On May 18, the Connecticut House of Representatives followed the lead of the state Senate by passing legislation supposedly designed to reduce the prevalence of obesity in children.(1) This goal was to be accomplished by limiting students' access to so-called junk foods in school vending machines. The new bill would allow high school students continued access to diet sodas and some sports drinks but forbid regular sodas and various snack foods.
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With National HIV Testing Day arriving on June 27, it's an apt time to rethink a major public policy impediment to the fight against HIV/AIDS: misguided and unscientific sex education in schools.
The Onion features a very on-target parody of how networks choose scientists and health experts to appear on television. Instead of an astute, balanced, and informed -- but dry -- professor, the network chooses a glib former football player who has written a book about "America's Coming Nuclear-Power Holocaust."
This too-close-to-home parody leaves us pondering some facts:
First, television is intrinsically a form of entertainment, not the best platform for education.
A May 1, 2005 article by Steve Wartenberg in The Morning Call mentions ACSH as a counterpoint to fears about irradiated beef:
Because of the efforts of grass-roots groups across the country, led by Public Citizen and local activists such as Szela and Stein, consumers have so far said ''no'' to irradiated beef.
ACSH Director Dr. Henry Miller wrote an article about unscientific activists for Genetic Engineering News, which you can read in its entirety and which contains many choice passages such as this one about EWG and their salmon scare:
Vitamin E has been promoted as a natural preventive or cure for several ills widespread among Americans such as heart disease, some types of cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately, as we ve noted before, when studied in randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials, vitamin E does not live up to its reputation (see http://www.acsh.org/news/newsID.446/news_detail.asp and http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.524/news_detail.asp ).
As the public health community began digesting the much anticipated new food pyramid last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to its credit, released a new study suggesting that previous obesity-related mortality estimations were grossly overstated and that, get this, being slightly overweight actually adds to longevity.
Based on little more than trumped-up fears, activist groups say gene-spliced crops will damage the environment and harm human health. Recent research carried out in China, however, shows how baseless such concerns really are.
Helen Palmer from Public Radio International's Marketplace show interviewed ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava about EPA rules regarding kids and cancer risks, and you can download the RealMedia file of the March 30, 2005 broadcast.
An April 3, 2005 article by Randy Dotinga described possible health benefits of garlic but included this skeptical note:
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition with the American Council on Science and Health, said eating two raw cloves of garlic a day could be both physically and socially challenging.
Yes, you read it right. If you've read ACSH's report, Bridging the Ideological Divide: An Analysis of Views on Tobacco Policy, you know that normally liberals accuse conservatives of being paid fronts for the tobacco industry, unwilling to condone lawsuits against the industry, while conservatives accuse liberals of using the anti-tobacco measures as a way of increasing the role of government in our lives.
We might expect concerned parents to live by slogans like: "Love them, protect them, tell them about the dangers of smoking" or "Love them, protect them, make them wear their seatbelts" or "Love them, protect them, keep them away from guns." But love them, protect them, never get them vaccinated? Huh?
There have been many warnings of late that if A(H5N1), the avian flu strain spreading in Asian bird populations, were to mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans, a pandemic might result on the scale of the 1918-1919 flu that killed tens of millions of people.
This article appeared in the June 12, 2005 Washington Times.
Reports of new vaccines have those of us in public health excited, but these vaccines may never get into the marketplace. Why? A combination of political, economic, and regulatory factors make vaccine development, production and marketing increasingly difficult for drug manufacturers.
Here are a few of the amazing vaccines in various stages of production:
When a woman goes to a hospital right after being sexually assaulted, she shouldn't have to worry that she will receive subpar health care. Currently, however, depending on where she turns for help, she might not have access to or even find out about emergency contraception, which is the standard, effective, and safe way to help prevent pregnancy after unprotected intercourse.
With headlines stating "Compound in Teflon A 'Likely Carcinogen'" (June 29) and "Teflon likely to cause cancer" (June 30), it is crucial to clarify a few issues surrounding the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientific advisory board's recent draft report identifying PFOA (also referred to as C-8) as a "likely carcinogen":
Diet sodas, which have no or very few calories, should be a boon to the overweight in their attempts to lose excess pounds. What, then, can we make of a recent report about a study purportedly showing that people who drink diet sodas gain rather than lose weight? The answer might lie in the report, rather than in biology, and is a great example of the drawbacks of presenting preliminary reports (those which have not been peer-reviewed) to the public.
Once again, proponents of the precautionary principle have tried to convince us that we are always better safe than sorry." Dr. Bruce Barrett recently published an article in favor of using this poorly defined doctrine to govern public health issues, making it in effect an institutionalized "fear factor."
A July 27, 2005 article on India's FinancialExpress.com noted the ACSH position on pesticides:
The pesticide industry has challenged the findings of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) relating to health hazards of pesticide use in Punjab.
An August 2, 2005 article by Michael Hill quotes ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava among experts wondering what craze will succeed the low-carb mania started by the now-bankrupt Atkins company:
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health, figures it might be something like a high-protein diet.
An August 14, 2005 article by Mimi Spencer describes endless food scares and quotes ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
Last week Senator Bill Frist made headlines with his apparent turnabout in favor of federal funding for research using embryonic stem cells (ESC) -- a break with the policy of President Bush. Almost all proponents of ESC (potentially far more flexible and thus conducive someday to far more treatments than adult stem cells) saw this as terrific news, while opponents -- including a full spectrum of religious groups and social conservatives -- characterized Frist as a traitor. But Frist may not have changed enough to keep him from stifling ESC after all.
It might be nice if all scientific debates were conducted quietly, with no media attention to them at all. Instead, we get varying levels of media attention, each bringing a different degree of distortion to the underlying facts (as a random grab-bag of odd science and health stories from 2005 remind us) but occasionally offering enlightenment:
A new study by E.G. Knox of the University of Birmingham (UK) claims children who were born near "emissions hotspots" (bus stations, train stations, and other transportation hubs) are at greater risk for childhood cancers than those who were born farther away.
Pagination
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