Remarks delivered at the American Council on Science and Health's twenty-fifth anniversary celebration on the evening of December 4, 2003 in New York City.
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Some random thoughts from a food-focused academic:
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Humane Vegecide
New York's mayor Mike Bloomberg has joined the list of public officials seeking to import drugs from Canada where even American-made pharmaceuticals are subject to price controls in a quest to provide cheaper drugs for New Yorkers. And not just for government employees, as other civic leaders have planned, but potentially for the millions treated within the huge NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation system.
Proposition 65 is the California law that requires a label on any product containing "known carcinogens" or chemicals that could be a reproductive hazard. Multitudes of warning labels litter the California landscape, since virtually any chemical, natural or synthetic, can probably be either toxic or carcinogenic. But now, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) wants even more labeling.
Ah, if only ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross could edit all the nation's health headlines! Below, he offers examples of the sorts of tweaks he might make, using some recent real headlines and article summaries from the Food and Drug Law Institute's SmartBrief newsletter as his raw material:
Lecithin May Help Lower Cholesterol [Then Again, It May Not]
"...Although no large-scale study has been conducted, some say it may be useful in the fight against Alzheimer's..."
I must interrupt your usual HealthFactsAndFears.com programming just briefly to note that its editor me will be on one of those fashion makeover TV shows that are all the rage lately, specifically Style Court on the Style Network, at the following (Eastern) times:
Thursday, Jan 8: 8pm and 11pm Friday, Jan 9: 9am and 4pm
(If you have digital cable, you may well have the Style Network.)
The Natural Resources Defense Council report cited in your March 9 article "The Old Yellow School Bus as a Threat" is an unreliable source. The report was not reviewed by peers for accuracy and does not offer sufficient data or details to support its assertion that exposure to diesel fumes on school buses increases childhood risk of cancer.
If it's difficult to deal successfully with overweight and obesity in adults, it can be even harder to help overweight children attain and maintain age-appropriate, healthful body weight. Is a given child really at risk for unhealthy weight gain, or is he or she simply putting on a few extra pounds in anticipation of a growth spurt? Is the family prone to obesity and related diseases? Are family members willing to change their lifestyle if necessary to help the child attain and maintain an appropriate weight?
Some of you may recall my battle with Whole Foods Market, the poster child for the "health food" movement. I threatened to sue them for violating California's ill-advised Proposition 65, which requires warning labels on just about anything that might harbor, even in an infinitesimal amount, a substance that can cause cancer at high doses when given to lab rats. (For more on that, please see: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,58760,00.html.) The company claimed I was picking on them unfairly.
A 2001 Democratic National Committee commercial attacked George W. Bush's policy on arsenic levels in water: a young child asking, "Can I please have some more arsenic in my water, Mommy?" The underlying premises of the ad were that current environmental standards tolerated dangerous levels of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water and that was just fine by President Bush.
Editor's note: What follows is a speech delivered to attendees of the Hayek Lecture Series in Brussels earlier this month.
The title of today's discussion is "Did the EU Get the Chemicals Regulation Right?" A title like that makes the job of a panelist pretty easy, when you can clearly and unequivocally answer the question with a one-word answer: NO!
I won't pretend to be objective about ABC News anchor John Stossel. I worked for him from 1995-2001, as an associate producer on one-hour specials very much like the one airing tonight (10pm Eastern), called Lies, Myths, and Downright Stupidity.
Morgan Spurlock wanted to be in a movie. And he was in a movie one he made himself which he then presented to the world at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The subject of the movie was the fattening of Morgan himself he managed to gain twenty-five pounds in a month by overeating at McDonald's restaurants. The name of his documentary, Supersize Me, should serve as a warning to the rest of us that eating too much will make us fat (which we might have heard before).
For years now, purveyors of various foods and supplements have pitched their products as being better for health because of the so-called "antioxidant" properties of their constituents. The theory is that highly reactive molecules, called oxygen free radicals or just free radicals, can stimulate the occurrence of diseases like arthritis, atherosclerosis, and various types of cancer.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." So states the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution a statement widely interpreted as specifying the "separation of church and state." Perhaps we need an amendment mandating the separation of church and diet, too. Some advocates of certain vegan and/or "raw" diets claim to garner their authority from the Bible presumably one can gain brownie points in heaven by eating according to "God's plan" (but no brownies would be allowed, unfortunately).
Yesterday's report that the United States Federal Trade Commission is going after the maker of Pedia Loss and Pedia Lean is good news, no doubt.
Is New York City s new deal with Snapple hypocrisy, nutritional naivete, or just a financial a boost to the educational system? Perhaps all of the above.
June 8, 2004 A broad range of groups, from landlords to the non-profit Community Preservation Corp., went to court last week to stop the city's new lead-paint law.
Here's hoping Judge Louis York grants the injunction before the law goes into effect Aug. 2 because the law would make it harder for all New Yorkers to get housing.
It's already deterring investment in affordable housing, a reality that will leave more of New York's 40,000-plus homeless in shelters.
Why would the City Council pass a law to increase homelessness?
For over twenty years, eggs have been considered dietary demons by many because of their high cholesterol content. Since high levels of cholesterol in the blood have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, the thinking was that limiting dietary cholesterol by limiting egg consumption would be a step in the right direction. Current dietary recommendations are to restrict cholesterol intake to 300 milligrams per day one large egg yolk contains about 213 milligrams to decrease the risk of heart disease.
In the category of facts that "everyone knows" is the assumption that organic foods (mostly produce) are better for people's health than the same items produced by conventional means. According to a recent article from CNN, a number of schools are now providing children with salad bars consisting of organic foods and are patting themselves on the back about giving the kids more healthful foods.
For several years, ACSH has been warning consumers that "natural" products such as herbal supplements are neither well regulated nor intrinsically safe. In our publication on potential supplement-drug interactions as well as on this site, we have noted actual and potential problems with such products.
Who was quoted in a Sunday newspaper trying to reassure people by saying the following?
"The key thing to remember is that all the products are well within the set safety limits and they are absolutely safe."
A) The spokesperson for a pesticide trade association.B) The spokesperson for a chemical company.C) The spokesperson for an organic food company.D) The spokesperson for a major multinational food company.
This past weekend -- a few days after ACSH's annual staff party at the beach -- I took a car service back to New York. It was relatively early Sunday morning, but the Garden State Parkway was packed -- although traffic was moving. We were not on the parkway more than thirty minutes when I saw an alarming site: three deer feeding on the grass, inching closer to the highway, apparently ready to sprint into moving traffic. Over the years, we have seen deer on the parkway before -- but never in a cluster, and never so close to moving cars.
I offer full disclosure right up front: I love FoxNews. It is my favorite channel. Other than a brief peek at NBC's Today show at 7am each day, FoxNews is the only channel I watch. I find them to be, as their logo brags, "fair and balanced." It seems that many other Americans agree with me: FoxNews is frequently cited as being #1 in national viewership of cable news channels.
But despite my great allegiance to Fox, I think there is room for improvement at that network. A lot of room.
The credibility of the peer review process has come under vehement attack.
Scientists who receive no-strings-attached financial support for their research from demonized industries -- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and food, among others -- are no longer deemed trustworthy.
Pagination
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