Hey, have you heard the claim that childhood vaccinations for measles, mumps, and rubella may cause autism? It's not true, but the myth has nonetheless contributed to the decline in vaccination rates around the world. Well-meaning but superstitious parents seek to "protect" their children from minuscule or non-existent risks from vaccine side effects. Instead, anti-vaccine parents expose their kids and others' to the very real risk of being victims in new outbreaks of old diseases we thought were nearly vanquished.
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In a barely-reported but seismic event in public health history, Britain's esteemed medical journal Lancet this week called on Tony Blair to ban tobacco. That's quite a shift from the days when tobacco companies could still issue propaganda like the so-called "Frank Statement," which flatly denied that cigarette smoking had been shown to cause lung cancer. The fiftieth anniversary of that pronouncement arrives on January 4, 2004.
As ACSH's president, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, put it in her 1984 book A Smoking Gun:
An October 15 New York Times piece by Marian Burros contained misleading information about the safety of irradiated foods. Ms. Burros must have been convinced about the toxic effects of irradiated foods, since she quoted and echoed the views of Public Citizen and the Center for Food Safety, well known for their stances against food irradiation technology.
The facts, contrary to Burros' article, are:
If he could read Michael Fumento's new book, "Bio- Evolution: How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World," Thomas Robert Malthus would be forced to say, "Never mind."
Malthus (1766-1834), renowned for his pessimistic predictions regarding the future of humanity - particularly about the prospects for having a sufficient food supply for the growing population - would be shell-shocked to learn how very off-base he was.
Most people know that a diet high in saturated fat can increase blood cholesterol and thus increase risk of heart disease. What they don't know is that so-called "banned foods," foods high in fat or cholesterol, including red meat, high fat dairy products, nuts, and eggs have wrongly been indicted as culprits in increased risk for stroke. While a diet high in saturated and trans-unsaturated fatty acids has been shown to be a predictor for heart disease, scientific support is lacking for extrapolating this finding to stroke. New findings from a major study released in the Oct.
Contaminated scallions linked to a deadly outbreak of hepatitis A shouldn't scare most people away from eating more fresh fruits and vegetables, experts say.
But the only way to ensure total safety is to cook everything.
A quote from an AP article by Juliana Barbassa about the recent hepatitis A outbreak linked to raw scallions (and something that the "raw foods" wing of the organic movement ought to keep in mind)
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Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis in the United States, affecting more than 40 million Americans. A new report released by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) discusses the various manifestations of this slowly progressive disease and notes that newer treatments, both medical and surgical, have changed the outlook for alleviation of pain and restoration of function for most of those affected.
In the wake of the hepatitis A outbreak that has killed three people and sickened over 500 in the Pennsylvania area in recent weeks, it is important to remember how useful it is to be able to track cases of disease and identify their sources. For a reminder of how not to track disease (that is, in an anecdotal and highly subjective fashion that may confuse coincidence with causality), see ACSH's booklet on Cancer Clusters.
At today's Earth Day celebrations, environmentalists will likely point to the clean-up of the toxic waste dump at New York's Love Canal as one of their biggest victories. But was there really a terrible environmental menace to combat at Love Canal in the first place?
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King isn't the only film I'll be rooting for to win an Oscar or two. Nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Screenplay is the smart, funny, poignant French-Canadian film Barbarian Invasions by Denys Arcand. The film's positive reception with U.S. critics teaches one very important lesson: If a film harshly criticizes socialized medicine and other follies of the left but has subtitles and is a little artsy, even capitalism-hating U.S. film critics may like it. That's useful information.
Walk into any food store. Unless it is a market that carries only ocean fish or meat harvested from wild animals, the food that it sells is a product of domestication and modification by humans. In any supermarket, we find a bewildering variety of foodstuffs that bear only the slightest resemblance to the wild progenitors from which they were once derived. The ancestors of many of our everyday foodstuffs are known to us only because of twentieth-century developments in the science of genetics, which allowed us to identify the wild plants from which they were derived.
Earlier this month Mississippi State Department of Health officials identified a bird in Marion County with West Nile virus the first official identification of the virus this year. Health officials in Ohio have identified one probable human case of West Nile virus and are awaiting confirmatory test results.
Last year the number of cases of West Nile virus (WNV) in the United States doubled, marking the worst, albeit not the most deadly, outbreak ever recorded with 8,649 cases and 206 deaths, up from 4,156 cases and 300 deaths the year before.
Overhyped stories of danger from fish, underhyped stories of lead in candy -- but are the activists the real threat?
As we begin June, are you more aware of asthma and allergies? Better sleep? Hepatitis? High blood pressure? Well, May was awareness month for these important health issues as well as others -- it was National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, too, and the public is reportedly better informed about all twenty-three of the issues brought to their attention last month.
At times it seems as though even scientific journals can morph into fiction. An article appearing in the April 24th issue of the medical journal The Lancet, entitled "Uganda considers DDT to protect homes from malaria," is so incredible to anyone interested in public health as to have been written by Asimov or Crichton. Using the impending "celebration" of "Africa Malaria Day" (April 25th) as a rationale, the story describes the current status of malaria-control measures in Uganda, an impoverished land in eastern Africa best known to Americans for AIDS and Idi Amin.
Earlier this week, the New York Times editorial page opined about the effectiveness of banning smoking in public places as a means of cutting down heart disease risk. Citing a very small, six-month study of heart attack admissions to a hospital in Helena, Montana, the Times editors concluded that "a six-month ban on smoking in public places...appears to have sharply reduced the number of heart attacks."
The San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund has concluded that American cosmetics including nail polish put women at risk of cancer and children at risk of suffering birth defects. Never mind that no mainstream cancer epidemiologist believes that cosmetics contribute in anyway to human cancer or reproductive effects. The Fund is convinced that "chemicals" in the environment are the culprits and thus must be targeted and banished.
Critics of so-called "alternative" medicine frequently raise the possibility that patients who avoid mainstream, scientifically-based medicine in favor of various other modalities may miss getting potentially life-saving therapies. And yes, this does happen. Let's look at one small example.
Today the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released data on the acrylamide content of a variety of new foods (see http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2004/NEW01040.html). The new data expand the database to an additional 750 foods. Acrylamide, for those who have forgotten, is the substance formed in high-carbohydrate foods that are baked or fried at high temperatures.
That's toxic toothpaste you're using, or so says a consumer health advisory recently issued by the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The study claims that one out of every hundred popular cosmetic products contains ingredients identified by the government as toxins and/or carcinogens. This information, while meant to "heighten consumer awareness," actually exploits a fallacy and accomplishes little more than unnecessarily frightening the public.
Two stories came to my attention recently testimony to our distorted health priorities thanks to activist groups' alarmist emissions and the media's slavish devotion to them:
People who view Morgan Spurlock's movie Super Size Me can be forgiven if they walk out thinking fast foods like those served at McDonald's and Burger King are particularly fattening. Mr. Spurlock ate (gorged, really) only at McDonald's for thirty days and ordered the super-sized versions whenever he was asked. As a consequence of his gluttony, he gained twenty-five pounds, raised his blood pressure and cholesterol, and saw deleterious changes in his liver.
An "alternative" paper in Las Vegas has gone into full-on tinfoil hat mode about the Morgan Spurlock documentary "Super Size Me."
They claim - third hand, of course - that this guy who has this friend who knows this dude tells him that a nefarious group known as The Firm was contracted by another firm to undermine the movie.
Editor's note: Posted just prior to July 4, 2002, this article still has useful safety reminders for this year's celebrants.
As befits any birthday, Americans will celebrate this July 4 with food, music, pageantry, and, of course: fireworks!
Who cannot remember the thrill of their first fireworks display, the childish wonder that is rekindled each Fourth? Indeed, many would argue that fireworks are what make this holiday special.
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