While we at ACSH have been determined to remain on the sidelines of the raging national debate about the fate of Terri Schiavo (this is largely a legal and ethical issue, not a scientific one), we cannot remain silent about the outrageous misrepresentation of scientific facts about this case that has been occurring in the past ten days.
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There's a lot of media coverage of this carcinogen and that. Almost exclusively, however, the reports deal with synthetic chemicals that supposedly present intolerable risks to the most vulnerable populations -- infants and children. But in many cases, if not most, the evidence of risk is not substantiated by sound science. There are, however, naturally-occurring chemicals that are known to be carcinogenic.
A January 31, 2005 Associated Press story describes the government's new list of "carcinogens," produced by the National Toxicology Program, but quotes ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan in a section about objections to the sweeping and poorly-prioritized structure of the list:
But the American College of Radiology faulted the addition of X-rays and gamma rays, saying it was misleading and could prompt patients to avoid getting needed care.
Your humble editor is taking next week off, but before I do so, I must quickly note a few milestones:
A March 1, 2005 Editor and Publisher article by Brian Orloff about John Tierney taking William Safire's place on the New York Times editorial page (alongside his ideologically-opposed ex-girlfriend, Maureen Dowd) mentions the objections of Columbia Journalism Review's Zach Roth and, in the process, Roth's objections to ACSH (which accepts donations from anyone willing to give -- including you, or for that matter Greenpeace -- as long as no strings are attached to our research):
To the Editor:
As the assistant director of public health for the American Council on Science and Health, I would like to reply to your review of David Kirby's Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic (April 17). I disagree with your reviewer about the timeliness of the book. As noted in a 2004 Institute of Medicine report, the large majority of reputable doctors and scientists agree that available data do not support the existence of a causal relationship between thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine preservative, and autism.
Nutrition activists like the Center for Science in the Public Interest are scaring Americans away from technology that could help us lose weight.
California's legislature is now debating whether to ban a chemical found in plastic consumer products of many types, Bisphenol A, based on the so-called precautionary principle. This principle asserts that if a substance is suspected of being harmful, it must be banned or restricted until it's proven "safe."
But how does anyone go about proving a substance completely safe, and to whose satisfaction must it be proven?
Recently, I posted a piece on the discovery of the potential for a serious allergenic response from a foodstuff that was being promoted as a non-genetically-modified (non-GM) alternative to GM soybeans. There was almost total media silence on this matter even though the research itself was published in a leading peer-reviewed medical journal. ACSH Nutrition Director Dr.
A March 31, 2005 Dow Jones Newswire report on the Pope's health quoted ACSH Advisor Dr. Marc Siegel:
A urinary infection can produce fever and a drop in blood pressure as reported in the Pope, said Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist in internal medicine at the New York University Medical Center.
The pope's risk of such an infection is heightened because he is elderly -- which suggests his prostate is probably enlarged -- debilitated and run down from the illness that recently sent him to the hospital, Siegel said.
An April 9, 2005 article on the news-for-fathers site DadTalk by Brett Levy notes a defense by ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross of the controversial CHEERS study on the reaction of children to pesticides, for which EPA Administrator Stephen L.
Now that the FDA has pressured Pfizer to remove Bextra from pharmacy shelves, applause rains down from the usual locales: self-styled "consumer advocates," politicos looking for a quick score, and columnists, all patting themselves on the back for "getting" Bextra.
The losers here, also as usual, are those members of the public who benefited (or might have benefited later on) from using this pain-relieving Cox-2 inhibitor.
Recently, the FDA issued an edict advising sperm banks to bar as donors men who have had sex with other men within five years prior to donation. I have searched through the medical literature for a sound scientific basis for this directive, yet the only reasoning behind the recommendation is the fact that homosexual men are at high risk of HIV. If this were the rationale, though, it follows that the FDA should bar other high-risk donors such as men who have used IV drugs or have had sex with prostitutes. This, however, is not the case.
Activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is known for confusing the notion of being kind to animals (which most people I know support) with animal rights extremism (which most people find absurd).
A May 4, 2005 column by dietician Cinda Williams Chima in the Cleveland Plain Dealer notes ACSH among voices cautioning that "functional foods" are overhyped:
Celebrate. Celebrate. No, that's not the return of the Celebrex TV ad with its aerobic arthritics. That's the euphoria of physicians delighted with a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel's recommendation earlier this year that Vioxx and its cousins Bextra and Celebrex (all medicines known as Cox-2 inhibitors) should remain on the market, despite evidence they increase heart disease risk in some people. The panelists reached their decision after weighing all the data and concluding the benefits of these pain-relieving drugs outweighed the risks.
A June 14, 2005 article by Jeanne Whalen in the Wall Street Journal describes an ad campaign by the Lung Cancer Alliance designed to draw attention to lung cancer sufferers who were never smokers -- a strange and possibly misleading tactic given that virtually all lung cancer is attributable to smoking; the article mentions ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
For anyone that cherishes good health and values straight facts, the oft-cited statistics of 630,000 American babies born every year with elevated levels of mercury in their blood and potentially damaged brains, if true, ought to be mind-boggling. These American babies are said to have been poisoned before birth when their pregnant mothers consumed fish with trace levels of mercury, and after birth when they were breastfeeding.
In January 2005, New York governor George Pataki issued an executive order mandating the use of so-called "green" cleaning products in all state agencies and authorities; he later extended his order to New York schools. According to an Associated Press notice, the governor signed legislation putting his orders into law, effective September 1, 2006. So now we can all breathe a sigh of relief when standing for hours in a queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles or any other state offices, right?
On March 29, 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a revised set of Guidelines for Carcinogenic Risk Assessment to replace those adopted in 1986. The revisions reflect a gradual evolution of the process by which EPA performs risk assessment for possible cancer-causing agents.
For over a year, the FDA has held adamantly to its stance that repeated delays in deciding whether to approve the over-the-counter sales of the "morning after" pill, Plan B, have nothing to do with abortion politics. Much of the science community, however, is finding this harder and harder to believe.
An August 25, 2005 dispatch from ChemWeek.com describes ACSH's petition to stop the EPA from using high-dose rodent tests alone to dub things "carcinogens" (and a longer version of the piece appears in the August 24/30, 2005 issue of the affiliated print magazine Chemical Week):
While the ongoing tension between Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields as well as a book by the latter have recently drawn attention to postpartum depression, the issue of depression during pregnancy is often neglected. Roughly the same percentage of women (14.5%) experience depression during pregnancy as after giving birth.
Ideology scored another victory over public health and sound science last week when seven New Jersey legislators obtained a court order barring needle exchange programs in the state. The crusading seven, led by Sen. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Union) claim that such programs, which allow drug users to exchange their dirty needles for new sterile equipment, encourage the use of illicit drugs and do nothing to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.
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