Where would you expect to hear that paying less and getting more is a bad thing? Only in the often-bizarre world of "public-health" activism.
Yes, according to NANA (the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity), fast-food vendors are robbing you blind by giving you more for less. You can read their report about the cost and calories found in various fast foods at their parent organization's website (http://www.cspinet.org/new/waistline_061802.html).
Among the horrifying findings:
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The September 4, 2002 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has both good and bad news for the health of American women and girls. One article (the good news) presents the results of a study on post-menopausal women showing that regular physical activity diminishes the risk of heart disease. The bad news is that a second article in the same issue reports that as girls advance from childhood to mid-adolescence, their levels of physical activity drop precipitously. This pattern does not bode well for their health.
The universal advice that has made guzzling water a national pastime is more urban myth than medical dogma and appears to lack scientific proof..."I have found no scientific proof that absolutely every person must 'drink at least eight glasses of water a day'."
Heinz Valtin, M.D., in an August 8 press release from Dartmouth Medical School.
See the letter ACSH's Ruth Kava wrote to the Wall Street Journal in May and an article she wrote for Priorities last year about the "eight glasses a day" myth.
On that day, the American Heart Association (AHA) went on record (in the journal Circulation) saying that every person in the United States, starting at age twenty, should be regularly evaluated for the risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
Why is the proclamation important?
Is there an "epidemic" of autism? Are vaccinations or dental fillings to blame?
Lately the media has loudly featured, with more noise than facts, the increase in reported cases of autism and the unproved allegation that the mercury derivatives in some vaccines and dental fillings have caused this increase.
We seek ways to improve the condition of those with autism, but enthusiasm mustn't imperil sound science. Wrong answers can make things worse, wasting time and squandering resources.
America's food supply is among the safest and most abundant in the world, thanks in part to a variety of technologies used to safeguard it. Nonetheless, in the last decade or so there has been an increasingly vocal minority that claims our foods are simply not as healthful or nutritious as they used to be. One of their targets is milk.
The Value of Pasteurization
While AIDS is the deadliest sexually-transmitted disease, we easily forget how much more widespread other STDs are. Today, there are an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States, roughly one out of every 345 people. It has rightly gained mass media attention and come to dominate sex education materials. Let's take a look at the numbers on some other scourges, though:
65 million, or 1 out of every 4 people: The number of people living with a sexually transmitted disease (STD) in the United States.
It's not every day that one of our projects here at the American Council on Science and Health moves people to write poetry. Well, actually, we've posted some ACSH-themed poetry, but rarely has anyone outside the organization written poetry about us, but now the Heartland Institute has.
All right, despite their protectionist laws, ludicrous theories about literature, and surrender-prone combat style, even the French occasionally get something right, and what better time to honor them than now, with Bastille Day upon us (even if the Revolution was a tragically misguided eruption of mass murder that threatened the foundations of civilization)?
Someday, I'm sure, it will become common knowledge that a health scare can be physically baseless yet cause real anxiety. People will learn to resist the urge to find a scapegoat for whatever illnesses happen to exist in the population (including symptoms induced by anxiety itself).
When my friend Ted, who is very skeptical about democracy, sees a crazy person or an idiot, he likes to say, "Remember: that person gets one vote, and you get one vote." The past few weeks have been full of events that make you wonder about the wisdom of the masses but the elites don't come off looking so clever, either:
There have been several reports lately about the odd, non-health-related projects that all that settlement money extracted from the tobacco companies went to, such as bridges, sprinkler systems, and even subsidies to tobacco farmers.
"I'm OK with it, but it'll be a drag if I don't make it until the next James Bond movie comes out."
Warren Zevon, fifty-five year-old singer of "Werewolves of London," on being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, as reported September 12 by Associated Press, which did not mention Zevon's smoking, and Reuters, which did.
Much as famine relief organizations are getting tired of ignorant anti-biotech protesters, the grown-ups at the World Health Organization are getting tired of the reckless kids at Ralph Nader's group Public Citizen. The WHO angrily denies Public Citizen's report claiming that irradiating food to kill bacteria is dangerous (see ACSH's booklet on the topic as well):
I. Bits and Pieces
Where was I...? Can't remember, but I try. Relatives making such a hew and cry, I feel like I'm the sane one amidst neurotic plagues.
No, I shouldn't be fazed, And that's not how the thing's phrased: It's neuritic plaques that have left me dazed, These brain-addling indicators of Alzheimer's disease.
II. Land of the Lost
Bioterrorism: How Great Are the Risks?
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan
Remarks Delivered at Debate with Richard Preston, Author of The Demon in the Freezer.
Sponsored by the Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation
Thursday, November l4, 2002, at the City University of New York
I recently gave a speech about cigarettes to a libertarian discussion group called the Junto here in New York City. I had expected the conversation to pivot on the question of free will not only do libertarians defend the legal right to smoke, many scoff at the idea of addiction, since each individual must ultimately be held accountable for his own decisions, healthy or unhealthy.
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:
Our recent report on the role of beef in the American diet noted some beef benefits, but that didn't please everyone. Below is a prime example of how some of beef's detractors react to such news but we will not be cowed.
Responses:
February 11, 2003
A new journal is needed. It should be titled The Journal of Obvious Results and Unwarranted and Spectacular Conclusions. The readers of ACSH's webpages have by now seen headlines that read "Organically grown foods higher in cancer-fighting chemicals than conventionally grown foods." Like souls in a Hollywood hell, forced to sit through a bad movie for eternity, we will undoubtedly be having this "finding" thrust at us ad infinitum, as we are in the case of this latest article meant to prove the superiority of "organic" food.
If the Environmental Protection Agency bans something, it must be dangerous, right? Well...
Two recent articles in my hometown newspaper show how hard a time the media have understanding and explaining science.
The "Organic Foods" Story
Scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) find no compelling evidence that acrylamide, when consumed in foods such as French fries and bread, poses a risk of human cancer. Their conclusions are presented today in a report on acrylamide in food and its relation to human health: "Acrylamide in Food: Is It a Real Threat to Public Health?"
A recently-published study (New England Journal of Medicine, Nov. 21) describes a new vaccine that can prevent persistent infection from a virus HPV, the human papillomavirus known to be a causative factor in about one-half of all cases of cervical cancer. This is a major breakthrough, for the fight against cervical cancer and, more broadly, for the burgeoning field of pharmaceutical products that may be useful in preventing human cancer.
Cervical Cancer
Pagination
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