifetime supplies of their cigarettes and paid women to smoke the brand in hip Manhattan bars and nightclubs in an effort to draw attention to the brand.
This year has seen whooping cough outbreaks in New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere. Whooping cough is a serious disease that, in the past, killed many children and caused considerable suffering for many others. A program of immunization had just about eliminated whooping cough in the United States, but this year the disease is making a comeback: the number of reported cases has greatly exceeded those reported in recent years, a scary reminder of another era.
The July 1 Health Journal article "Getting Screened for Colon Cancer Isn't Just for the 50-and-Over Set" by Tara Parker-Pope was important. Colorectal cancer is both a major cancer killer and largely preventable with appropriate screening. Deciding who should and should not be screened is crucial, as it would be prohibitively expensive to screen everyone over age 40, instead of the currently recommended age cut-off of 50.
Re: "Health groups' donor ties questioned":
In light of the distortions promoted by the anti-consumer-choice, left-wing funded, advocacy group, Center For The Science in the Public Interest, below are some facts about the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). We are disappointed that your reporter did not contact us before publishing misleading information about our work.
A new publication by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), Kicking Butts in the Twenty-First Century: What Modern Science Has Learned About Smoking Cessation, summarizes the spectrum of methods that have been proven to help smokers quit. The report also describes smoking cessation techniques currently in development and evaluates alternative methods that have been advocated as aids to smoking cessation.
The Jan. 20 article in the Health Journal, "Toxins in Breast Milk," conveys unscientific assumptions that will needlessly alarm many members of the public, especially women who plan to breast feed. The assertion that a study subject's body "carried 105 chemicals in measurable levels" is meaningless on its face. We all have thousands of "chemicals" in our bodies, both natural and synthetic. Why was the discussion centered on synthetic, to the exclusion of natural chemicals?
Your Dec. 8 articles "Health Officials Say Flu Shots Should Go to the Most Vulnerable" and "Lack of Vaccines Goes Beyond Flu Inoculations," dealing with the shortages in influenza (flu) vaccine as well as others, re-inforce two important points:
New York's mayor Mike Bloomberg has joined the list of public officials seeking to import drugs from Canada where even American-made pharmaceuticals are subject to price controls in a quest to provide cheaper drugs for New Yorkers. And not just for government employees, as other civic leaders have planned, but potentially for the millions treated within the huge NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation system.
Dear Dr. Whelan,
As a member of the ACSH Board of Science and Policy Advisors, I read with great interest the recent A Citizen's Guide to Terrorism and Response book. I found the publication filled with a great deal of good information, well thought out, and comprehensive. Although I think the publication did a good job addressing responses to WMDs, I also believe that the publication may have slighted other aspects of terrorism that might contribute significantly to instilling fear and creating significant health risks for Americans.
As the American Council on Science and Health prepares to mark its twenty-fifth anniversary with a celebratory dinner on Dec. 4, here's a quick look back at how things have changed over the years.
The world was different but not all that different in 1978, the year that a plucky pro-science non-profit opened its doors, headed by epidemiologist Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and dedicated to informing the public and opinion-makers about the real health science that is so often obscured by scare stories, activists, con artists, and quacks.
Pagination
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