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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.

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?

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:

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:

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

A May 25 article by Star Lawrence (with Charlotte Grayson, M.D.) of WebMD Medical News about a device designed to make overeaters take smaller bites includes an ACSH reference (see http://my.webmd.com/content/Article/87/99579.htm?printing=true):

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.

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:

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.

Letter published in San Luis Obispo (CA) Tribune http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/8712182.htm
The article that ran in The Tribune titled "Exposé or con job? 'SuperSize Me' takes a bite out of McDonald's," calls director-star Morgan Spurlock a glutton for punishment. But what he demonstrated in his movie, "Super Size Me," was just plain gluttony, compounded by an intentional lack of physical activity.

This mention of ACSH's survey of magazines' health reporting appeared in the New York Daily News:

Recently two items of interest to medical providers and consumers appeared in the press:

I should be receiving a massive salary from Greenpeace and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But let me explain.

Today is my mother's 90th birthday. She has the dubious distinction of being born the very day World War I began -- July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after it failed to meet the conditions of an ultimatum it sent on July 23 following the Sarajevo assassination. Wife, mother, "career woman" (she served as pioneer self-help book author Dale Carnegie's personal secretary in the early 1940s) , she has seen a lot of life and a substantial amount of societal change -- almost all for the better.

Center for Science in the Public Interest, which does not disclose its political donors and let's any number of corporations launder money through foundations, ironically chose to criticize the American Council on Science and Health for being transparent about disclosing corporate donors.