Yesterday, ACSH was the scene of a press conference to announce the publication of our new book, Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.
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ACSH staffers were pleased to read an op-ed by Michael Willrich in today’s The New York Times promoting the notion already long upheld by scientific communities that vaccines are a safe and extremely effective public health measure. Many large international studies have tried to find a link between autism and vaccines — all have shown no such effect. Scientifically, the issue is a closed book.
At a joint press conference yesterday, the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) presented a new labeling system for store-bought food.
In New York City, Queens borough Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. is introducing a bill to eliminate fluoride from the city's tap water, claiming it "amounts to forced medication by the government."
Apparently, the Huffington Post hasn’t caught up with the times. Nearly a year after The Lancet retracted Dr.
The prognosis for the approval of innovative new drugs is more dismal than ever.
Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide. At least that’s what the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) would have you believe in its report Global Recommendations on Physical Activity for Health, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO).
There is no such thing as a safe form of tobacco, says Joseph Lee, a social research specialist for the Department of Family Medicine at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in an op-ed last week for Raleigh’s NewsObserver.com.
The March issue of Pediatrics presents some startling if unexplained findings about infant health. Researchers who conducted a study of 847 babies in eastern Massachusetts found that there was a 6.3 fold increase in the likelihood that a child would be obese at age three if a bottle-fed infant began eating solid foods before four months of age compared to bottle-fed infants who began eating solid foods after four months.
Despite receiving even an A-list celebrity testimonial on their efficacy, e-cigarettes have gotten a lot of flack from public health opponents who argue that the clean nicotine delivery device is harmful and contains “toxic” chemicals.
The New York City Council approved a bill Wednesday expanding the City’s public smoking ban to beaches and parks after a study showed 57 percent of New Yorkers had cotinine, a nicotine byproduct, in their blood compared with a 45 percent national average. Proponents of the measure argue that it was passed in the name of public health.
In a short but punchy letter in Sunday’s USA Today, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson lauds the newspaper for its January 14 coverage of a so-called research study which actually just recycled old CDC biomonitoring data to show that pregnant women have dozens of chemicals in their bodies — at trace levels.
Speaking of unnecessary medical procedures, a Q&A article in the Los Angeles Times with Dr. H. Gilbert Welch highlights his views on the potential public health consequences of preventative medicine. Though Dr. Welch voices support for health care reform, he takes issue with the Obama Health Care bill’s emphasis on preventive screening.
Yesterday's The New York Times underscored the risks associated with anal cancer — facts largely unknown to many U.S. adults.
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and Michelle Minton in The Daily Caller, January 28, 2011
Empire State or Nanny State: Suffolk should not ban energy drinks
Today’s Investor’s Business Daily includes an editorial lauding the new paper by ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom on the central role that the American pharmaceutical companies played in taming the AIDS epidemic. Under the headline, “Capitalism Kills AIDS,” the paper comments:
Yesterday brought word from two continents of extraordinary government action — and absurd lies — regarding tobacco.In the U.S., Judge Gladys Kessler announced a decision requiring tobacco companies to run advertisements and put notices on their product packages acknowledging that they deliberately misled the public about the health effects of so-called light cigarettes and the addictiveness of nicotine.
Two of the largest manufacturers of mentholated cigarettes initiated a lawsuit against the FDA Friday to prevent the consideration of an upcoming FDA panel report recommending expanding the current flavored cigarette ban to include menthol varieties. Lorillard and R.J.
In the largest and most comprehensive survey of eating disorders yet, a sample consisting of more than 10,000 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 yielded surprising and disturbing information: over half a million U.S. adolescents have an eating disorder.
An alarmist TIME article presents yet another dubious Environmental Health Perspectives study as factual. This time, researchers purport that even BPA-free plastics can leach so-called “endocrine disruptors” into the human body.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with active, progressive disease will be happy to learn that a needle-free treatment option may be available in the near future. Pfizer’s oral medication tofacitinib has made it through Phase III clinical trials. The drug inhibits a family of enzymes known as Janus kinases (JAK), which are involved in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Pfizer also hopes to use the drug for other conditions such as psoriasis ACSH's Dr.
Until recently, patients diagnosed with active, autoantibody-positive lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), were treated with decades-old sub-optimal therapies such as aspirin, anti-malarials (Plaquenil), corticosteroids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. But on Wednesday, the FDA approved Human Genome Sciences’ Benlysta, the first new drug on the market to treat lupus in over 50 years.
While speaking to over 30 University of North Carolina Wilmington students, Paul Turner Jr., director of the N.C. Spit Tobacco Education Program and former director of the CDC’s oral health division, haphazardly groups various smokeless nicotine products, including dip, snuff and snus, into one category — harmful to human health — despite each having its own risk profile.
On Friday the FDA acknowledged that it was reconsidering whether to permit pharmacies and drug stores to sell at-home genetic testing kits.
Last week the Los Angeles Times reported on a fascinating ongoing legal saga: a three-judge panel of a federal appellate court is now considering the latest motions from the Institute for Justice, a Libertarian legal foundation, which is challenging laws prohibiting individuals from selling their bone marrow.
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