An October 5, 2004 article in the (Quincy, MA) Patriot Ledger by Sue Scheible looks at Marcia Angell's anti-drug industry book The Truth About the Drug Companies and quotes ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan as a counterpoint:
Elizabeth Whelan, an established author and founder of the nonprofit American Council on Science and Health, blasted back, calling the book "Junk-Science Reporting." In National Review Online, Whelan accused Angell of doing a "hatchet job on Big Pharma"...
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This review of Marcia Angell's new book, an attack on drug companies, first appeared in the Washington Times.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE DRUG COMPANIES: HOW THEY DECEIVE US AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
By Marcia Angell, M.D.
Random House, $24.95, 336 pages
One thing that you can say about the folks at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) -- they're certainly tenacious about their food vendettas! Once a food or ingredient has made the CSPI hate list, it's apparently there forever, whether or not any scientific evidence supports their viewpoint. A case in point is the CSPI crusade against olestra, the fat replacement ingredient that is used in potato chips and other savory snack foods.
About a month ago, we noticed that some TV ads for the fast food chain Subway were sporting the prestigious logo of the American Heart Association (AHA). In particular, one ad implied Subway's food is uniquely helpful for weight loss. Since the AHA is a well-known and widely respected organization that promotes commonsense nutrition and balanced diets, we were surprised to see their apparent support of this type of advertising.
A Dec. 12 USA Today article by Anita Manning describes the fear of a flu pandemic but quotes ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross striking a calmer note:
Some people say health experts are being needlessly alarmist.
A January 6, 2005 editorial from the board of the New York Sun denounced New York governor George Pataki for ignoring the state's fiscal problems and focusing on non-issues like banning "toxic" cleaning products from state buildings. The piece quoted ACSH's Jeff Stier:
To the Editor: Your editorial ("The Merck Case" Nov. 15th) correctly deplores the tactics of tort lawyers in their quest to dismember Merck and get a piece of the billions likely to be re-distributed subsequent to the Vioxx withdrawal. But you are wrong to conflate the needless and unjust assaults on the pharmaceutical industry with the well-justified litigation against the tobacco industry.
An October 17 article in the (Sioux Falls) Argus Leader by Kevin Dobbs quoted an article by ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
The November 15, 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer article "Scientists Are in Dispute Over Acrylamide" by Virginia A. Smith quoted scaremongers such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest's Michael Jacobson on fears over acrylamide in foods, then quoted ACSH's Jeff Stier for a different perspective:
ACSH Advisor Dr. George Ehrlich received the Joseph Lee Hollander Award from the Arthritis Foundation, Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter earlier this summer. The award is given for excellence and achievement in the field of rheumatology. Our congratulations to him.
This article originally appeared on http://TechCentralStation.com.
The government is not doing a good job in telling us what causes cancer.
This article first appeared in the Austin Statesman on February 7, 2005:
On February 13, 2005, ACSH received a letter from the mother of an autistic child asking what our response was to the February 8th release of a 1991 Merck & Co. memo. The memo in question, written eight years before the FDA noted this fact in 1999, cited knowledge of the possibility that additions to the pediatric vaccine schedule resulted in overexposure of children to the ethylmercury based vaccine preservative, thimerosal.
As the demand for -- and cost of -- prescription drugs in America soar, the Internet marketplace for medications grows. Seniors, especially, are being taken in and blinded by their desire for more and cheaper drugs.
A research report in the March 2 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) pointed out that many members of National Football League (NFL) teams (57%, to be exact) had Body Mass Indices (BMIs) over 30 -- numbers that would put them in the range of body weight considered obese. Similarly, the March 9 edition of the Kansas City Star had an article listing the BMIs of a number of National Basketball Association (NBA) players -- who also came in at or close to 30.
An article by Pat Phibbs on http://BNA.com January 27, 2005 describes the release of ACSH's America's War on "Carcinogens":
Congress and the National Cancer Institute should lead an effort to change the ways animal data are used to predict whether a chemical would cause cancer in humans, the medical director of a consumer-education organization said Jan. 26.
Whether gold or grain, humans don't give it away.
Globally, a thousand people die of hunger every hour. Over 800 million of us are chronically malnourished. Yet studies consistently conclude that the world actually produces enough food for everyone; if only it were more evenly distributed we could eradicate hunger.
This is a major plank in the argument against using modern farming methods to increase food production: there's already enough food, so we don't need modern technology.
It would be easy to infer from headlines on many news articles that eating red meat increases the risk of developing colon cancer. For example, "Red Meat increases Colon Cancer Risk," states one, while another trumpets "Red meat newly linked to colorectal cancer."
In fact, the story is significantly more nuanced than such headlines (and many of the associated articles) make it seem.
A February 2, 2005 review of Michael Crichton's anti-eco-radical thriller State of Fear, by Read Schuchardt, editor of http://Metaphilm.com , mentions ACSH's Todd Seavey:
A February 11, 2005 "Q & A" feature in the Atlanta Journal Constitution mentioned ACSH's take on The Facts about Bisphenol A:
Q: I remember reading about potential problems, such as toxic danger, in reusing plastic water bottles. Can you discuss that?
--Howard Schell, Roswell
I saw the posters everywhere this weekend "Celebrating Fifty Years of Flavor": Celebrating Marlboro Cigarettes!
Celebrating? Under what possible circumstance should we be celebrating the anniversary of the introduction of a product that is the leading cause of preventable death in America? It is bad enough that we tolerate it--and turn our heads away from the billions of dollars spent annually to advertise and promote it.
But we have to celebrate it, too?
A February 23, 2005 article by Nancy Wang in the Stanford Daily described student attitudes toward smoking, noting some of the risks and citing ACSH:
A March 1, 2005 Family Practice News debate about whether to remove red meat from our diets included a "no" argument from ACSH's executive and medical director with the following cautionary introduction (but please check out
HOUSTON (CNI)--Don't trust laboratory rats when it comes to chemical and food health safety.
That's one of the messages of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a group that combats what it perceives as unnecessary public hysteria over whether certain chemicals, food additives and other substances can cause cancer in humans.
This article originally appeared on http://www.Spiked-Online.com.
The new US protocol that says scientists with corporate connections are unfit to judge drug safety smacks of modern-day McCarthyism.
Pagination
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