The 32nd Great American Smokeout: A Perspective
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Wednesday, November 19, 2008
As we approach yet another Great American Smokeout -- tomorrow, November 20th -- both good and bad news on smoking abounds.•The good news is that adult smoking rates in 2007 have dropped below 20% for the first time since this statistic has been recorded with any accuracy. There are now more former smokers than current smokers, and women's smoking rates have declined for the fifth year in a row.•The bad news is still shocking: there remain over 43 million adult smokers in the   Read Full >>

WORLD MALARIA DAY--and Its Implications for West Nile Virus
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Friday, April 25, 2008
Today is being commemorated around the globe as "World Malaria Day." Note, I didn't say "celebrated" -- clearly an inappropriate descriptor for a disease which, despite the availability of effective preventive measures, continues to kill over one-million impoverished people (mostly young children) annually. The toll of those sickened, both from health and economic perspectives, is incalculable but enormous.Despite these grim statistics (and I hate to refer to such tragic   Read Full >>

Greeniacs on the March Against Plastic Bottles
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Thursday, April 17, 2008
The latest chemophobic scare has centered on bisphenol-A (BPA), a component of strong, shatter-resistant plastic bottles. BPA has been in common use--one might call it ubiquitous--for several decades now, and no human being has ever been harmed by exposure to it. This doesn't matter to the panel members of the National Toxicology Program's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), who released a draft report yesterday announcing their "concern" that   Read Full >>

The Today Show Warns: Chemicals Are All Around Us!
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Wednesday, April 9, 2008
This morning, the folks who produce NBC's Today show allowed me six seconds (out of a six-minute segment) to comment on an astoundingly alarmist and unscientific "report" on the alleged dangers of plastic water bottles.The precise target of this junk-science assault was bisphenol A (BPA), a component of some types of polycarbonate plastic bottles. In fact, BPA is near-ubiquitous in our   Read Full >>

Adult Immunization Rates Woefully Low, Costing Thousands of Lives
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Friday, March 7, 2008
The New York City Department of Health wants to increase the odds of people getting their flu and pneumonia shots by permitting pharmacists, not just doctors, to administer the inoculations. And the public could use the help: results from the Centers for Disease Control's new National Immunization Survey show that adult Americans arise woefully ignorant of the benefits -- and even of the availability -- of many of the vaccines recommended for them. The consequences of this lack of   Read Full >>

Bisphenol-A (BPA) in Baby Bottles: Not a Concern for Parents
By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Publication Date : Thursday, February 7, 2008
Some activist "watchdogs" are again attempting to manipulate parents' natural concerns about their babies, without medical or scientific evidence. A few days ago, the uproar was over baby powder and lotions alleged to be delivering toxic phthalates; today, it's baby bottles and plastic water bottles leaching supposedly-toxic bisphenol-A (BPA). Both of these attacks are false.BPA has never been shown to have any sort of health effect on humans in the extremely low doses we are   Read Full >>

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 >>