Car Chemical Craziness from Men's Health Magazine
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Tuesday, January 15, 2008
"Oh great, my child's going to be a mutant," says Lou Terrier as the woman explains to him why she wants to look inside his car.--First line of a "Men's Health" articleThe current issue of Men's Health magazine contains an article that, while making every effort to be scary and authoritative, actually contains no good advice about anything relevant to men's -- or anyone's -- health.The article, "Invisible Hitchhikers May Be Lurking   Read Full >>

Why the World Needs Riskometer.org
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Thursday, December 13, 2007
At last, there is a reliable source of information to help us differentiate real health threats from alarmist nonsense. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) has researched and published a reliable reference to help the consumer discern the comparative risk of dying from various illnesses, behaviors and exposures. On our new website, Riskometer.org, a simple graphic-illustration diagram of relative threat magnitudes is accompanied by clear text   Read Full >>

Times Snaps Fingers: Presto! New Antibiotics Soon Appear
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Yesterday, Tuesday Nov. 20th, the New York Times published an editorial entitled "Another Very Scary Germ." The thrust of the piece was that more needs to be done, now, to get MRSA back under control. It was prompted by recent news showing that this highly-resistant and dangerous bug has been spreading outside of its usual haunts, hospitals and other healthcare facilities, to sicken and kill in the   Read Full >>

A Strikeout for the Great American Smokeout?
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Wednesday, November 14, 2007
November 15th marks the thirty-first annual "Great American Smokeout," a campaign initially undertaken by the American Cancer Society, whose goal was to encourage smokers to quit -- even if only for one day -- hoping this would lead to prolonged abstinence from cigarettes. Through educating smokers about the wide spectrum of smoking-related illnesses, promoting Read Full >>

Vaccines' Lifesaving Benefits Confirmed Again
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Tuesday, November 13, 2007
A new report in today's Journal of the American Medical Association documents the profound decline in vaccine-preventable disease and death for those infections with vaccines approved before 1980. The lifesaving effect of vaccines released subsequent to 1980 has also been dramatic, although somewhat less so than the older vaccines. The diseases eliminated -- or nearly eliminated -- include diphtheria, measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, congenital rubella syndrome   Read Full >>

Caution Advised for Women Who Use Oral Contraceptives
By Corrie Driebusch, Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Thursday, November 8, 2007
A new study by Belgian researchers found that taking oral contraceptives increases a woman's risk of atherosclerosis. A preliminary report of a study presented at the American Heart Association meeting indicated a small increase in the occurrence of fatty deposits in the arteries of the women studied, as evaluated by sonograms of the carotid and femoral arteries. The authors, led by Dr. Ernst Reitzschel, found that among 1,300 healthy women who had been on hormonal contraception for a mean   Read Full >>

Safe and Useful Chemicals Under Attack, Again, as Endocrine Disruptors
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Friday, November 2, 2007
A recent "health" column in USA Today ("'Everywhere chemicals' in plastics alarm parents," Oct. 30) attempts yet again to scare the public -- especially parents of young children -- about the alleged "endocrine-disrupting" effects of common chemicals, specifically bisphenol-A (BPA) and phthalates. The specific phthalate attacked, the vinyl plasticizer DEHP, is   Read Full >>

Everyone Wants to Be Below Average -- in Cancer Rates
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Thursday, October 25, 2007
A report today from northeastern Pennsylvania describes a fruitless search for the environmental "cause" of an increased rate of a blood disease called polycythemia vera (known among medical folk as P Vera -- here I'll use PCV). While not in fact a cancer, it often deteriorates into some form of leukemia, or it can lead to other blood disorders of high mortality. The federal epidemiologists found no specific explanation for the apparent increased incidence of PCV.The   Read Full >>

A Potential Breakthrough in Malaria Prevention
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Parents of infants in sub-Saharan Africa, where a million or more die each year, have new hope, thanks to a group of multinational researchers, led by Dr. John J. Aponte of the University of Barcelona and colleagues from Mozambique. They evaluated a new malaria vaccine's safety and efficacy in 214 infants in rural Mozambique, an area of high incidence of malaria, and found that the vaccine against Falciparum malaria, the most severe form, reduced the rate of new infections by almost two   Read Full >>

Flu Vaccine Saves Lives: Learning Exactly How Many Can Wait
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Wednesday, October 3, 2007
There is an apparent discrepancy between last week's Lancet Infectious Diseases review article -- which asserted that the lifesaving benefits of influenza (flu) vaccination in the elderly was overstated -- and today's New England Journal of Medicine multicenter study of the extent of mortality benefit over a ten-year period -- which found that the death rate was substantially reduced among seniors who got the vaccine.It is to be hoped that the media will not take the   Read Full >>