Malaria Awareness Day, Many Still Unaware of DDT Benefits
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Wednesday, April 25, 2007
April 25 is Malaria Awareness Day and a good time to look back at some of ACSH's oft-repeated warnings (see below) that malaria is one of the world's biggest killers.  Unfortunately, the environmental movement must also take its place as one of the world's biggest killers, since it has long supported the ban on DDT, the insecticide that can most efficiently and cost-effectively kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes.  That error by the greens, inspired by the anti-chemical   Read Full >>

World Is Improving and/or Doomed, Signs (and These Links) Suggest
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Tuesday, January 30, 2007
As many commonsensical acquaintances of mine say -- especially if I ramble on too long about some current scientific controversy -- "Yeah, you find one study that says one thing, and then there's some other study that says the opposite." That summary may leave out some of the nuances of the scientific process, but it's not such a bad description of the way media coverage of science lurches back and forth between utopian and apocalyptic announcements. The overall truth about   Read Full >>

Congress Votes Gold Medal for ACSH Trustee Dr. Norman Borlaug
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Nobel Peace Prize recipient and ACSH Trustee Dr. Norman Borlaug, age ninety-two, will receive a new honor because of today's House of Representatives vote to award him a Congressional Gold Medal, the U.S.'s highest civilian honor. An agricultural scientist, Borlaug fostered innovative crop-yield-increasing techniques that sparked the so-called "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1960s. "Dr. Borlaug is responsible for saving a billion lives around the world,"   Read Full >>

Notions for a Fast Food Nation
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, November 17, 2006
Fast Food Nation -- in which (as noted earlier this year on HealthFactsAndFears) journalist Eric Schlosser argues that America is having its health and environment ruined by a sinister system of fast food mass-marketing and animal cruelty, all in the name of evil food manufacturers' profits -- has now become a slightly dull film from director Richard Linklater.  Linklater and Schlosser answered   Read Full >>

Population Predictions Bomb: 300 Million in U.S. Still Thriving
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Tuesday, October 17, 2006
As the American population officially passes the 300 million mark today, it's worth remembering, as John Tierney recently did in the New York Times, that many of the environmental movement's dire predictions about the effects of a booming population have proven false.   Read Full >>

Penn Jillette Interviews Dr. Norman Borlaug: The Man Who Fed the World
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Monday, August 14, 2006
Penn Jillette is not only a magician, comedian, skeptic, libertarian, and radio host -- he's also a big fan of ACSH Trustee Dr. Norman Borlaug, calling him "My biggest hero on the planet" in this recent interview of Borlaug on Penn's radio show: http://podcast.penn.freefm.com/penn/25352.mp3 Penn and his partner, Teller, have praised Borlaug before, declaring him "the greatest man who ever lived" on their   Read Full >>

Working Girl Melanie Griffith Raises Smoking Girl, Dakota Griffith
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, August 4, 2006
She was a deceived porn actress in Body Double, a prostitute on Miami Vice (and in Stormy Monday), and a Louise Brooks-influenced woman on the wrong side of the law in Something Wild, but the real evidence that actress Melanie Griffith is trouble may be the photo that Us Weekly just ran of her lighting up her seventeen-year-old daughter Dakota's cigarette:Read Full >>

Debates on Patients' Role, Smokeless Tobacco, and the Future Itself
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Tuesday, July 11, 2006
ACSH folk are trying to prod debate in various corners of the Internet: --The site Eudoxa, which promotes the idea of using smokeless tobacco instead of cigarettes as a method of harm reduction, invites comments on Dr. Gilbert Ross's letter in yesterday's Wall Street Journal on the topic.  --ACSH Advisor   Read Full >>

San Francisco Clamps Down on Children's Toys and Safety Equipment
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Yesterday, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to ban from the city the manufacture, sale, or distribution of products containing the chemical BPA (bisphenol-A) if the products are to be used by children younger than three.  That will sound compassionate to most people -- in fact, it will sound compassionate to most people before they even stop to   Read Full >>

Online Pharmacopeia Cornucopia Not So Copious
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Thursday, April 13, 2006
Most Internet users face a daily avalanche of e-mailed advertisements for online pharmacies, thousands of vendors claiming to sell everything from painkillers to penis-enlargers online.  Most of these offers are fraudulent, and you'd have to be out of your mind to trust an Read Full >>