A grim reminder that almost anything, not just synthetic chemicals, can be toxic in extraordinarily large amounts:
A Florida baby sitter was charged with murdering a 3-year-old girl by forcing her to drink so much water that she died of "acute water intoxication," police said on Monday...the child, Rosita Gonzalez, died of hyponatremia, which occurs when the body contains so much water that sodium levels are dangerously diluted, causing cells to malfunction.
Reuters, March 10
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Australian researchers note the immense cost to society of smoking compared to illegal drugs...
This week saw the arrest of sixteen teenagers in Westchester County for underage drinking at a party which is not big news, but the report made passing mention of the presence of several tablets of Ritalin, the drug prescribed with growing frequency as a treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and said that the drug is sometimes used recreationally. It's ironic that at the same time some people are concerned that some kids are overmedicated with Ritalin to keep them under control, other kids are rebelling by using more Ritalin than they're supposed to.
French scientists, writing in the February 8, 2003 issue of The Lancet, claim success in treating a heart attack victim with muscle stem-cells transplanted from his thigh to his heart. Though the seventy-two-year-old patient died eighteen months later, examination of his heart showed that the grafted stem cells had taken root and were differentiating into myotubes and contractile tissue.
Editor's note: People sometimes think of smoking as little more dangerous than countless other bad habits, so the idea of quitting through nicotine replacement therapy or pharmaceuticals that combat nicotine cravings may strike some as counterintuitive as though it were a mere switching from one substance to another. But smoking kills about a third of users and has many other negative health effects (see ACSH's book about Cigarettes), while drugs to aid smoking cessation just might save your life.
The invaluable Snopes.com, which exposes hoaxes, notes an e-mail that's been making the rounds that warns people about purported dangers from heated or frozen plastic containers. Here is the text of the e-mail, with some commentary from HealthFactsAndFears.com:
"No Smoking," the ubiquitous sign in public buildings, should also be present in another building your home. According to the August issue of the British Medical Journal, University of Warwick researchers recommend banning all smoking in parents' homes in order to decrease the potential harm of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) to babies.
New York City had a freak snowstorm on April 7, and as a result of an equally freak accident, Dr. Robert C. Atkins slipped on the sidewalk outside his office, fell, and hit his head. One week later, Dr. Atkins, trained as a cardiologist, world-renowned author of a diet named for him, died from injuries suffered in that fall.
Testimony to the New York City Council on the question of whether to tighten lead regulations, given June 23, 2003:
The ACSH is a public-health consumer-education organization, advised by a panel of 350 scientists and physicians. All of our work is peer-reviewed internally and published in independent, peer-reviewed scientific journals. We are about to celebrate our twenty-fifth year of promoting public health, here in New York and around the U.S.
Introduction
Many vulnerable people who are at risk for heart disease, and even those who are not at risk, routinely take antioxidants to ward off heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. Alternative medicine practitioners and vitamin companies advise people to take antioxidants, such as vitamin A, vitamin E, and vitamin C, both as a preventative nutrient as well as a treatment after heart disease has been diagnosed. The disease-fighting hypothesis is based on the fact that oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL, a.k.a. "bad cholesterol") is taken up by the arteries, leading to plaque formation.
If you vaguely recall hearing that smokeless tobacco (chewing tobacco, etc.) is about as dangerous as cigarettes, you're hardly alone but it isn't true.
Smokeless tobacco is only about one sixtieth as likely to kill mainly through oral cancers as cigarettes. Cigarettes cause the premature death of about one third of their users and have a host of other ill effects. See ACSH's newly-revised book, Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You for more on the risks.
[Editor's note: We don't wish to make light of the suffering of ebola victims, but we're pleased that guest poet Jenny Foreit has found some humor in the most dire of situations. TS]
a fever hemorrhagic with consequences tragic liquefying tummy internal organs runny skin with gooey bubbles and other icky troubles
SHOW: Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC
June 12, 2003 Thursday
HEADLINE: New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz and Dr. Elizabeth Whelan discuss a proposed tax on junk food as a way to control the obesity crisis
ANCHORS: LESTER HOLT
LESTER HOLT, co-host:
Felix Ortiz is the New York state lawmaker who will introduce the fat tax tomorrow. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health.
A trip to the supermarket should be a simple task, but nowadays it seems that you need a science degree to figure out which foods should be on your shopping list. Due to revised Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules regarding health claims on products, it is about to become even more difficult. The new health claims will allow food packages to communicate possible health benefits as opposed to proven benefits. The new food label guidelines will allow scientifically supported health claims to be made on food packages, but this refers to scientific support of almost any strength.
Here at the American Council on Science and Health, under the leadership of our president, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, we've always thought of ourselves as cautious, non-panicky promoters of common sense on nutrition matters. And we tend to think of the Center for Science in the Public Interest as scaremongers, always looking for new foods to denounce.
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.
To the editor:
"Pressing Concern: Nearly 50% of N.Y. School Children are Overweight" (July 9, 2003) raises legitimate concerns about the obesity epidemic, however some of the remedies suggested are off base.
This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the first time the U.S. government declared smoking a serious danger to health, the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, published January 11, 1964. With evidence of over 7,000 biomedical research articles on the topic, the committee of the Surgeon General declared, "Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States to warrant appropriate remedial action."
It's no surprise when an activist group trots out a lone, non-peer-reviewed study in an effort to bolster its case, but you would think that government regulations rest on a stronger scientific foundation. Guess again.
Summarized by: William D. Evers, Ph.D., R.D. Department of Foods and Nutrition Purdue University West Lafayette IN
Not so long ago, hunger was the only food issue over which it was worth issuing international reports, but the World Health Organization recently suggested that governments around the world should start fighting obesity by using taxes and subsidies to get people to eat healthy foods. That inspired the U.S. government to tell the U.N., correctly, that it is one's total diet, not specific "good" and "bad" foods, that determine one's weight (and overall health), as the AP's Jonathan D. Slant reported on January 16:
Because the government's first regulator of food products and patent medicines, Harvey Washington Wiley, lacked the statutory authority needed to impose the controls he believed necessary for the public's welfare, he established his indelible imprint on Congress and the people by sheer force of will. Yet, when he wielded that power in the early decades of the twentieth century, he often collided with the federal judiciary. The original pure food and drug law was flawed by its ambivalent language.
Pagination
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