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A coveted seat at the ACSH Dispatch table goes to agronomist Giorgio Fidenato for standing up to environmental groups and the Italian government.

A study of about 500 people in Charlotte, N.C., before and after the city completed a light-rail system found that those who used the system to commute were 81 percent less likely to become obese.

Even though her provision to ban bisphenol A (BPA) was removed from the Food Safety Modernization Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) refuses to give up and is asking California Gov.

A new University of Virginia study finds that alcohol-based hand sanitizers do not significantly reduce infection rates with flu or cold viruses. Study participants who used the sanitizer had 42 rhinovirus infections and 12 influenza infections per 100 volunteers, while 51 rhinovirus infections and 15 influenza infections occurred per 100 volunteers who did not take any special sanitary precautions.

Americans over the weekend honored the victims killed in the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
ACSH staffers would like to remind our readers that they should take the necessary precautions for terrorism preparedness by reading ACSH’s publication A Citizen's Guide to Terrorism Preparedness and Response.
“The most important thing people can do is to be educated. Knowledge will overcome fear,” ACSH's Jeff Stier reminds us.

Here’s a possible pick-up line for all you boys at the bar: Did you know moderate wine consumption is associated with better cognitive function? Female wine drinkers, and male wine and beer drinkers, score better on thinking tests than teetotalers.

From the company that brought you Dolly the cloned sheep comes another new and exciting development: the creation of red blood cells from spare IVF embryonic stem cells (ESC). British scientists from the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh are using stem cell lines to create an alternative source of O-negative (universal donor) and B-positive blood types.

Statin medications such as Lipitor and Crestor are a cost-effective way of preventing heart attacks even in lower-risk populations, according to a computerized analysis published this week in Circulation.

In contrast to Wednesday’s lists of false or unprioritized cancer prevention tips, (from USA Today and the

Sunday NFL football fans may have noticed something different amongst the hordes of their favorite gridiron defensive linemen and quarterbacks — pink cleats, wristbands, gloves, chin straps, sideline caps, helmet decals, eye shield decals, captains' patches, sideline towels and quarterback towels. In honor of breast cancer awareness month, every NFL game in October will feature this distinct pink tint, reminding all of us about the devastating disease.

The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to regulate perchlorate under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Associated Press reported Thursday. The chemical has long been used in testing rockets and missiles, and therefore has been notoriously dubbed as the toxic chemical used in rocket fuel.

Most people who want to scare folks for Halloween do it with a frightening costume or elaborate yard display. Not the Environmental Working Group, alas.

A third of American mothers are unlikely to get their children flu shots, according to a survey commissioned by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. Another poll by the same group finds 43 percent of Americans say they won’t get vaccinated themselves.

An international team of Alzheimer’s disease experts have proposed a new framework for diagnosing the disease earlier in its course that doesn’t require the patient to suffer from full-blown dementia. Instead, the patients must suffer “episodic memory impairment” and have at least one positive biomarker — either found in the cerebrospinal fluid, or on special radiological tests — for the disease.

Mammograms: Not so beneficial after all?

Pregnant women who were near the 9/11 attacks in New York don’t have to worry that they might have put their unborn child at risk from exposure to toxic dust.

The FDA Endocrinologic & Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee has now recommended against allowing two new anti-obesity prescription drugs onto the market, in spite of the pervasive obesity epidemic in this country.

ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom yesterday participated in a webinar whose ostensible aim was a discussion of the efficacy of taxing sugary beverages as a weapon in the fight against obesity. But rather than discussing the pros and cons of such a tax, participants focused mostly on generating revenue through taxes on soda and sweetened juice.

Last month, an FDA advisory panel voted 12-to-1 to recommend the agency revoke the indication for advanced breast cancer for Avastin, a drug which two recent studies show does not significantly increase progression-free survival in patients. But over 6,500 people and counting disagree with the panel’s assessment and are petitioning the FDA to maintain Avastin’s indication for breast cancer.

Many women who take prescription drugs that can cause birth defects aren t that vigilant about using birth control, according to a new study. After analyzing a large database of prescription drug orders, Medco Research Institute scientists found that an alarming 40 percent of reproductive-age women concurrently using an oral contraceptive and a Category X drug a medication with known teratogenic, or fetal malformation effects are not taking the contraceptive regularly and are risking pregnancy.

Dallas-area black men have been getting more than just fades, buzzcuts and something off the top while visiting their local barbershop. As part of a public health intervention study, barbers in an intervention group of eight black-owned barbershops were trained to take customers blood pressure, and offered patrons a free reading with each cut while telling them a model story about real people getting their blood pressure under control.

Pregnant women whose doctors recommended the H1N1 swine flu vaccine were almost seven times more likely to get the shot than those whose doctors didn t recommend it,according to a survey of 300 women at Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Del. An aggressive pro-vaccine campaign at the hospital resulted in 62 percent of admitted pregnant women getting shots, researcher Marci Drees, M.D., told reporters at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Even though the number of U.S. adults with high blood pressure has not changed over the past decade, U.S. government researchers report that many more know about it — over 80 percent in 2008, up from 70 percent in 1999-2000 — and are getting treated for it. Approximately 30 percent of Americans have high blood pressure — a number that has remained stable since 1999 across gender, age and race — but almost 74 percent of adults took drugs to treat it in 2008, compared to 50 percent in 1999-2000.