Only about one-third of women know that heart disease is the leading cause of death for women, according to an AHA-sponsored survey in 2000, while almost two-thirds of female respondents thought cancer was their chief health threat. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) kills nearly half a million women each year, with over 240,000 women dying of heart attacks, twice the number of all female cancer deaths combined.
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Don't women have enough to worry about? Breast cancer is scary enough without all the recent confusion about mammography. That's the sad but true state of the science today, and science simply refuses to be rushed, hyped, or intimidated by doctors, pressure groups, or even the government.
In January, Robert's American Gourmet, maker of a popular functional snack food line, recalled Pirate's Booty for mislabeling. The Good Housekeeping Institute independently tested the product and found that it contained 147 calories and 8.5 grams of fat per serving quite a difference from the 120 calories and 2.5 grams of fat reported on the label. The company attributed the discrepancy to a manufacturing problem. They needed to purchase new equipment to meet the public's high demand for Pirate's Booty.
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."
Hey, look! The secret to happy parenting has been known since the 1950s. Smoking may be very bad for Mom and Junior's lungs, but it can do wonders for alleviating stress in their relationship...
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April 5, 2002
Last month, a jury rejected arguments by two National Security Agency workers who claimed that their brain diseases were caused by a magnetic tape-erasing system they used in the course of their work. The judge dismissed some of the plaintiffs' arguments as junk science and the jury rejected the rest, to the delight of the defendant, Electro-Matic Products Co., manufacturer of the tape-erasing system. This was a victory for science and the legal system, which have both been abused in recent decades by people stoking fear of electric and magnetic fields.
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."
Recent reports in the medical literature have profoundly shaken the popular and medical wisdom which held that estrogen-progestin combination therapy enhances life and health for women in the post-menopausal years. Women are relatively free from heart disease, bone loss, vaginal dryness and hot flashes prior to menopause, but manifest increased risk for such ailments after menopause. Therefore, it seemed intuitively obvious that a replenishing of the naturally diminished supply of estrogen and progesterone would restore women to their earlier, lower risk profile.
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 .
Eric Cohen points out some tensions though not actual contradictions in pro-biotech arguments ("Biotech Loses Its Innocence," June 24). He notes that biotech defenders claim the benefits of therapeutic cell-cloning are imminent while the possible horrors of radically altering the human gene code (or "eugenics," as Cohen puts it) remain far off. This is no rhetorical ploy on the part of scientists but an accurate summary of the state of research.
What's the connection between cloning, astrology, alternative medicine, and the Earth orbiting the sun?
A crippling condition may be striking media celebrities and people close to them: paranoia.
Ed McMahon blames a toxic "death mold" (in the words of his lawyer) for killing his dog Muffin and causing his own respiratory ailment.
John Travolta's wife believes her son's Kawasaki Syndrome, a rare vascular disorder, was caused by chemicals in their carpet.
A Vancouver neurologist thinks viral agents may have caused Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's, since three other people who worked with Fox on the Canadian sitcom Leo and Me in the 1970s also have the disease.
Last month McDonald's was ordered to pay $12 million to Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and vegetarians who thought they were eating beef-free fries and hash browns. In 1990, McDonald's issued a statement saying they would no longer use beef fat for frying, using 100% vegetable oil instead. However, the company never claimed that the fries they sold were appropriate for vegetarians.
With the thirtieth anniversary of the DDT ban upon us, the Senate is concluding consideration of a treaty that will ban DDT use worldwide a policy that condemns millions of poor children to death.
The Senate's consideration of the treaty, notes the American Council on Science and Health, falls close to the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most tragic public health decisions in history: the Environmental Protection Agency's original ban on DDT, a powerful and inexpensive pesticide.
The government's National Committee for Complementary and Alternative Medicine recently announced that it may fund a five-year-long, large-scale study evaluating the possible benefit of chelation treatment for those suffering from heart disease. At first, this may sound like a reasonable inquiry. Why wouldn't we want to consider all possible options for the treatment of the number one killer in America? Just last year, almost 62 million Americans had some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and nearly one million died of related conditions.
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.
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.
"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
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"?
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