Dispatch: Streep, Lead, TV, Soda, Smoking, and Ingredients
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Monday, March 8, 2010
The Award for Best "Eco-Mom" Goes to: Meryl Streep Meryl Streep may not have won at the Oscars last night, but the Natural Resources Defense Council has declared her an "eco mom" and has interviewed her about her green/chemophobic approach to cooking.  The irony, as ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan noted last year,  is that   Read Full >>

Dispatch: More Bureaucracy, Taxes, Stimulants, False Claims, Salmonella, and Asthma
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, March 5, 2010
When Senators Play Doctor As ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross wrote in yesterday's Washington Times, two senators have been attempting to turn criticism of one GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug into an excuse to create an entire new drug-approval bureaucracy -- even slower than the existing one.  "Grassley and Baucus sent this 300-page report to the Senate and the FDA attacking GSK," laments Ross. The report implies that the diabetes drug Avandia presents serious heart risks   Read Full >>

Tomorrow Is World Malaria Day -- We Need DDT-Day
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, April 24, 2009
In 2000, African leaders vowed to reduce malaria deaths by 50% in ten years.  Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of the vow, and though it hasn't been fulfilled, we are drawing very close to another marker of malaria's toll: 100 million dead from malaria since the Environmental Protection Agency's 1972 ban on DDT, the insecticide best suited to combat malarial mosquitoes.  For comparison, the total number of people killed by cigarette smoking in the twentieth century is   Read Full >>

Michael Phelps vs. Michael Jacobson..."Diabesity"...Organic Claims
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A few interesting nutrition-related items brought to our attention this summer: As the Olympics began, the group Consumer Freedom noted some amusing differences between champion swimmer Michael Phelps -- a voracious living proof of the calories in/calories out equation for weight maintenance -- and head food nanny Michael Jacobson of the perennially worried Center for Science in the Public Interest.   Read Full >>

Threats Real, Possible, Fake, and Science-Fictional
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, June 20, 2008
Our job here is ranking risks, and here's a little exercise in doing so: (1) A Real Risk: Marilyn Larkin provides a balanced New York Academy of Sciences overview of foodborne illnesses: "Health Threats from Domestic and Imported Produce."  (2) A Small But Discussion-Worthy Risk: Ryan Evans looks at Read Full >>

ACSH Morning Dispatch Round-Up: 200th Dispatch and More
By Krystal Ford, Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Monday, June 9, 2008
DISPATCH: Hunger, Mercury, Alcohol, Smoke, and ToenailsNorman Borlaug's op-ed on the fight against hungerACSH trustee Dr. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M University, co-wrote an op-ed addressing the issue of world hunger.  In the article, Dr. Borlaug and Peter McPherson acknowledge that   Read Full >>

Dr. Daniel Koshland, RIP
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Thursday, July 26, 2007
ACSH was saddened to hear of the death, earlier this week at age eighty-seven after a stroke, of Dr. Daniel Koshland.  Beyond being a colleague of and donor to ACSH, Koshland was a veteran of the Manhattan Project, of enzyme and early biotech research at Brookhaven and Berkeley, and of the journal Science, where he was the editor in chief from 1985 to 1995.  At Berkeley, he oversaw the reorganization and streamlining of the biology department, and his model of departmental   Read Full >>

Michael Moore's "Sicko" Is Both Prescription and Overdose
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, June 29, 2007
For history buffs, the most amazing moment of the new Michael Moore documentary Sicko (his plea for socialized medicine) may be getting to hear the actual moment when most of our current healthcare problems began: Nixon, on tape in the Oval Office, deciding to regulatorily mandate a system of employer-provided health insurance packages in 1971, around the same time that he (a supposed "conservative") decided to freeze wages and prices -- something, thankfully, that is   Read Full >>

Scottish Enlightenment, U.S. Stone Age?
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Monday, May 7, 2007
Despite the occasional exciting biotech newsflash out of Asia, most of the science research and development money on this planet is still in two places, roughly speaking: the U.S. and Europe.  So, much of the near-future progress of science is likely to depend on which of these two regions seems most hospitable to such inquiry.  For most of the twentieth century, the U.S. had an edge conferred, I would argue, more by its wealth and relative absence of regulations than by our love of   Read Full >>

Go Hungry Here to Fight Malaria in Africa
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Monday, May 7, 2007
This Thursday, May 10, 2007, is Fast Against Malaria Day, when, in an effort that grew out of an idea from investment banker Lance Laifer (who started Hedge Funds vs. Malaria), people around the world have pledged to give up one meal in order to donate the money to buying bed nets to ward off malarial mosquitoes in Africa (you'll find ACSH's Executive Director, Dr. Gilbert Ross, listed among those taking the pledge). The group promises   Read Full >>