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This week, the lingerie company Victoria's Secret is no longer under threat of investigation by the Federal Communications Commission, but it will still have to contend with Greenpeace.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Christine Todd Whitman tried to be funny at this year's annual Gridiron Dinner for Washington journalists, like the night's other speakers, but one of Whitman's zingers makes me shudder. Indeed, she preceded her comment by suggesting that this joke hits "close to home":
"When you give a Republican a choice between [less] poison and less regulation, we need some time to think about it."

Authoritarian governments killed some 100 million people during the twentieth century. Simon Chapman, in an essay on Tobacco.org, notes a similarly lethal but less hotly debated menace:
"Between 1950 and 2000, smoking caused about 62 million deaths in developed countries...but they fail to create a sense of urgency in the media, policy-makers, or the public. As Joseph Stalin argued: 'A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.'"

What's the connection between cloning, astrology, alternative medicine, and the Earth orbiting the sun?

CALL IT POLITICAL MARTIAL ARTS, whereby one can use an opponent's own strength and movements to defeat him. This is part of the skill we lovers of liberty must learn in order to surpass the Left in the art of political war.

"Most environmentalists have adopted zero-tolerance positions in order to remain adversarial. The only way to stay adversarial is to adopt even more extreme positions."
Patrick Moore, a Greenpeace co-founder turned skeptic. His old allies call him a turncoat. See: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/3471893.htm

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A U.S. health education group on Wednesday took legal action against the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods in a bid to highlight what it called absurd food health scares.
A legal notice targeting whole-wheat and organic bread sold by the U.S. chain Whole Foods Market was filed by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) after a worldwide scare over acrylamide, which can cause cancer in animals.

Whole Foods Market bills its Whole Wheat Farm Bread as the "stuff of life."
That may be, but it's also now the stuff of lawsuits.
The American Council on Health and Science, a conservative watchdog group, is preparing to sue the upscale, crunchy food chain, contending its baked wheat bread contains the chemical acrylamide. A letter of intent to sue has been filed with the Attorney General's Office, according to Jeff Stier, attorney for the group.

It used to be said that the most fearsome statement in the world is, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." Now, government officials have the "precautionary principle," which supposedly will make our lives safer. In fact, the principle which is not really a principle at all but a seemingly plausible excuse for opposing innovation has already laid waste to several industries and boasts a body count in the millions.

I can attest to the almost hypnotic effect of the Happy Meal...I realize I am buying concentrated fat and acrylamides in a box, but they come with toys.
from an amusing July 29 Houston Chronicle article about suing fast-food companies for making people fat. Available at: http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/1512903
Also see ACSH's comments on the closely-related threat of a "fat tax" on FactsAndFears.

What are we to make of green activists who oppose electricity and want most of humanity to remain poor?
What are we to make of green activists who would rather see Zambia face starvation than let people eat genetically-modified crops?
What are we to make of green activists who promote "voluntary human extinction"?

To political activists though to few scientists ACSH's constant warnings about smoking seem like a non-sequitur. We're opposed to regulations in so many other areas and spend so much of our time reassuring people that they aren't going to be killed by pesticide residues on broccoli or by electric and magnetic fields from power lines, some critics say, why do we wimp out and denounce smoking, making it sound as if it's very bad for you? Why are we, as some put it, "libertarian except for smoking"?

From the Institute of Food Technologists website:

From: ACSH President Dr. Elizabeth Whelan
Re: Decisions Related to Distribution of the Smallpox Vaccine
Dear President Bush,
Recent press reports indicate that your administration is on the verge of making a determination about which Americans, if any, should be vaccinated against smallpox.
As a public health professional, I understand the complexity and gravity of the decision you are facing, and I wanted to offer some perspective and advice.

Sometimes to keep things organized, it's best to jot down a list. So, faced with a flurry of news items and e-mails about unscientific goings-on, I find myself filing them according to the political philosophies of the people responsible for the goings-on. All of them are in some sense "greens," but I discern seven distinct types or subspecies, if you will. It's worth noting how their priorities differ. (I suspect this list will come in handy in the future.)

Of course advocates involved with breast cancer on Long Island were disappointed in the results of the recently completed federal study "What Next?" Aug. 11 . They had been told so often by environmental activists that there must be some relation between breast cancer rates here and one or another chemical pollutant that it became received wisdom; no doubters were tolerated.

Eggs play a valuable role in helping consumers achieve a balanced, varied, and nutritious diet, the American Council on Science and Health concluded in a report released today.
"When people hear the word 'eggs,' they often think 'cholesterol' and 'bad,'" says Dr. Ruth Kava, ACSH's director of nutrition. "In fact," she continues, "although egg yolks are high in cholesterol, they only contribute about 1/3 of the typical American's dietary cholesterol. Eggs also provide essential nutrients, such as protein, riboflavin, folate, and vitamins B12, D and E."

Whole Foods Market can dish it out, but they sure can't take it. The largest organic foods retailer developed a mega-profitable business by scaring consumers about conventionally produced foods supposedly "contaminated" with chemicals and biotechnology.
For the complete story, please visit http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58760,00.html .

From an October 21 MSNBC.com article about an appetite suppressant drug that had the side effect of causing erections:
"The [body] tends to use the same signals over and over" for different jobs, said Philip F. Smith of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

To the Editor:
While the debate continues on when to begin smallpox vaccinations, there is no public discussion at all about our state of readiness to deal with a large-scale bioterrorist assault using weaponized anthrax ("New Plan to Meet Smallpox Threat," front page, Sept. 24).
This is illogical, as the threat of smallpox is still hypothetical, while not that long ago we sustained a real attack using anthrax spores.

Scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health once again have analyzed the natural foods that make up a traditional holiday dinner and once again have found that they are loaded with "carcinogens": chemicals that in large doses cause cancer in laboratory animals. None of these chemicals are made by man or added to the foods. Indeed, all of these "carcinogens" occur naturally in foods. But ACSH scientists have good news: these natural carcinogens pose no hazard to human health.

Yet another young man has fallen victim to the American quest for a "magic bullet." A couple of weeks ago twenty-three-year-old Steve Bechler, a Baltimore Orioles pitcher, collapsed and died of heatstroke during spring training. The weather was warm eighty-one degrees but not outstandingly hot. Why would a young, strong, athletic man succumb like that? It is quite likely that at least part of the answer is Bechler's use of an herbal weight loss/energizing product containing the herbal stimulant ephedra.

I applaud FDA Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan's efforts to help sick patients gain desperately needed access to new cancer-fighting drugs ("FDA Gives Quick Approval to Cancer Drugs," Personal Journal, May 14). His bold initiative to include actual cancer specialists with hands-on patient care expertise in the FDA's deliberations on new drug approvals will save lives and extend the lives of many others who had little hope.