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 >>

Kristof Goes Berserk over High-Fructose Corn Syrup
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Nicholas Kristof's April 11 New York Times column starts out as if he's joking: "Our government needs to do much more to control potentially deadly substances -- plutonium, anthrax, and high-fructose corn syrup."  On some level, then, he realizes how ridiculous it is to single out one food ingredient as if it is   Read Full >>

Perhaps Neither Prayer Nor Alcohol Can Save Us
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, March 31, 2006
A new study in the American Heart Journal, reportedly the largest of its kind, found no healing benefits for hospital patients from being prayed for by strangers.  Unexpectedly, the study also suggested that there might even be a detrimental effect, as   Read Full >>

Thank "Thank You for Smoking" for Encouraging Skepticism
By Todd Seavey
Publication Date : Friday, March 17, 2006
Skepticism is hard.  As a recent best-selling book noted, doubletalk is a pervasive part of an attention-driven, media-dominated economy.  But we can't just choose to doubt everything all the time, or we'd never be able to get out of bed in the morning for fear of the floorboards inexplicably collapsing.  So we each come up with our little rubrics for deciding what   Read Full >>