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The website TomPaine.com seems to exist mainly to place large ads on the op-ed page of the New York Times, usually denouncing corporate greed in such cartoonish and oversimplified terms that one almost expects to see the pieces decorated with top hat-wearing Snidely Whiplash figures, chomping on cigars and carrying big bags of money.
That is standard left-wing politics, but TomPaine.com recently took up a new cause: attacking vaccine manufacturers.

To the Editor:
As a physician and public health educator, I say it's self-evident that parents' rights to evade vaccinations for their school-age children stop at classmates' respiratory tracts ("Worship Optional")
Parents seeking "religious" exemptions from vaccinations for their kids should be made aware of recent epidemics of whooping cough and other rare communicable diseases. When vaccination rates drop below 80 percent or so, community ("herd") immunity falters and even vaccinated youngsters become vulnerable.

You know, I've been feeling awfully tired lately. I haven't been sleeping well, and when I do sleep, I grind my teeth. Also, I'm feeling slightly nervous, forgetting minor details, and eating more than usual but not gaining weight. Should I be worried? According to the November 2002 issue of Secrets of Robust Health promoted as a "health newsletter for the thinking person," I should. Divulging information "you will probably never hear from your family doctor"(with good reason, as we'll see), the newsletter claims that all of my symptoms point to the same culprit: a parasite.

"You say tomato. I say tomato." It's not only a saying that fails to work when used in print instead of uttered aloud, it's also the wacky, devil-may-care opening line of a booklet promoting alternative medicine that Oxford Health Plans sent out a few days ago to all of their participants, including, ironically, us skeptics at the American Council on Science and Health.

Physicians and scientists at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) called a second filing of a lawsuit against McDonald's Corporation "without scientific merit." Lawyers for two overweight and obese New York teenagers today filed a revised suit to replace the one which had been dismissed last month by Judge Robert Sweet in the U.S. District Court of New York.

We know that cigarettes are bad for our health, but there is an indirect way they can kill that we rarely stop to think about. Cigarettes are the number one cause of fatal house fires.

The Toll

Most of us would agree that it's cruel for hucksters to claim they have treatments for cancer if they do not. We ought to be just as wary of organizations claiming to have unconventional knowledge about preventing cancer by avoidance of various environmental threats. That's the central pitch of the Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC).

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently instituted more lenient regulations regarding the level of scientific evidence needed to note health benefits of certain foods on packages. The FDA determined the benefits of nuts to be at a "B" level on its new ranking system of A (scientifically proven) to D (almost no evidence), according to Lauren Neergaard of the Associated Press. Previously, the FDA did not permit food manufacturers to make qualified health claims on its products.

Plants do not have digestive systems, but they do have a genome like the rest of life as we know it (unless one counts viruses as a life form). However, the furor over transgenic ("genetically modified") crops has given rise to the belief among many that foodstuffs such as tomatoes do not have genes unless biotechnologists put them there and do not have toxins unless those toxins originate in factories (just this week, New York Times writer Marian Burros wrote another article implying the purity of organic food, and she is far from alone in purveying that message).

Executive Summary

Here at the American Council on Science and Health, we have repeatedly found ourselves engaged in correspondence like the following, so we thought we'd share...

Dear Dr. Whelan,

Should cigarettes be made illegal and currently-illegal drugs be made legal?
Defenders of cigarettes used to joke about such a scenario coming to pass, but with smoking bans becoming more popular and the idea of medical marijuana gaining some ground, it doesn't seem like such a far-fetched, mirror-universe idea anymore. And much as I hate to sound like my own thinking is on the cutting edge of absurdity, that outcome doesn't sound as unreasonable to me as it once did.

There's been a lot of controversy over Janet Jackson revealing her breast at the Superbowl, which must make Madonna and Britney envious (though Madonna is cleaning up her act in some ways: she has reportedly quit smoking and is trying to get Britney to do likewise). The real booby prize for Celebrity with a Bad Idea should go not to poor Miss Jackson, though, but to...actress Pamela Anderson.

The City Council of Aliso Viejo, CA was scheduled to consider a law banning foam cups and containers this week in part, reports the Los Angeles Times, because they contain a potentially deadly chemical some call "dihydrogen monoxide." It is more commonly called water, notes the Times, and city officials say that a paralegal drafting the proposed legislation was duped by Internet sites repeating the nerdy joke that something ought to be done about the dihydrogen monoxide problem.

The headline in the April 11 New York Times Magazine said it all: "What the World Needs Now Is DDT." Given the prestige of the Times, one hopes that it reopens the public discussion on the use of DDT for control of the mosquito vector for malaria and for control of other insectborne diseases. For some of us over the last three decades, the issue was never closed, but we were voices in the wilderness, unheard except occasionally to be condemned as strange or worse.

[Editor's note: Paul Lee, in an article for SkepticReport.com, has argued that complementary and alternative medicine methods are by definition unproven and that we should prefer "evidence-based medicine" but Saul Green cautions that the term "evidence-based medicine" is often used not by responsible mainstream scientists but by CAM adherents who merely go through the motions of performing tests and gathering data without those tests and data producing reliable results in order

The movie "Supersize Me" is misleading and a perversion of healthful nutritional practices, according to physicians and scientists at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). The documentary follows star and director Morgan Spurlock as he overeats at McDonald's restaurants every day for one month.

This letter to the editor appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on June 16, 2004:
To the editor:
Roger Moore's review in Friday's Calendar section of the movie Super Size Me calls director/star Morgan Spurlock's downward spiral compelling. But what Spurlock demonstrated in his movie was just plain gluttony, compounded by an intentional lack of physical activity.

Now, I do not want to sound like everyone's mother, but let's face it, a lot of what Mom taught us was true.

A couple of days ago we noted that a new health scare is on the horizon, one linked to the discovery of a class of flame-retardant chemicals called PBDEs in salmon. An article in the August 12 Wall Street Journal confirms our interpretation.

Over the last few years, we've chronicled a range of approaches to dealing with obesity. From Atkins to bariatric surgery, to the Zone, we've seen it all. Or so we thought. A new approach to dealing with the weight problem plaguing more and more Americans has been broached at a meeting sponsored by the Public Health Advocacy Institute, according to the Washington Times.

Rock Hudson, Arthur Ashe, Ryan White, Liberace, Alvin Ailey, Freddie Mercury, Anthony Perkins, Rudolf Nureyev. Remember when you could hardly go a month without hearing about someone famous dying of AIDS? And the New York Times obituary page was filled with thirtyish men, often in the arts, who had died "after a short illness." When is the last time you heard this? Probably about eight years ago. So what happened?
The pharmaceutical industry is what happened.
"The Gay Plague"

Ah, it's spring again when our fancies are said to turn to romance. And with Earth Day upon us (April 22nd), the Greens' romantic fantasies turn to the environment, as they promote nineteenth-century Romantic ideologies to deal with twenty-first-century problems. Increasingly, the food sections of many newspapers have become year-round bastions of these romantic ideologies, touting the virtues of local produce, heritage varieties, and of course organic agriculture.

Whether you are traveling around the world or relaxing at home, a safe, healthy vacation will add to your enjoyment. Here are some health and safety tips to keep in mind when planning your summer vacation.
The Dark Side of Summer Sun

How much do we really know about the origin and spread of the 1918 flu pandemic? Comparisons with other pandemics reveal patterns and lingering mysteries.
Watching the Animals
"The horses growing better, a cough and sore throat seized mankind." This was the news from Dublin toward the end of 1727, reported in Charles Creighton's monumental History of Epidemics in Britain -- Volume II -- From the Extinction of the Plague to the Present Time, Creighton's "present time" being 1894.