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Judges have ruled that a man cannot claim a religious exemption from an employer's rule that required him to get a vaccination. The man had argued that being ordered to get a mumps vaccination would illegally violate his vegan beliefs, since chicken embryos are used in the production of the vaccine.

A shorter article derived from this "e-monograph" appears in the September/October 2003 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, with the title "Energy, Homeopathy, and Hypnosis in Santa Fe."

Some people are deeply moved by the idea that there is a more holistic way of viewing human health, that there is a warm, friendly alternative to cold, institutionalized medicine as I learned while conducting interviews for a new "e-monograph" about unconventional medical practices.

The advance of scientific inquiry over the past two centuries has not gone unchallenged. In his 1976 book, The Occult Establishment, James Webb uses the apt phrase "rejected knowledge" for the ideas that, at a given point in history, prevailed, then were opposed by science, and finally were rejected as false. Though vitalism (the belief in some form of "energy" or "lifeforce" at work in all things) has been rejected by the mainstream of science over the last two centuries, this "rejected knowledge" became central to beliefs such as organic agriculture and alternative medicine.

Breast cancer is the number one diagnosed cancer for women in the United States and second only to lung cancer in cancer-related deaths. There is much uncertainty surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer: Are mammography and breast self-examination effective methods of detection? Should treatment include lumpectomy or mastectomy? Chemotherapy, radiation, or both?

The Bill Moyers PBS show NOW got one important thing right about genetically-modified crops. "There's no scientific evidence that eating these ingredients hurts our health," says narrator Mark Schapiro in the segment "Seeds of Conflict," which aired earlier this month. Even Moyers' introduction muted the usual "Frankenstein foods" tone of such stories, contrasting "the surprises of nature" with "the precision of science."

With so much news and discussion focused on obesity in America, not much attention is being given to the 2% of the population who are underweight. Underweight is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of less than 18.5. Health problems are associated with this weight status, though different problems from the ones facing the obese.

"...it's literally true that something like a thousand people will not die each year that would have otherwise died..."
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, annoucing a sweeping ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, as quoted by the New York Times December 12, 2002

Last month, a jury rejected arguments by two National Security Agency workers who claimed that their brain diseases were caused by a magnetic tape-erasing system they used in the course of their work. The judge dismissed some of the plaintiffs' arguments as junk science and the jury rejected the rest, to the delight of the defendant, Electro-Matic Products Co., manufacturer of the tape-erasing system. This was a victory for science and the legal system, which have both been abused in recent decades by people stoking fear of electric and magnetic fields.

Last month McDonald's was ordered to pay $12 million to Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and vegetarians who thought they were eating beef-free fries and hash browns. In 1990, McDonald's issued a statement saying they would no longer use beef fat for frying, using 100% vegetable oil instead. However, the company never claimed that the fries they sold were appropriate for vegetarians.

With the thirtieth anniversary of the DDT ban upon us, the Senate is concluding consideration of a treaty that will ban DDT use worldwide a policy that condemns millions of poor children to death.
The Senate's consideration of the treaty, notes the American Council on Science and Health, falls close to the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most tragic public health decisions in history: the Environmental Protection Agency's original ban on DDT, a powerful and inexpensive pesticide.

The government's National Committee for Complementary and Alternative Medicine recently announced that it may fund a five-year-long, large-scale study evaluating the possible benefit of chelation treatment for those suffering from heart disease. At first, this may sound like a reasonable inquiry. Why wouldn't we want to consider all possible options for the treatment of the number one killer in America? Just last year, almost 62 million Americans had some form of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and nearly one million died of related conditions.

The authors of the short volume Misconceptions about the Causes of Cancer (UC Berkeley scientists Lois Swirsky Gold, Thomas H. Slone, Neela B. Manley, and Bruce N. Ames) deserve a great deal of credit for having the courage to write a somewhat dry book. But let me explain.

Information Tobacco Companies Don't Want Teens to Know About the Dangers of Smoking
Prepared by the American Council on Science and Health
Foreword by Justin Guarini

New York City had a freak snowstorm on April 7, and as a result of an equally freak accident, Dr. Robert C. Atkins slipped on the sidewalk outside his office, fell, and hit his head. One week later, Dr. Atkins, trained as a cardiologist, world-renowned author of a diet named for him, died from injuries suffered in that fall.

Many vulnerable people who are at risk for heart disease, and even those who are not at risk, routinely take antioxidants to ward off heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. Alternative medicine practitioners and vitamin companies advise people to take antioxidants, such as vitamin A, vitamin E, and vitamin C, both as a preventative nutrient as well as a treatment after heart disease has been diagnosed. The disease-fighting hypothesis is based on the fact that oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL, a.k.a. "bad cholesterol") is taken up by the arteries, leading to plaque formation.

Because the government's first regulator of food products and patent medicines, Harvey Washington Wiley, lacked the statutory authority needed to impose the controls he believed necessary for the public's welfare, he established his indelible imprint on Congress and the people by sheer force of will. Yet, when he wielded that power in the early decades of the twentieth century, he often collided with the federal judiciary. The original pure food and drug law was flawed by its ambivalent language.

Walk into any food store. Unless it is a market that carries only ocean fish or meat harvested from wild animals, the food that it sells is a product of domestication and modification by humans. In any supermarket, we find a bewildering variety of foodstuffs that bear only the slightest resemblance to the wild progenitors from which they were once derived. The ancestors of many of our everyday foodstuffs are known to us only because of twentieth-century developments in the science of genetics, which allowed us to identify the wild plants from which they were derived.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King isn't the only film I'll be rooting for to win an Oscar or two. Nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Screenplay is the smart, funny, poignant French-Canadian film Barbarian Invasions by Denys Arcand. The film's positive reception with U.S. critics teaches one very important lesson: If a film harshly criticizes socialized medicine and other follies of the left but has subtitles and is a little artsy, even capitalism-hating U.S. film critics may like it. That's useful information.

At times it seems as though even scientific journals can morph into fiction. An article appearing in the April 24th issue of the medical journal The Lancet, entitled "Uganda considers DDT to protect homes from malaria," is so incredible to anyone interested in public health as to have been written by Asimov or Crichton. Using the impending "celebration" of "Africa Malaria Day" (April 25th) as a rationale, the story describes the current status of malaria-control measures in Uganda, an impoverished land in eastern Africa best known to Americans for AIDS and Idi Amin.

The San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund has concluded that American cosmetics including nail polish put women at risk of cancer and children at risk of suffering birth defects. Never mind that no mainstream cancer epidemiologist believes that cosmetics contribute in anyway to human cancer or reproductive effects. The Fund is convinced that "chemicals" in the environment are the culprits and thus must be targeted and banished.

Here at the American Council on Science and Health, under the leadership of our president, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, we've always thought of ourselves as cautious, non-panicky promoters of common sense on nutrition matters. And we tend to think of the Center for Science in the Public Interest as scaremongers, always looking for new foods to denounce.

Editor's note: People sometimes think of smoking as little more dangerous than countless other bad habits, so the idea of quitting through nicotine replacement therapy or pharmaceuticals that combat nicotine cravings may strike some as counterintuitive as though it were a mere switching from one substance to another. But smoking kills about a third of users and has many other negative health effects (see ACSH's book about Cigarettes), while drugs to aid smoking cessation just might save your life.

The invaluable Snopes.com, which exposes hoaxes, notes an e-mail that's been making the rounds that warns people about purported dangers from heated or frozen plastic containers. Here is the text of the e-mail, with some commentary from HealthFactsAndFears.com: