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ACSH Dispatches Round-Up: #500, Radon, Stossel, Amalgam Fillings, More
By Curtis Porter
August 19th, 2009
MD #500, plus Lawyers, Money, Cocaine, Nanobees, and HPV
By Curtis Porter
Welcome to ACSH’s 500th edition of Morning Dispatch. We have officially brought you 500 days’ worth of happy, sad, outrageous, and stupefying health news, complete with expert insights from around our breakfast table, where we sip coffee, eat scary non-organic blueberries, and try to save the world from pseudoscience. So far, so good.
Surprise of the Century: Moral Depravity in Some Lawyers
The front page of the Wall Street Journal tells the story of U.S. trial lawyers who traveled to Nicaragua and fabricated evidence to suggest that pesticides had harmed banana-plantation workers for a lawsuit against Dole Food Co. The article explains that U.S. lawyers are “emboldened by a developing-world legal system that heavily favored plaintiffs,” and that “fraud allegations against lawyers have surfaced in other liability cases involving exposure to toxic substances.”
“This is abusive, outrageous behavior by lawyers that translates into junk science in America,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “We haven’t done a study on occupational exposure to this particular pesticide, but this case is part of a larger theme. We’re currently keeping an eye on a major lawsuit taking place in Ecuador against Chevron that seems to involve some of the same questionable tactics. The irony is that the abuses and fraud in the Ecuador case might be even more outrageous.” Stay tuned.
Wow! -- and Thank You
It has been a week since we announced the opportunity to donate to ACSH and have your donation matched by one of our generous friends, up to $25,000 for a total of $50,000, which we can use during the critical health policy debate over the next month.
ACSH President Dr. Elizabeth Whelan thanks everyone for your strong response. We are about one third of the way there, so now would be a great time for people who haven’t yet participated to join those who have. Donate now and double your impact.
Drug Money
ACSH staffers read that traces of cocaine were found on 90% of dollar bills from American cities.
“Just as it would be futile to try and get rid of all the tainted dollar bills or use them to trace where the cocaine was coming from, biomonitoring that reveals tiny traces of every imaginable chemical in our bodies isn’t a good indicator of health threats,” says ACSH’s Todd Seavey. As ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross points out in his recent HealthFactsAndFears blog post, “Our chemical-analytical methods are so precise nowadays that we can find parts per trillion of anything we look for. The mere fact that a substance is found in our bodies does not mean that it’s a hazard to health.”
Stier offers a tongue-in-cheek solution for anyone who is offended or concerned about cocaine on their currency: “If people don’t want money with cocaine on it, they can send it to ACSH. Even cocaine-laced cash will be eligible to be matched in our fundraiser, dollar for cocaine-tainted dollar.”
The Buzz on Nanobees
ACSH staffers were impressed by a report from CNN describing groundbreaking nanotechnology developments that hold promise for targeting cancer cells: “They’re called ‘nanobees,’ and they’re not insects -- they're tiny particles designed to destroy cancer cells by delivering a synthesized version of a toxin called melittin that is found in bees.”
“This is very interesting,” says Dr. Whelan. “It looks like the research is pretty far along.”
Stier adds, “This could be an important medical development, which could never be put to use if we’re too risk-averse. It all goes back to the precautionary principle. Here you have a technology that has potential, yet those who hold by the precautionary principle would say, ‘We can’t move forward with this until we’re absolutely sure it’s safe.’ But we can’t know for sure if it’s safe unless we move forward with it. Proponents of the precautionary principle would say that we shouldn’t use important technology like this.”
Pessimistic Account of an Optimistic Report
The New York Times mentions a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association about a risk-benefit analysis concerning Gardasil, a drug used to protect against the human papillomavirus and the various cancers it can cause. “Overall, the study is very reassuring,” says Dr. Whelan. “It says the benefits far outweigh the risks, and in cases of serious complications, it wasn’t clear if the problems were related to the vaccine.”
“Everything about the study is positive,” says Stier. “Yet everything in the accompanying op-ed is negative. It’s very troubling, saying that the advertising campaign for Gardasil is too aggressive, while that campaign must respond to unscientific, ideologically driven anti-vaccine activism. Are companies not allowed to vigorously defend their lifesaving products?”
August 18, 2009
Drug Divide, Whole Foods Fracas, Vaccines Void, and Tumor Tumult
by Curtis Porter
Seat at the Table
A (non-partisan) seat at the table goes out to House Republican Leader John Boehner for his letter to former House colleague and current PhRMA CEO Billy Tauzin, as reported on Politico: “Boehner urged Tauzin to unwind PhRMA’s deal with President Barack Obama and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MO) to support health care legislation in exchange for profit protection under rules established in the controversial 2003 prescription-drug bill. ‘Appeasement rarely works in conflict resolution,’ Boehner said in the letter. ‘This is as true in the arena of policymaking as it is in schoolyards across America. When a bully asks for your lunch money, you may have no choice but to fork it over. But cutting a deal with the bully is a different story, particularly if the ‘deal’ means helping him steal others’ money as the price of protecting your own.’”
“We applaud him,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “He’s right on.”
Science Caught in Political Crossfire
When John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, suggested in the Wall Street Journal that President Obama’s health care reform would create unsustainable deficits, the progressives that form the base of Whole Foods’ target demographic initiated a boycott in protest. Some who oppose healthcare reform are now launching a counteractive “buycott” to support Whole Foods and Mackey’s views. “We applaud their activism, but we’re encouraging our friends to sit this one out,” says Stier.
ACSH has a storied relationship with Whole Foods due to their unscientific positions across the board, ranging from their ban of trans fats to their ban of plastic bags.
“And in the spirit of ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander,’ We even began a lawsuit against them for their failure to put a cancer warning on whole wheat organic bread in California,” says Stier. “We appreciate Mr. Mackey’s op-ed, and we share some of his concerns about healthcare, but ACSH staffers won’t be shopping at Whole Foods anytime soon. The problem is that those who care about science should have been boycotting Whole Foods from the beginning, since their business model is based on the lie that trace chemicals are dangerous. Isn’t that why people shop there, sometimes paying twice as much for foods labeled ‘organic’? If people who oppose healthcare reform implicitly buy into their ‘environmentalist,’ anti-chemical premise, they are then actually undermining the very public health prioritization we stand for.”
Adult Vaccines
ACSH staffers were pleased to see an article in the Washington Post address the widely overlooked and critically important topic of adult vaccinations: “All the vaccine buzz is about the H1N1 virus right now, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reminding Americans to make sure all of their vaccinations are up-to-date. The CDC encourages adults to guard against vaccine-preventable diseases such as shingles, human papillomavirus (HPV), tetanus, meningitis, whooping cough, and pneumococcal disease.”
“Everyone thinks about swine flu and seasonal flu,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “Adults need other vaccinations as well, and they’re just not getting them. Adults don’t even think about the concept of needing a vaccine, they’re assumed to be for kids only. What’s worse, doctors don’t talk about patients needing vaccines. We’re very pleased that the Washington Post brought this to everyone’s attention, and we advise everyone to look for our forthcoming paper on the topic of adult vaccination.”
The Cancer Catch-22
The Los Angeles Times points out the disturbing trend of unnecessary treatment for breast cancer due to non-life-threatening tumors detected in mammograms: “A new study calculates that this is just what happens in as many as one in every three breast cancers diagnosed by a screening mammogram. That research, published July 9 in the British Medical Journal, comes on the heels of several other studies suggesting that some breast cancers found on mammograms would naturally have regressed on their own without treatment.”
“They say, ‘The studies don't mean that women should abandon mammography...But some think it’s time to reconsider the way that mammogram screening is done.’ That doesn’t help a potential patient know what to do,” says Dr. Whelan. “Of course, this whole situation reminds us of the prostate cancer dilemma where screening picks up non-life-threatening tumors. All of these patients get put through hell with cancer treatments that they don’t need. It’s awful.”
“Many women would tell you that they’d rather take that risk and become a cancer patient,” says Stier. For more information, see Stier’s column in Roll Call, which helped stall a previously popular piece of legislation promoting over-cautious breast cancer detection in young women.
August 17th, 2009
Public Option, Vaccine Reactions, and Unleaded AstroTurf
By Curtis Porter
Downplaying the Public Option
The New York Times reports today that the White House will put less emphasis on the importance of a “public option” for health insurance: “Mr. Obama himself sought to play down the significance of the public option at a town-hall-style meeting on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colorado...‘The public option, whether we have it or we don’t have it, is not the entirety of health care reform,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it.’”
“We agree that people have been so fixated on this that they forget everything else,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “There has been so much debate on this public option issue that some very troubling provisions are being ignored, including issues Dr. Henry Miller and I discussed in terms of how the pharmaceutical industry is being asked to pay into healthcare reform out of profits they earned from innovative medicines that save lives and actually reduce costs. They could be using those profits to innovate further and save even more lives. We’ll be continuing to monitor and address other issues related to healthcare reform and public health.”
H1N1 News Roundup
“There was a big Twitter campaign over the weekend,” says Stier. “Pig farmers are trying to make sure people call the virus ‘H1N1’ instead of ‘swine flu.’ People are apparently still thinking you can get it from eating pork products.”
Scientists are watching the H1N1 vaccine closely for evidence of a link to Guillain-Barré syndrome, which affects the nervous system and has been thought to be a side effect of flu vaccines in the past. “These stories that link Guillain-Barré and the vaccine haven’t gotten picked up much because there isn’t much credibility to them,” says Stier. “But because it hasn’t gotten a huge amount of coverage, the conspiracy theorists have been saying that the American corporations and the media have been covering it up.”
“This is quite unfortunate,” adds ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “This could scare people away from the H1N1 vaccine.”
In light of concerns about the available supply of the H1N1 vaccine, authorities are considering the use of an adjuvant, an agent added to some vaccines to boost immune response and therefore require less of an antigen to provide immunity. Seasonal flu vaccines do not usually contain an adjuvant, though a host of other vaccines make use of them.
“It’s something that we’re keeping as a contingency in case we need to use them,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told ABC News. “Right now, the main priority is to test the unadjuvanted vaccine.” Should an adjuvant be needed, however, Fauci said there is little question that it would be safe.
“It looks like they’re acting judiciously,” says Stier. “One theme we’ve been seeing regarding H1N1 is that there’s a lot of uncertainty, but the federal approach seems to be appropriate given that uncertainty.”
Unleaded AstroTurf
According to a report by Reuters, “AstroTurf LLC, a leading maker of artificial grass for athletic fields, has agreed to a stringent new lead-safety standard in California that virtually eliminates traces of the hazardous metal from its products.”
“Of course, you can contrast this with the White House, which said that you don’t need to eliminate every drop of lead, even from a garden,” says Stier. “Yet on an athletic field which no one is eating produce from, California is lowering the acceptable level to half the new federal level allowed in children’s products -- a standard established by the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). The irony is that major sources of lead have been eliminated -- primarily lead-based paint, which had tens if not hundreds of thousands of parts per million, and leaded gasoline -- and because we’ve eliminated major sources of lead in the environment, levels of exposure have continued to fall dramatically. If this were evaluated purely on scientific criteria, the allowable levels of lead would be increased. We aren’t actually hoping for that, but at least leave them the same. Instead, the federal level drops from 600 to 100 ppm, and California drops that from 100 to 50 ppm. What’s next?”
August 14th, 2009
Ross on Ads/Ross on TV, Thanks, Cancer News, Big Tobacco
By Curtis Porter
An Anthology of Dr. Ross’ Wisdom
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross penned an op-ed for the Washington Examiner about Sen. David Vitter’s amendment to a Homeland Security funding bill, which would allow the importation of foreign pharmaceuticals: “Few things could undermine the safety of the homeland more than allowing drugs of uncertain provenance to mingle with homegrown, safe, effective, FDA-approved pharmaceuticals. Even more threatening, though, is the potential damage that allowing importation would do to our pharmaceutical industry’s ability to develop the next generation of lifesaving, innovative drugs. Importing cheaper foreign drugs en masse would by definition mean importing foreign price controls...The profit motive is removed from the drug business, hurting customers in the long run.”
Dr. Ross also wrote a post for ACSH’s HealthFactsAndFears blog about his Good Morning America appearance yesterday in which he defended the safety of fresh fruits and vegetables from scare-mongers with the Environmental Working Group: “The EWG wants to have it both ways: warning us of ‘dangerous’ levels of pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables -- but at the same time, telling us not to stop eating them. In view of the rampant obesity epidemic, how much more irresponsible and damaging to our nation’s health could this group be -- and why do we not only tolerate their antics but seek them out to appear on national news shows? I think it's time we told them: we are tired of your counterproductive scare-mongering, and please go away.”
(Thank You) x 2
“Our message is really striking a nerve,” says ACSH president and founder Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. Dr. Whelan would like to thank the many Morning Dispatch readers who promptly and generously responded to the challenge put forth by an ACSH donor.“Raise $25,000 online this month, and I'll match it dollar for dollar,” the donor told us, “so you can stand up for what we believe in.” If you have not yet participated, please don't wait another day. Your donation today will have double the impact.
Click here to donate safely and securely online -- or you can call ACSH, a non-profit dedicated to debunking unscientific claims, toll-free at 1-800-905-2694.
Cancer Deaths in Decline
A study published in the journal Cancer Research reveals a steady decline in cancer death rates over the past three decades. The trend is most pronounced within younger subsets of the population, though rates are declining among all age groups due to improvements in screening and treatment. “The way that these statistics are traditionally reported is they have averaged all of the age groups together to get a composite rate,” said Dr. Eric Kort of the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI, who authored the study. As he told Reuters, “The problem with that is because most cancer deaths occur in older Americans, the average heavily emphasizes the experiences of older people. It’s like watching the caboose of the train to tell when the train is changing direction.”
“This is an aggregate look at cancer deaths from all cancers,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “It’s not about cancer incidence rates, though both incidence and death rates have declined, and it’s important to reinforce that cancer is not one disease. Cancer includes many different diseases with different causes and treatments, so it’s good news across the board, and it runs counter to the conventional wisdom that people are dying of cancer now more than ever. People are pushing this notion that cancer is getting worse, that more people are getting it at younger ages, and they believe that it’s because of exposure to chemicals and expanding industry, and that’s not true. Technology is not to blame for more cancer deaths, technology is responsible for reducing cancer deaths -- especially in younger people -- through screening as well as the use of chemicals to treat and prevent cancer.”
Suing Big Tobacco
According to a report from Reuters, “A Florida jury awarded a ninety-two-year-old man $1.9 million in compensatory damages for the death of his wife, a former two-pack-a-day Marlboro smoker...Philip Morris announced that it plans to appeal the case, one of thousands of ‘Engle progeny’ cases, named after a 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision that decertified a class-action lawsuit against the tobacco industry. That case involved Dr. Howard A. Engle, a Miami Beach pediatrician and smoker who served as the lead plaintiff in the class-action suit.”
“The reason that the class of plaintiffs was decertified is that there were too many differences in each case involving smoking-related illnesses,” says Stier. “The whole point of certifying a class-action suit is the similarity in the cases, which allows them to be tried at once, but there are too many different fact patterns to consider them all together.”
“Another unique aspect of this case is that [the Florida Supreme Court] also said that facts about smoking causing disease can be taken from the Engle case and applied to the progeny cases,” says Dr. Whelan. “Now judges don’t have to go through the routine of whether smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema and all these other diseases. This will be assumed. Previously, Philip Morris was successful in diverting the attention of the jury to something irrelevant in order to discredit the plaintiff, but hopefully that will change. There will be thousands more of these cases.”
August 13th, 2009
GMA on ACSH on EWG, Reason on ACSH on Healthcare, and FDA
By Curtis Porter
Dr. Gil “Gill” Ross on GMA
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross appeared on this morning’s Good Morning America to discuss a list compiled by the FDA of fruits and vegetables that have been found to contain pesticide residues. A representative of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) was there to deliver EWG’s stock message that everything in the world is going to hurt you. Dr. Ross (undercover as his fishy alter-ego “Gill” Ross according to ABC’s caption, but we'll let that slide) concisely dispelled EWG’s rumors by pointing out that trace levels of pesticides like those discovered have been repeatedly proven harmless. Despite what EWG would have you believe, it remains true that eating fruits and vegetables is a healthy practice
Would You Like to Double Your Impact?
A generous ACSH donor placed her trust in us and her hope in you.
She has confidence in our ability to continue being a major voice in the current healthcare reform debate. So this week, she pledged to donate up to $25,000, to match the donations you make right now. Almost like a Penn and Teller magic trick, every dollar you give will turn into two. That's double the impact, double the science, double the defense of what we believe in.
Many in the media try to de-legitimize criticism of Obamacare by claiming those voicing their concerns are put up to it by some organized political campaign. They say critics provide more heat than light by showing emotions. We'll leave that type of analysis to the political pundits, but in the meantime we here at ACSH are busy providing intellectual ammunition to thousands of Americans who attend town hall meetings and rallies on the topic around the country.
This is a critical time, and we are stepping up to the plate. But we need your help today. Please arm us with the funds we need today to make your voice heard even more clearly.
Please click here to donate safely and securely online -- or you can call ACSH, a non-profit dedicated to debunking unscientific claims, toll-free at 1-800-905-2694.
Red Pills, Blue Pills, No Pills at All
ACSH’s friend Ronald Bailey has a post on Reason magazine’s blog
that discusses President Obama’s “red pill/blue pill” healthcare plan in the context of the recent New Hampshire town hall meeting. The post includes a question asked of President Obama at the meeting by a New Hampshire Medicaid patient who was denied the medication his doctor had been prescribing him for a decade until it was proven that nothing else worked as well.
“Obama was saying that insurance companies ration medicine,” says Stier. “But it was New Hampshire Medicaid that refused to fund his medication.”
Bailey also references the L.A. Timesarticle on healthcare rationing by ACSH’s Jeff Stier and Dr. Henry Miller, which has been reprinted in many newspapers, most recently St. Pauls’ Twin Cities’ Pioneer Press.
“We’re getting the message out to a big audience,” says Stier. “That’s exactly what you, our donors, asked us to do.”
FDA’s Change of Heart
According to the Wall Street Journal, “The Food and Drug Administration finalized new regulations Wednesday designed to provide broader access to experimental drugs for seriously ill people who have exhausted all other commercially available treatments.”
“Until now, the FDA has been preventing people who are very sick from getting these treatments because they wanted controlled, randomized trials done on them first,” says Dr. Ross. “How do they now justify opening the gates?”
August 12th, 2009
Alzheimer's, Colorectal Cancer, CPSIA, and Organic Food
Curtis Porter
Alzheimer's Disease in JAMA
A study by a group of researchers associated with the Columbia University Medical Center, detailed in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), investigated the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and adherence to a Mediterranean-type diet in conjunction with a regular exercise regimen. The report concludes, “both higher Mediterranean-type diet adherence and higher physical activity were independently associated with reduced risk for AD.”
“This is a fairly good prospective study,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “The researchers analyzed diet and exercise both separately and together to look at the effect on incident Alzheimer’s disease, that is, Alzheimer’s disease whose onset occurred during the period of the study. They also adjusted the data for a variety of confounders. Lo and behold, they found that -- both separately and together -- adherence to a healthy, Mediterranean-type diet and regular exercise significantly reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. There was even a dose-response relationship, which means stricter adherence to diet and exercise corresponded to lower risk for Alzheimer’s disease than moderate adherence, with a fairly significant effect. Risk was reduced by 30%. Certainly, if we could figure out some drug that reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 30% or more, it would be a huge breakthrough for public health and a blockbuster for the drug company that developed it.”
The Mediterranean-type diet is “characterized by abundant plant foods (fruit, vegetables, breads, other forms of cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts, and seeds), fresh fruit as the typical daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat, dairy products (principally cheese and yogurt), and fish and poultry consumed in low to moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low amounts, and wine consumed in low to moderate amounts, normally with meals.”
Colorectal Cancer in JAMA
Another report in JAMA presents the results of a federally funded study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School that sought to determine the influence of aspirin on survival after diagnosis of colorectal cancer.
“It is already known that aspirin and related, non-steroidal agents reduce the risk of colorectal cancer,” explains Dr. Ross. “Similarly, aspirin is known to inhibit the growth and metastasis of colorectal cancer in animal models.” The study determined that the risk of death by colorectal cancer after diagnosis was reduced by as much as 29% by aspirin.
“If I’m a clinician reading this study,” says Dr. Ross, “and I’m responsible for a patient with colorectal cancer that has not spread to other organs, I would certainly want to put that person on aspirin, as long as there are not strong contraindications such as stomach bleeding.”
T-Minus 2 Days Until CPSIA Brings the Heat
Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an editorial denouncing the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) passed last year in an attempt to allay public fears of lead in toys from China: “In its hurry, [Congress] imposed draconian lead limits that have ravaged businesses...since the law went into effect in February. This week, the screws are tightening further, as products directed at children under twelve must meet stricter lead standards, and companies face higher penalties for any mistakes. Because the rules are retroactive, toys or other items that are legal to sell on Thursday will be banned on Friday.”
“This editorial points out once again the ironies and counterproductive ramifications of CPSIA which is set to go into full implementation this Friday,” says Dr. Ross. “The sad irony of this horrendous legislation is that its enforcement will protect no one from lead poisoning. The number of kids who ingest toxic levels of lead from the consumer products flagged by this law number somewhere between zero and...well, zero. And those who are responsible for this counterproductive law in Congress will not accept responsibility for its consequences to American consumers and small businesses, and they resist amending it even to this day. They should be ashamed.”
For more information, see an article about CPSIA published in the New York Post by ACSH’s Jeff Stier.
Organic’s Downfall
A New York Times blog reviews a farmer’s riposte to a prominent critic of modern agribusiness and its methods: “[Blake] Hurst argues that the ‘reality is messier’ than idealistic, non-farming critics would have it. Much of his argument comes down to: beware the law of unintended agricultural consequences.”
“Organic agriculture is built on the fraudulent claim that chemicals are dangerous,” says ACSH’s Todd Seavey. “So-called sustainable agriculture, more often than not, is actually a conglomeration of primitive methods that sustained us on the brink of starvation -- without using resources efficiently at all -- for millennia. These techniques, like a lot of other unscientific, anti-industrial trends in society, are a virtual war on modern civilization.”
ACSH will soon present a new article from Dr. Joseph Rosen -- who has written on organic agriculture for ACSH before -- rebutting the latest exaggerated organic claims.
August 11, 2009
Calorie Counts, Breast-Feeding, DTC Ads, Swine Flu Quirks
By Curtis Porter
On the Road
ACSH’s Jeff Stier has taken to the road to visit with some of our donors around the country, and his hotel-hopping itinerary has kept him abreast of all the news that’s fit to print in _USA Today_. He called in this morning from California -- where it was much too early to be awake -- in order to refer us to a point-counterpoint feature in today’s issue wherein the editorial staff argues for the benefits of posting calorie counts on fast food menus, while ACSH’s friend Grace Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, shares some of our own sentiments judging by her counterpoint, “Opposing view: Pointless and expensive.”
Breast-Feeding and Cancer Risk
ACSH staffers are skeptical about a new study published in _The Archives of Internal Medicine_ that suggests that breast-feeding can lower the risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer. “This is another result from the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “These ongoing, observational or retrospective analyses have become a veritable publication machine where they have sixty-thousand-plus nurses and test for sixty thousand outcomes, and every year they come out with another bunch of ‘statistically significant’ but irrelevant and irreproducible results.”
Dr. Louise Brinton, chief of the National Cancer Institute’s hormonal and reproductive epidemiology branch, also finds the report dubious. “I would be cautious in interpreting this,” Dr. Brinton said. “You would expect to see a dose-response relationship with breast-feeding if it is a really causal protective factor.”
“I echo that sentiment very strongly,” says Dr. Ross. “This study found no dose-response, which means that those who breast-fed for shorter amounts of time did not have higher incidences of breast cancer than those who breast-fed for longer. This is just retrospective data analysis, which I have in the past called ‘data dredging.’ The best that such data can do would be to point to other studies, that is, randomized controlled trials, which are much more difficult and expensive to perform. It’s comparatively easy to do retrospective data analysis, but the results are often not as valid and can sometimes be misleading.”
For a less speculative look at breast cancer, see ACSH’s peer-reviewed report, _Risk Factors for Breast Cancer_.
Targeting DTC
In response to Stier’s collaboration with Dr. Henry Miller concerning healthcare reform in last Wednesday’s _L.A. Times_, a letter to the editor in today’s issue argues, “let us not forget that pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money marketing their products to healthcare providers and the public.”
“To suggest that direct-to-consumer advertising (DTC) actually increases the cost of drugs and lowers profits is completely opposite to the truth,” says Stier. “Why would a company advertise in a way that increases cost? Drugs that are taken by very few people are, by their nature, much more expensive. DTC expands the number of people benefiting from medications by increasing demand.”
“Another common fallacy about DTC is that pharmaceutical companies that spend significant amounts of money on advertising cannot possibly be spending enough on research,” says Dr. Ross. “It’s as if one thing precludes another, which is absurd. There are many benefits to the public from DTC advertising and few risks, despite what the anti-pharma politicians say. Anyway, why should drug makers be subject to stricter ad restrictions than cellphone marketers or automobile advertisers?”
Swine Flu Quirks
An article in today’s _New York Times_ highlights the difficulties of dealing with swine flu around the world. Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, chairman of the department of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, reveals some of the ways swine flu differs from seasonal flu: “The standard definition of influenza includes a fever. But an odd feature of the new virus is the lack of fever in a significant proportion of documented cases, even after some patients become seriously ill...Diarrhea is a symptom that appears to be occurring in a larger percentage of cases than in seasonal influenza, giving clear reason to reinforce the importance of frequent hand washing.”
“If you asked me what the paradigm sign of flu infection was, I would say fever,” says Dr. Ross. “But here we find that it does not always come with fever. This is an interesting article. Expressing information about the atypical presentation of a disease is an important public health service.”
August 10th, 2009
Soda Tax, Organic Dispute, Swine Flu Vaccine
By Curtis Porter
Soda Tax
A headline in the Washington Post asks, “Can We Fight Obesity by Slapping a Heavy Tax on Soda?” ACSH’s Todd Seavey has a succinct answer: “No.”
When pressed for further details, he explains, “ACSH has always said it’s pointless to single out one food as if it’s the magic bullet for solving the obesity problem. Even if you discourage people from drinking soda, it wouldn’t stop obese people from compensating with more calorie-dense foods or even larger amounts of the beloved low-fat foods.”
The article raises an important question: “To some critics [the soda tax] approach smacks of paternalism and over-reliance on government intervention. Shouldn’t diet and weight be a matter of personal responsibility, not the government’s concern?”
“Yes,” says Seavey, true to his laconic form. “The idea that the government should decide how large we can be ought to strike people as creepy.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross adds, “The ‘tax soda to cure obesity’ dogma is a prime illustration of the ‘simple solution to a complex problem’ approach touted by pro-government-solution types. Such cures are always wrong. The answer lies in portion control, increased exercise, and balanced nutrition education for parents and kids. Moreover, they always add the come-on ‘the extra tax monies will be used to fund anti-obesity programs and education.’ Don't fall for that one. They said the same thing when they cobbled together the tobacco ‘Master Settlement’ in 1998, and the funds extracted from the tobacco companies went towards roads, bridges, and reducing deficits, and almost none of it went towards anti-smoking efforts.”
The Organic Conniption
ACSH staffers are grateful to Dominic Lawson, whose article on the UK’s TimesOnline offers support for his belief that “Organic food is just a tax on the gullible.” Lawson chronicles organic proponents’ recent shift to abusive personal attacks against scientists in light of the UK’s FSA report proving that organic food isn’t any more nutritious than conventionally produced food.
He quotes Dr. Ben Goldacre of the NHS, author of the acclaimed book Bad Science, who says, “In my experience the [comments of the] organic food, anti-vaccine, and homeopathy movements are unusually hateful and generally revolve around bizarre allegations that you covertly represent some financial or corporate interest. I do not, but I do think it reveals something about their own motives that they can only conceive of a person holding a position as a result of financial self-interest.”
He’s not the only one who has observed the deceitful trend. “Dr. Joseph Rosen noticed recent studies once more discrediting the claim that organic food is nutritionally superior,” says Seavey. “He’ll be writing a series of articles on the topic for our HealthFactsAndFears blog in the next few weeks.”
The article concludes by reiterating ACSH’s oft-repeated organic disclaimer: “This just demonstrates the common-sense point that diet, rather than whether food is produced‘organically’ or not, is the key to healthy eating.”
Sanofi-Aventis Leads the Charge Against Swine Flu
Sanofi-Aventis has filed a supplemental license application with the FDA and started human testing of its H1N1 swine flu vaccine last Thursday. The first swine flu vaccines should be approved and ready for use in some countries starting next month, according to the World Health Organization.
“One reason to be relieved about the swine flu situation is that although it’s very contagious, it doesn’t seem to be more harmful to most people than seasonal flu,” says Seavey. “We’ll have an article soon on HealthFactsAndFears by someone who had swine flu and whose admirably calm doctor told him not to worry about it too much and to just stay away from his kids for a few days.”
Dr. Ross is surprised by this news item: “I believe it will take several more weeks at least before our FDA allows clinical use of the new vaccine. Given the innate aversion to risk of the FDA, and the collective memory of the Swine flu vaccine debacle in 1976, I think the drug regulators will take as few chances as possible with releasing vaccine before its safety is assured.”
August 7th, 2009
Healthcare, E-Cig Responses, Flu Shots
By Curtis Porter
Haggling for Healthcare
ACSH staffers were not surprised to see the latest episode of Congressional and White House doublespeak covered in the New York Times. There are new developments in the effort to squeeze more healthcare reform "contributions" out of the pharmaceutical industry: "Congressional Democrats said Thursday that they intended to push the Obama administration to back away from its deal with the drug industry to cap its share of the costs in a healthcare overhaul."
"The White House and Congress are playing 'good cop, bad cop,'" says ACSH's Jeff Stier, who reported with Dr. Henry Miller on the haggling. "The White House says, 'We'll only take away $80 billion,' but Pelosi wants more, so she's using that as a starting point. It's a classic underhanded negotiation technique."
Pelosi admits as much: "We know we can squeeze more from the system. The minute the drug companies settled for $80 billion, we knew it was $160 billion. The President made the agreements he made. And maybe we'll be limited by that. But maybe not!"
"President Obama, ironically, is the good cop here," says Stier. "He was 'only' insisting on taking $80 billion of what the drug companies will earn by creating new drugs and saving peoples' lives."
ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross adds, "The mixed messages emanating from the White House cast the President in a bad light: Can his promises be trusted? How can anyone deal with the administration when the agreements shift day to day?"
Be sure to follow this and other stories over the weekend with Jeff Stier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JeffACSH.
A Rare Treat
ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan wrote an op-ed on e-cigarettes for yesterday's Washington Times, and already staffers' inboxes and the Times' online comments page has been inundated with grateful letters from former smokers for whom e-cigarettes represent the last hope.
"I don't get a lot of fan-mail," says Dr. Whelan, whose concern for scientific integrity has strained professional relationships in the past. "I must admit that my heart hurt when I read some of that feedback. I know it's all anecdotal accounts, but these smokers are so desperate to quit, and they've finally found something that can help them. This product really changes peoples' lives."
"I am writing to thank you most heartily for bringing a note of common sense and sanity to the issue of the electronic cigarette," reads one email. "I am one of its beneficiaries. I smoked cigarettes for forty-five years. I switched over to an electronic cigarette...and have no desire or cravings for the tobacco cigarettes. I will do everything in my power to continue using the e-cigarette, short of something that could land me in jail. If it comes to that, I probably will need to take up tobacco again. Even the thought of that makes me feel very, very sad."
Usually, ACSH's uncompromising commitment to scientific principles earns us more hostility than gratitude (someone has to talk to "environmentalists"), so we're going to relish this moment, and indulge ourselves with some excerpts from the Washington Times' comments page for this article:
"All I can say for sure is that I feel 100 times better then I did a year ago, I can breathe easier, I'm biking and running again. E-cigs have saved my life! • a BIG thank you to Dr. Whelan for writing an unbiased article on the FDA and E-Cigs • Thank you Dr Whelan. As corny as it sounds I almost cried when I read this • I am a former two pack a day smoker and have not even looked back. Please keep the REAL truth about these marvelous devices on the forefront • These devices are a miracle. I tried everything to quit. Nothing worked. I quit cigarettes on the first day with ecigs...Thank You Dr. Whelan! • Thank you Dr. Whelan for this article, it's about time someone set the FDA straight. • This could improve the lives of many not to mention health related cost savings. Thank you for writing this article and bringing awareness to this issue. Thank you Dr. Whelan. • Thank you! Thank you Dr. Elizabeth Whelan!! This is the FIRST article I've seen that actually presents the larger picture. Everyone else just regurgitated the FDA press release and you wrote a REAL report. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now why did it take a Doctor to be a 'real' journalist?"
Three Shots, No Chaser
Before there was this latest strain of H1N1, people cared about the more deadly seasonal flu virus, which will still be making an appearance in a few months. According to an AP news story, "Sanofi, Novartis AG, and GlaxoSmithKline PLC all have begun shipments of seasonal flu vaccine earlier than usual, with Glaxo and Novartis both starting shipments Wednesday and Sanofi on July 27. Novartis said it was starting 'weeks ahead of schedule,' Sanofi is about two weeks early, and Glaxo is a little ahead of its normal mid-August start."
Meanwhile, it seems the swine flu will require two separate shots per person, making a total of three vaccine injections for total coverage this flu season.
"We're moving along, and the seasonal is being pushed forward and moving quickly," says Dr. Whelan. "But the logistics of getting all of us to have three flu shots is just mindboggling. My doctor told me last year that he could not do flu shots anymore, so he was training his assistants to administer them. With three shots, someone will need to help."
"I've said it before," says Dr. Ross. "Anyone can give a flu shot -- it's intramuscular. You can't miss. And hopefully more satellite areas such as pharmacies will be recruited in this year's effort."
August 6th, 2009
E-Cigs, Black Boxes, Chem Biz vs. Itself, Imus vs. Imus
By Curtis Porter
FDA’s Departure From Science
ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan has an op-ed in today’s Wasington Times that criticizes the FDA’s announcement that e-cigarettes are dangerous and should not be considered a harm-reduction device to help smokers quit their deadly habit: “In making its distorted, incomplete, and misleading statement, FDA was violating its long-cherished tradition of sticking to sound science as the basis for its policies. And in doing so, it is putting the lives and health of millions of Americans at risk...Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States today. Any alternative acceptable to addicted smokers should be taken seriously. Instead of condemning the e-cigarette, the FDA should be sponsoring studies to evaluate its safety and efficacy -- leaving it on the market in the interim.”
Black Box Warnings Don’t Affect Risk
After more than a year of review, FDA scientists decided on Tuesday to apply “black box” warnings to a group of drugs known as tumor necrosis factor blockers used to treat inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and Crohn’s disease, citing an increased risk of cancer in children and adolescents.
“These biologics are powerful drugs,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier, “but we already knew of the cancer risk in children and adolescents. Doctors should have used these medications with caution even before this bolder warning. However, physicians should still give due consideration to the benefits of the drugs, especially in light of the paucity of other treatments for inflammatory diseases. For example, by not using these drugs out of concern for the cancer risk, might IBD patients face a higher risk of colon cancer as a result of years of inflammation?
“The level of risk hasn’t gone up, only the warning has changed. It just shows how risk-averse the current FDA is. If doctors consider the new warnings in light of the above, the impact on usage should be minimal. Why? Ironically, an abundance of caution in such matters might just be too risky.”
Who’s Who Among Industry Sell-Outs
There is a new and profoundly disturbing figure championing stricter EPA/TOSCA regulation of safe chemicals such as bisphenol-A (BPA).
In Tuesday’s USA Today, Liz Szabo quotes someone surprising arguing that “the law has not kept pace with science. Giving the EPA more money and power to ban dangerous substances will help restore confidence.” This same person, says Szabo, “acknowledged that it’s hard for businesses to comply with a patchwork of environmental laws. Making the federal law stronger will eliminate the need for states to pass their own environmental bills, he says.” He adds one final talking point: “In rewriting the law, the EPA’s primary consideration should be the health of children.”
“Guess who said this,” challenges ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “No, it was not Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group -- although he essentially agrees in this same article. It was also not Sen. Lautenberg (D-NJ), the legislative sponsor. It’s not the president of NRDC or Union of Concerned Scientists or Consumers Union or Public Citizen or Greenpeace. It’s Cal Dooley -- head of the American Chemistry Council, the trade group that represents the chemical industry. So who will be defending the safety of BPA when it comes under attack in Congress and the EPA? If the ACC is now calling for ‘more money and power for the EPA’ to protect ‘the health of children,’ clearly someone needs to point out the fallacy of such unscientific posturing, or fifty years of safe consumer use will go down the drain.”
“Apparently, they think the products they are selling are risky and we need the government to regulate them,” says Stier. “At least, that’s the message they’re sending. The real reason Cal Dooley is saying this, I suspect, to give him the benefit of the doubt, is that they’ve been warned that if they don’t give in they won’t have a seat at the negotiating table. The EPA has already asked for a 37% budget increase for 2010. Now they want more money. Where does it stop? The ACC should learn from what is happening with PhRMA.”
Dr. Whelan agrees: “The bottom line is that trade associations and industry simply do not represent the interests of the American consumer any more. If not for ACSH and our individual and foundation donors around the country, who would defend science?”
Holistic Medicine: “Eat Peppers, See What Happens”
ACSH staffers were not surprised to see today’s New York Times mention Don Imus’ decision to forego traditional treatment for his stage two prostate cancer: “Though he was initially advised to begin radiation treatments, he has so far chosen to treat the disease holistically. He has been dutifully ingesting habanero peppers and Japanese soy supplements as part of a regimen partly devised by his wife, a natural foods proponent.”
“His wife is into all things natural,” says Dr. Whelan. “She’s a known advocate and vendor of natural cleaners, and at one point she lobbied the governor of New York to make it state policy to only use natural cleaners in schools and state offices. So when her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer, she decided that he should be using natural treatments.”
“We don’t think he’s necessarily harming himself in any way with this regimen,” adds Dr. Ross. “Watchful waiting without invasive treatment is often a valid approach for early-stage prostate cancer. But he’s definitely deluding himself, and his wife is deluding him and anyone who emulates him. Anyone who assumes that this is an appropriate treatment of prostate cancer is being misled. They would believe that this ‘holistic’ method is good for all cancer patients and that conventional pharmaceutical approaches should be shunned, which is ultimately a dangerous message to be sending to Imus’s vast audience.”
August 5th, 2009
Obamacare, Needle Exchange, 9/11, and Cholesterol
By Curtis Porter
Stier and Miller on Red and Blue
ACSH's Jeff Stier teamed up with ACSH Trustee Dr. Henry Miller, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, to pen an op-ed in today's L.A. Times, "Healthcare Reform That's Hard to Swallow." Dr. Miller approached Stier with the idea of addressing the healthcare rationing that could result from Congress's proposed reforms, and the collaboration makes a compelling case against comparative effectiveness, the "red pill vs. blue pill" rationale espoused by the President and many in Congress:
"[T]his approach ignores the futility of such one-size-fits-all prescribing of medicines. For many classes of drugs -- among them statins, anti-hypertensives, pain-relievers, and antipsychotic medicines -- the selection of the appropriate drug among many possibilities requires a delicate balancing of effectiveness and acceptable side effects in each patient. Under Obamacare, you don't want to be one of those people who might really need the more expensive red pill."
"We have had growing success in reaching out to a broad range of media outlets since you, our donors, encouraged us to expand our reach," says Stier. "Not only does the L.A. Timeshave the fourth-highest circulation in the country, it also has a reputation for being part of the 'mainstream media,' having credibility with those to the left and center of the political spectrum. Because of this breakthrough, the piece is getting national attention. For instance, AARP posted it in on their 'AARP Bulletin Today'."
Reduction of Harm Reduction
ACSH staffers were disappointed by the revelations contained in a New York Times editorial detailing Congress's new restriction on locations of operating centers for the highly effective needle exchange program that prevents the spread of AIDS by providing clean needles to drug addicts. The Times notes, "[S]uch a restriction would make it virtually impossible to have federally financed programs anywhere in densely packed urban communities, which is where the need for AIDS intervention is especially pressing."
"Congress is effectively cutting off federal funding for needle exchange programs that significantly reduce peoples' risk of contracting AIDS," says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. "I do not understand what these people are thinking. Can they justify this in any way? If harm reduction programs that are as helpful as this one are being, in effect, banned, we have a tough row to hoe with tobacco [harm reduction efforts]."
Stier agrees, "This just goes to show that ideology gets in the way of science on both sides of the political spectrum."
Bad Science in JAMA
The most recent volume of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) contains a report that purports to reveal a link between the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11 and incidences of asthma among various New York residents. ACSH staffers were displeased with the study's dubious methods and exploitation of a national tragedy.
"The main reason why this is junk science is their method of collecting data, which was a phone survey," says Stier. "It's very likely that people who responded were hoping to get medical benefits or compensation, so the data is not only self-reported, but the questions themselves seem to promise incentives for answering in a certain way."
"We often castigate epidemiological studies for lack of control," adds Dr. Ross. "This is the worst type of study -- what's called a 'push poll' -- where the respondents' best interest lies in answering a certain way. The link to 9/11 is the whole reason it seems legitimate enough to include in JAMA."
Stier agrees: "It is often the case that 9/11 is used to lend legitimacy to poor medical research in an attempt to get federal funding. The real victims of the attack should be taken care of, but New Yorkers shouldn't ask for aid based on junk science."
For more information, see Stier's earlier coverage of this issue in the New York Post and New York Sun.
Remember Miller and Stier's L.A. Times Piece? Well...
A Kaiser Permanente study released Tuesday indicates that people with borderline or high cholesterol levels are at increased risk for developing Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia.
"This is a scary report. All I can say is, 'Let's hear it for statins!'" says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, referring to a class of pharmaceuticals used to lower cholesterol levels. "There are already a lot of reasons to keep your cholesterol in the ideal range; maybe this is another one. In the time since I formed ACSH, cholesterol levels of Americans have declined significantly, but they are still a concern. Most people are not aware that there are modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer's and vascular dementia, including smoking and hypertension. But for those with cholesterol control problems, statins may be a valuable option."
"There is a 'new' statin available that could be helpful to a broader audience because it has fewer side effects," says Stier, referring to pitavastatin, which was approved by the FDA on Monday. "The advantage of it is that it has fewer side effects and drug interactions than other statins. Consumers and healthcare providers might have to pay more for it, but it is more than just another 'blue pill' that does the same thing as other statins. A subclass of patients that was not helped by other drugs on the market could be helped by this. This is just the latest example of the case against comparative effectiveness, which is a key element of the President's healthcare reform package."
August 4th, 2009
Calories, Sweeteners, Mount Sinai vs. Chemicals, Suzanne Somers, Depression
By Curtis Porter
Clarification
ACSH staffers always value questions and feedback from our supporters. Yesterday, a friend of ours asked, “I don't understand the statement that ‘there are no such things as unhealthy calories.’ Isn't a calorie of fruit or fish better for someone than a calorie of marshmallow? Or is caloric content somehow independent of nutritional content?”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross explains, “With regard to obesity, which the article yesterday addressed, calories are calories, period. No ‘type’ of calorie is more or less a contributor to weight gain. All fats have 9 calories per gram, while all proteins and carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram. That being said, we do recognize the importance of nutrient-dense -- as opposed to calorie-dense -- foods in the overall approach to combating obesity. While there are no ‘good foods’ and ‘bad foods’ -- all foods can be a part of a well-rounded diet, including fun foods -- some foods pack more of a caloric wallop and should be consumed less frequently and/or in smaller quantities if one is trying to maintain a healthy weight or to lose weight.”
Please feel free to ask questions like this in the future.
Dr. Epstein’s War on Tasty Delights
ACSH staffers were somewhat amused to read a diatribe by Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois in Chicago, concerning the unfounded dangers of the artificial sweetener aspartame (“Nutrasweet”) in an article published on Huffington Post yesterday. “This is a good example of Huffington Post’s promotion of bad science,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “There’s probably no more tested food additive than aspartame. This whole thing is completely off-base.”
Dr. Epstein believes aspartame should be banned as a carcinogen, a position he bases on animals studies that alone are not relevant to human health. He goes so far as to suggest that someone somewhere in the world expects it to be banned soon: “it is anticipated that Dr. Margaret Hamburg...will promptly ban the continued use of aspartame.”
“Artificial sweeteners are a hotbed for health conspiracies,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “First it was saccharin, since that came out first. They were saying it caused bladder cancer based on rat tests, which had no relevance to humans. There was, at least, a legitimate disagreement on the applicability of animal tests back then, but this aspartame argument doesn’t even have a veneer of credibility today. The problem is that the media often give Epstein credence. He’s not just some wacko conspiracy theorist -- he’s considered a credible scientist, even though he says vague things like, ‘it is anticipated that Dr. Margaret Hamburg will ban the continued use of aspartame.’ Anticipated by whom?”
Ranting in Disguise
This morning’s New York Times print edition contains a paid advertisement (unidentified as such) posing as an op-ed in which Dr. Philip Landrigan takes advantage of the opportunity to list everything he can think of as a threat to your children. “Everything is in here,” says Dr. Whelan. “BPA, phthalates, lead in toys, mercury -- he’s naming every health scare he can remember. It is so off the wall. I can’t believe the Mount Sinai School of Medicine lets him do this using their good name.”
“Dr, Landrigan implies that the mere presence of these chemicals is somehow responsible for the increased rates in chronic diseases,” says Dr. Ross. “He ignores the fact that we are healthier than ever, with a longer lifespan and lower cancer rates. The only exception is increased obesity, which is due to too many calories and not enough exercise, and has nothing to do with trace levels of chemicals.”
News Flash: Aging is Natural
ACSH staffers were disturbed by a report revealing the emerging fashion of using dangerous hormone therapies to conceal age. “While I am somewhat disgusted by this whole thing, I was not surprised to see that Suzanne Somers is involved,” says Dr. Ross. “She’s the poster child for these self-inflicted hormone treatments.”
The article does contain an understated disclaimer: “Despite what bloviating celebrities like Somers claim, there is no evidence that hormones have anti-aging powers -- and plenty of reasons to think they might cause harm, including diabetes and possibly cancer. Somers herself developed breast cancer while on her hormone-heavy routine and had a hysterectomy due to precancerous changes in her uterus. The FDA has not approved any of the substances for anti-aging.”
“I don’t understand how women could take on medicating themselves with hormones,” says Dr. Whelan. “These women who are doing this are probably the same as the ones that are afraid of BPA in plastic bottles. Where is the FDA when we need them?”
Depression News
A report in the Archives of General Psychiatry reveals that the use of anti-depressant medication in the U.S. has doubled since 1996. Treatment for depression became more widely available with the advent of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) medications, which are prescribed to roughly 10% of the population.
“Bloggers seem to be against these medications, as if using them were somehow lazy or irresponsible,” says Dr. Ross. “Back in the days of tricyclic antidepressants as the sole option for depression treatment, before SSRIs, treatment and psychotherapy was difficult and expensive. One of the big risks of tricyclics was suicide,” not because of emotional side effects but simply because “overdosing on those medications is a very effective method. SSRIs, on the other hand, are very safe. Their increased use could well be a good thing. Patients not treated with SSRIs would have to live with depression or be affected by terrible drug side effects, including increased risk of suicide.”
In a cynical reaction to all of the depression talk addressed by Jeff Stier on Twitter, one commenter said: “Antidepressant use in U.S. doubled between 1996 and 2005. [Direct to Consumer advertising (DTC)] began in 1997. Coincidence?” Stier responds, “This could be taken to be a condemnation of DTC. But in fact, it speaks to DTC’s efficacy. Because of this advertising, more people are getting treatment for a serious and often stigmatized medical condition.”
August 3rd, 2009
Fat, Drugs, Doctors, and Clots
By Cutis Porter
Supply, Demand, and Intervention
“If America is at war with obesity, then obesity is winning,” declares an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal’s weekend edition. The essay chronicles the nation’s obesity woes with examples of big government responses that have so far proven ineffective. ACSH staffers were pleased with the article as a whole, though we noticed one argument that was slightly off: “Most of the new calories in the American diet come from processed foods, and taxpayers have underwritten them since the New Deal with huge price supports for commodity crops like corn and soy. These are processed into low-quality calories that make their way to consumers as refined starches, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils and feed for livestock.”
“Taken at face value, it flies in the face of our knowledge about nutrition and obesity,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “There are no such things as unhealthy calories. Calorie for calorie, there are no disadvantages to high fructose corn syrup compared to other sweeteners. On the other hand, everyone knows that agricultural supports are a major cause of a lot of our public health problems because they distort the market, favoring calorie-dense foods over a wide range of fruits and vegetables. If it was a natural market force skewing the numbers to cause more obesity, the government would be quick to regulate it, but since it’s regulation causing the trend, they ignore it.”
ACSH’s Jeff Stier agrees: “Once again, government intervention is to blame. If you intervene in the market and use subsidies to lower the price of very calorie-dense foods, you don’t need to be a University of Chicago economist to know that you will increase the consumption of the cheaper food.”
PhRMA Just Can’t Win
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) agreed in June to “reduce its draw on the health care system by $80 billion over the next ten years as part of overall health care reform” currently being negotiated in Congress, as they announced their support for the President’s healthcare plan.
“In other words, they agreed to voluntarily give back $80 billion they were to earn by creating innovating and lifesaving drugs,” explains Stier. “Of course, they did so under the threat of losing a seat at the negotiating table.”
After the Energy and Commerce Committee passed a version of reform calling for even more sacrifice from pharmaceutical companies, PhRMA got up and walked away from the table entirely: “Unfortunately, the totality of the efforts in the U.S. House of Representatives, while well-intentioned, represents a step in the wrong direction in the healthcare reform debate...The result [of this bill] could mean significant job losses in the middle of a recession...Under the House bill, we’re concerned that the federal government will wind up rationing healthcare and dictating what medicines doctors can prescribe to their patients.”
“It seems that, even after a huge concession, anti-innovation forces in Congress weren’t satisfied,” says Stier. “It looks like those fighting for innovation have lost a seat at the table. Perhaps they are now rethinking their earlier concessions.”
Insert Your Matrix Joke Here
President Obama has already gained some negative publicity for his flippant suggestion that American physicians are driven by profit incentives to the point that if “your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, ‘You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid’s tonsils out.’” Considering this in combination with his earlier “red pill vs. blue pill” illustration of comparative effectiveness, ACSH staffers fear that the outlook for the nation’s health care is bleak.
“That was a gratuitous attack on American physicians,” says Dr. Ross. “He’s basically saying that doctors are sleazy, dishonest crooks, and they’ll always take the path to making more money if possible. And the red pill, blue pill thing goes right to the heart of Dr. Marcia Angell’s philosophy and that of other ‘government knows what’s best for us’ adherents. His oversimplifications neglect the whole concept of variable effectiveness in different patients and differences in potential side effects. Most sentient citizens will agree that medical decisions should be left up to the doctors and their patients and not the government.”
An Unlikely Syllogism
Contrary to conventional wisdom, a report in the Annals of Emergency Medicine has concluded that immobility during long plane trips is not a major cause of blood clot formation. “This is a strange report,” says Dr. Ross. “First they say, ‘immobility of a limb was most strongly linked with a blood clot.’ Then they say, ‘travel was the most frequently observed reason for immobility.’ Their conclusion is, ‘there was no evidence that [travel] was linked to blood clots.’ Something is amiss here.”
ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan adds, “We still recommend that people who are traveling should get up and move around when they can.”
July 31st, 2009
Honoring Dr. Borlaug, HuffPo's Imbalance, Big Money in Fake Meds, Red and Blue Pills
By Curtis Porter
Penn, Teller, and Borlaug
The entertainment duo Penn and Teller have an educational series on Showtime that frequently debunks popular myths with compelling arguments, fun illustrations, and “colorful” language (the show’s title is one such example, which you might want to look up on your home computer). Their most recent installment takes on the myth that organic food is in any way better than conventionally produced food, a myth that they handily dismantle with a combination of humor and facts.
ACSH staffers are also familiar with Penn and Teller for their homage to ACSH trustee and founding director Dr. Norman Borlaug. They dubbed Dr. Borlaug – a Nobel Laureate who is famous for pioneering agricultural science techniques that have saved over one billion lives from starvation to date – “the greatest person in history.” We can’t help but agree.
Dr. Borlaug has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that makes the case for the kind of innovation in agriculture that organic proponents despise – the kind that makes more food available: “Given the right tools, farmers have shown an uncanny ability to feed themselves and others, and to ignite the economic engine that will reverse the cycle of chronic poverty … the civilization that our children, grandchildren and future generations come to know will not evolve without accelerating the pace of investment and innovation in agriculture production.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross and Dr. Elizabeth Whelan attended Dr. Borlaug’s 95th birthday celebration in Dallas in March, and when the staffers called to congratulate him on his Wall Street Journal piece this morning, he informed us that his doctor told him at a recent check-up that he expects Dr. Borlaug to make it to 100. He sends his regards to all of ACSH’s friends and colleagues.
HuffPo’s Magical Mystery Cure
ACSH staffers were impressed by Dr. Rahul K. Parikh’s article on Salon.com that attempts to explain the primacy of pseudoscientific “alternative medicine” over actual medicine in reference to health issues mentioned on the popular blog The Huffington Post. “You have to remember that Arianna Huffington is off the wall when it comes to health and medicine, and she always has been,” says Dr. Whelan.
“Her website is a top blog on the internet,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “It helps set the agenda for debate in the country, so it’s unfortunate that the writers there don’t take the scientific position on medical issues.” Dr. Ross adds, “It is disturbing, and she rises--or falls--to the level of Oprah in terms of supporting false health claims."
Investing in Snake Oil
The National Institutes of Health released a report on Thursday revealing that “complementary” and “alternative” medicine are profitable businesses in the U.S., totaling nearly $34 billion in out-of-pocket spending. ACSH staffers are disappointed by the credulity of the American public when it comes to snake oil products.
“There’s no such thing as alternative medicine,” says Dr. Ross. “It’s either real medicine – based on science and research – or it’s just superstition. The federal government has spent billions researching so-called ‘alternative medicines’ and they discovered that basically none of them work. I’m not against someone being able to take an herbal supplement if they want, but there’s no alternative to medicine.”
“We’re not against the study of alternative medicines, either,” says Stier. “If you prove that it is safe and effective, it’s no longer alternative, it’s real medicine, and then we are for it. Alternative medicine by definition has not yet been proven safe or effective, but people still turn to those products because they don’t trust pharmaceuticals and chemicals that they don’t understand.”
Rationing By Any Other Name
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment to prohibit the federal government from rationing medical care based on comparative effectiveness studies among medical drugs and devices.
“A House panel is trying to order the tide to go out here,” says Dr. Ross. “They say the comparative research commission can do research on which therapies and procedures are more effective and cheaper, but they’re not allowed to use that for rationing. Why else would they do that?” The amendment follows President Obama’s reductive explanation that between two pills – a red one and a blue one – there’s no reason to continue to provide the blue one if the red one works just as well at a cheaper price.
“The point is, for some people, the red one works just as well, but for some the blue will be better and they won’t be able to get that,” says Stier. Dr. Ross agrees: “Also, what pharmaceutical company will be motivated to try and produce an even better pill if it’s not even certain that they will be able to market it?”
July 30th, 2009
Toxic Imports, Organic Nutrition, Vaccines for All, White House vs. CDC
By Curtis Porter
What’s Wrong With Importing Cheap Poison?
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross has a new article on TCS Daily about Senator David Vitter’s drug importation amendment tacked onto the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. “This is one of the most misunderstood topics in the country today,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan.
The article focuses on the two most problematic effects this bill would have: “[It would provide] an easy path for substandard and toxic drugs to enter our supply,” and, “Most importantly, importing cheaper foreign drugs en masse would, by definition, mean importing foreign price controls. And where government-imposed price controls are in place on drugs--including Europe, Japan, and Canada--innovative drug research and development withers as the profit motive is removed from the drug business.”
Big Surprise
A large study sanctioned by the UK’s Food Standards Agency and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that there is no significant nutritional difference between “organic” and conventionally produced food. The research replicates the results of an earlier study by ACSH advisor and Emeritus Professor of Food Toxicology at Rutgers University Dr. Joseph Rosen, who exposed the fallacies of the organic movement’s claim that organic food is more nutritious over a year ago.
“While it’s a meta-analysis and it only looked at nutrition as opposed to the presence of pesticides, it still provides evidence that organic food isn’t any better for you,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “It’s like playing a game of whack-a-mole. It was already proven that people aren’t getting sick from pesticides on food, so the organic crowd claimed their food was more nutritious. Now that that has been disproved, they’re going back to the pesticides thing.”
One such organic proponent is Dr. Marion Nestle of New York University, who says, “Organics aren't about nutrients. They are about cleaner and more sustainable production methods,” including “lower levels of pesticides and herbicides, which seems like a good idea.”
“We have no qualms with organic lobbyists who claim there’s more pesticides on foods that aren’t labeled as organic, but our response is: so what?” says Dr. Ross. “There are studies showing that those chemicals are safe at current levels of exposure. However, there are no studies that show a significant advantage associated with eating organic food.”
Vaccine Priorities
ACSH staffers have grown as weary of ominous swine flu stories as we’re sure you have, but they continue to flow regularly from media outlets, most recently with speculation about who will be a priority for vaccination. For example, some are concerned that the elderly will be denied the swine flu vaccine since Italian researchers suggested it might be counterproductive.
In an article expressing similar concerns, yesterday’s New York Times quoted Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, who said, “Tight prioritization will result in vaccine being unused. When you have vaccine, just give it.”
“We are getting so many conflicting messages on this topic,” says Dr. Whelan. “One day we’re told we’re going to have an abundance of vaccines, now they’re talking about stringently rationing them. Dr. Schaffner is right. If we have the vaccine, we should give it to everyone. Otherwise it will just get thrown out.”
Who’s Right: White House or CDC?
Liz Szabo has an article in USA Today that mentions the 200,000 injuries sustained on playgrounds every year, and goes on to quote Dr. Gary Smith, a pediatric emergency medicine physician and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who says, “The top three things to pay attention to at a playground are surfacing, surfacing and surfacing. It's everything.”
Szabo goes on to say how this is being addressed: “In recent years, a number of playgrounds have switched to rubber chips, partly because of a 1997 Lancet study. Researchers found that rubber playgrounds had the lowest rate of injury: half the risk of bark mulch and one-fifth the risk of concrete.” By now you’ve probably guessed where this is going. “Some environmental groups, however, are concerned about the safety of rubber mulch, which can contain lead. Lead is toxic at any level, and its damage is cumulative, says Mary Jean Brown of the [CDC].”
“Here we have a lady with the CDC saying that lead is dangerous at any level,” says Steir, who recently wrote and op-ed for Forbes about the lead found in Michelle Obama’s “organic” garden soil. “So, according to a CDC official, the vegetables in the White House garden are dangerous, even though the White House denied that. They change their mind depending on who’s at fault. Now they’re saying changes we’ve made to improve safety are more dangerous. This comes at a time when we have so much obesity to worry about, and parents will now be hesitant to take their kids to exercise at playgrounds.”
July 29th, 2009
Flu Shots for Pregnant Women, Amalgam Fillings, Addressing Obesity, Jeff’s News for Jews, Tanning, Wednesday Video
By Curtis Porter
Expect a Flu Vaccine When You’re Expecting
Swine flu has been hitting pregnant women disproportionately hard, as they account for 6 percent of U.S. swine flu deaths since the pandemic began in April, though they make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population.
“The message here is that pregnant women should be immunized this fall,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “There is a common fear about women taking medication when they’re pregnant, so I think we’re going to be up against a huge amount of resistance when saying pregnant women should get the shot.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross can confirm this tendency: “As far back as when I was in medical school, it was an accepted tenet that you don’t give pregnant women medications that they don’t absolutely need. That’s still a valid policy, but flu vaccines are proven safe, and since pregnancy is a vulnerable period for complications of influenza, it is of crucial importance for pregnant women to get the flu shot – and it will protect their unborn baby as well. They are among the highest-risk groups of people – just below people with chronic heart and lung disease and immuno-compromised people.”
“Hopefully this story will get their attention,” says Dr. Whelan.
Ripping Out Fillings Not Recommended
ACSH staffers were pleased to see the FDA dismiss the alleged dangers of mercury-containing amalgam dental fillings. “While elemental mercury has been associated with adverse health effects at high exposures, the levels released by dental amalgam fillings are not high enough to cause harm in patients,” the FDA said, citing an agency review of roughly 200 scientific studies.
“In 1990, there was a 60 Minutes story about this,” says Dr. Whelan. “It was scaring people for no reason, and some were going so far as to have their fillings ripped out. We addressed the fact that amalgam fillings weren’t harmful in our Facts vs. Fears publication. It’s good to see the FDA catch up. Just like their 1989 Alar "report," this proves that 60 Minutes will do anything for ratings.”
Health by Coercion
In light of Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius’ announcement on Tuesday that the federal government is planning to increase states’ funding to combat obesity, some are questioning what could possibly be done without infringing on personal freedoms. FOXNews.com quotes Texas state Senator Kel Seliger, who says, “It's a question of limiting personal choice. I like to inform the public rather than coerce the public.”
“That’s the quote of the day,” says Dr. Ross. “This is all about the government interfering in your life, telling you what you can and can’t eat.” Dr. Whelan agrees: “We’re back to this dichotomy – which we find unacceptable – between ‘good’ foods and ‘bad’ foods. Who gets to define what’s good and bad? There have been articles written saying we need to make the distinction, but no one has had the guts to actually list the bad foods. There’s room for ‘fun foods’ in a well-balanced diet.”
Jeff in JTA
ACSH’s Jeff Stier penned an opinion article for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (the wire service – like the Associated Press – for Jewish news around the world) about how the failure of the current organ donation system and the promise of government-regulated incentive programs relate to the recent kidney selling scandal in a Brooklyn Jewish community: “Clearly the incentive to save a life isn't enough, or synagogues would be sponsoring kidney drives alongside their blood drives … That it is a good deed to save life, even for compensation, is a Jewish value we should embrace in response to the chilul Hashem, desecration of God’s name, of this crisis.”
Cooking Yourself May Be Detrimental to Your Health
A new analysis published in Lancet Oncology determined that the risk of skin cancer increases by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. “We’ve known for a long time that UV light is a carcinogen, and it’s a bad idea to sit in one of those things,” says Dr. Whelan. “Whatever the short term pleasures you get from the positive effects of having a tan are not worth the ultimate price.”
Cowen’s Voice of Reason
In a new video posted on Reason Magazine’s web page, George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen contends that the government today is warning those who disagree with proposed policies that they must keep their opposition muted, or not have a seat at the negotiating table. “This is a very dangerous phenomenon for democracy – and we are seeing it affecting our issues,” says Stier. “This is another reason that we are so grateful that we have a growing number of enthusiastic individuals around the country supporting our work.”
July 28th, 2009
Merchant of Death Dies, Big Government’s Big Problem, Dr. Ross’ Letter, FDA Dishonesty
By Curtis Porter
“Real Marlboro Man” Clocks Out
George Weissman, former president of tobacco conglomerate Phillip Morris, died Friday at the age of 90. His obituary in today’s New York Times emphasizes his business savvy, as he created and cast himself in the iconic image of the Marlboro man “who doesn’t punch a clock.” He is also lauded for his donations to the arts, especially New York’s Lincoln Center. “He’s hailed as a god on pedestal,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Nowhere does it mention the grievous toll of cigarettes that his company promoted.”
“For decades he was selling a killer product, but what is even worse is that he was lying about it the whole time,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “During his tenure, millions of Americans died, which this obituary didn’t mention. He chose to wrap himself in the arts, and he couldn’t understand why people were upset about that. He and Phillip Morris were buying legitimacy for cigarettes with these donations. That’s the message here. These people were lying through their teeth. The Times did not do a good job with this.”
Frieden’s Crusade Moves to Washington
A study presented on Monday at a CDC obesity meeting determined that obesity-related diseases account for nearly 10 percent of all medical spending in the United States – an estimated $147 billion per year. The study was sanctioned by CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden, whose partiality to government-interventionist responses to public health concerns is epitomized by his quote: “Reversing obesity is not going to be done successfully with individual effort. It will be done successfully as a society.”
“The reason he hyped this study was to promote more proactive government interventions, including a three cent soda tax,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. Dr. Ross adds, “Whenever I see numbers like this – especially when they are being promoted by someone we know is a fan of big government – I suspect that they have been altered or manipulated. Obesity is definitely a health threat, and it will definitely be a burden on our health care system. How much of a burden, we don’t know. But I don’t trust these numbers.”
Dr. Ross’ Rapid Response
ACSH’s own Dr. Gilbert Ross has a letter published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in response to an article that celebrated New York City’s scientifically unfounded ban on trans-fats (TFAs) – another pet project of Dr. Thomas Frieden: “Is there a shred of evidence that manipulating TFA intake in this manner will actually lower lipid levels – much less reduce the toll of cardiovascular disease? No … The authors apparently believe that we cannot be trusted to figure out our own diet choices regarding our health, while they nominate the NYC Dept. of Health to be our food arbiter of first resort. This would be a bad idea, for health and for personal responsibility.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the authors who are congratulating the city for banning TFAs are the same officials who instituted the ban.
Portentous Report
ACSH’s dedicated followers are well aware of the travesty that is the FDA’s recent report on e-cigarettes. This blatant abuse of regulatory and scientific authority has not gone unnoticed. Professor of Medicine at the University of Louisville and expert on tobacco harm reduction Dr. Brad Rodu used his blog on Friday to parse the language of the report, deconstructing their arguments concerning carcinogens found in e-cigarettes.
ACSH staffers are concerned about the direction this FDA might be moving in. “Over the years, I have to admit I’ve had a great deal of respect for the FDA,” says Dr. Whelan. “I believe they really do perform an important function, as opposed to, say, the EPA. But I worry about this kind of dishonesty.”
“Up until now, it hasn’t been in the FDA’s marrow to be unscientific and anti-business, which seems to have changed,” adds Dr. Ross. “The bottom line is, they tested this product selectively, down to parts per trillion levels for carcinogens. This is beyond disingenuous.” Stier agrees: “This is deception for the sake of furthering their ideology of absolutely no harm reduction.”
July 27th, 2009
Title: Organ Donation, More Flu, and E-Cigarettes
By Curtis Porter
Organ Donation
The recent arrest of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn for allegedly trafficking in human organs has revived media dialogue over the subject of organ donation in the United States. ACSH advisor and American Enterprise Institute Fellow Dr. Sally Satel writes in today’s Wall Street Journal, “‘That it could happen in this country is so shocking,’ said Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the Red Cross. No, it isn’t. When I needed a kidney several years ago and had no donor in sight, I would have considered doing business with someone like Mr. Rosenbaum.”
ACSH’s Jeff Stier wrote in Friday’s edition of the UK’s The Guardian that this is too often the case for those in need of a transplant: “The current American system of organ donations, which forbids any incentives for donation, has created a niche market for just this type of crook … a practical and ethical government-regulated donor compensation system would put people like Rosenbaum out of business.”
Hyperbolic Flu Talk
According to an article from the Associated Press, health officials with the CDC are projecting that “up to 40 percent of Americans could get swine flu this year and next and several hundred thousand could die without a successful vaccine campaign and other measures.”
“They’re postulating a worst case scenario,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “It seems to me to be hyperbole. We don’t need this kind of hype.” ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross agrees: “’Up to’ is the key phrase here. The CDC has no business saying things like this because it will hit the headlines like this. Also, they’re talking about the next two years here, which is not emphasized in the article, so the story is designed to be alarmist.”
Health officials are already addressing the approaching flu season by encouraging people to get vaccinated against the seasonal flu, including children. “The first step is to be immunized against seasonal flu,” says Dr. Whelan. “You don’t want to get both flu viruses at the same time.” Dr. Ross adds, “As far as diagnosis and treatment, if we get everyone immunized against the seasonal flu, there will be far less diagnostic uncertainty. That would help when it comes to recognizing which virus they are dealing with. A further benefit of the new CDC recommendation to include schoolchildren among those getting flu shots is to protect their parents and grandparents from the more severe consequences of influenza, as I've been advocating for some time.”
More E-Cigarette Bashing
ACSH staffers were disappointed to see Liz Szabo of USA Today jumping on the bandwagon against e-cigarettes over the weekend. “Ms. Szabo’s piece was completely biased,” says Stier. “She talks about how health advocates are concerned about the product’s safety, but she never even mentioned the possibility that it could help people quit smoking until the end, when she quotes an e-cigarette manufacturer.”
The article appeared on the heels of the FDA’s announcement that they were suspicious of e-cigarettes as possibly containing dangerous chemicals. “It’s bad enough when the FDA lies by simply ignoring facts,” says Dr. Ross. “Then medical and science writers pick up the story and you would expect them to have some consideration of risk-benefit analysis. It’s horribly irresponsible reporting.”
“It also encourages people to continue smoking,” says Dr. Whelan, “since it scares them away from the alternatives. They could have easily pointed out that e-cigarettes are untested and go from there. The concept of a non-combustion product is sound, and since nicotine is what smokers crave and is not what kills them, these should be given a chance. I don’t know how many people use these, but when I go on websites I see smokers raving about it as their first chance to get off of cigarettes.”
July 24th, 2009
Organic Politics, Salt Fear, Stable Fat, Flu Shots
By Curtis Porter
Weekend Reading
Ladies and gentlemen, ACSH’s Jeff Stier simply cannot be stopped from revealing the truth through every media outlet available. If you don’t believe me, check out his Twitter feed this weekend at http://twitter.com/JeffACSH. Don’t use Twitter? That’s okay -- just bookmark that link and you’ll be like the cool kids.
But before you do that, or maybe after you do that, be sure to see Stier’s article in Forbes about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) as it relates to the lead found in Michelle Obama’s “organic” White House garden. Here’s a little taste: “The White House did not dispute the findings but defended the lead in the garden, calling it ‘completely safe’...But the White House's defense rings of self-serving hypocrisy. Where were the White House reassurances when environmentalists were pushing CPSIA restrictions on other fronts?”
CSPI’s Salty Language
As ACSH staffers discussed the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s ludicrous lawsuit to get warning labels on hot dogs yesterday, we were a tad surprised to see Dr. Michael Jacobson, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), offer a reasonable assessment of the situation: “Though I favor warning notices in certain circumstances, the overuse of warnings can lead to ‘warning fatigue.’”
“That was excellent advice,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “We need to remind him of that over the course of the next month.” Alas, Dr. Jacobson’s admonition seems to be falling on his own deaf ears as he and CSPI crusade against Denny’s Corp, demanding that their menu disclose the “dangerously high” sodium levels in their meals. “It seems Dr. Jacobsen thinks the only warnings that cause 'fatigue' are the ones he doesn't come up with,” quipped Stier.
CSPI cites Denny’s “meat-lover’s scramble,” which comes with two eggs, chopped bacon, diced ham, crumbled sausage, cheese plus two bacon strips, two sausage links, hash browns, and two pancakes -- and 5,690 milligrams of sodium, almost four times the recommended daily allowance. “Why don’t they mention how many calories there are in this meal?” asks ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. “This is an isolated statistic taken completely out of context. Most Denny’s customers are probably not getting this meal. This just shows how Michael Jacobson extrapolates data irrationally.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross adds, “Maybe he thinks we shouldn’t eat out at all. It seems Michael Jacobson doesn’t want the public to have the choice of what he considers unhealthy food.”
On the Lighter Side of the News
The CDC has announced that obesity rates among children between the ages of two and four have remained approximately the same since 1998. “I've noted something bordering on disappointment from activists reacting to this news,” says Stier. “It’s as though some activists are thinking, ‘What do we do now?’”
“Well, there’s still plenty to be done,” says Dr. Ross. “One third of adults are obese and another third are overweight. So it’s still a problem, and the question remains how to properly address it. We believe our trilogy on obesity is a good start.”
Dr. Whelan agrees: “That’s true. But it’s good to hear that it’s not getting worse, at least in one age group.”
Swine Flu Vaccine
Dr. Robin Robinson of the Health and Human Services Department announced Thursday that the U.S. government has bought 195 million doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine and contracted for 120 million doses of adjuvant, a compound that stimulates the immune system and so decreases the doses of vaccine needed for protection. WHO officials want to start vaccinating people against H1N1, alongside regular seasonal flu, in October.
“Obviously, the situation with swine flu is still uncertain,” says Dr. Whelan. “It seems like we’re getting a handle on it, though. The number of vaccine doses they’ve bought suggests that the vaccine will only be one shot per person, but they say that will be resolved in testing in the next month. If we still don’t even know at this point if we need two shots, a lot will be happening before October.”
July 23rd, 2009
Our Fanmail, E-Cigs, and PCRM's Anti-Hot Dog Crusade
By Curtis Porter
Letter to the Editor
ACSH staffers received a disgruntled e-mail in response to yesterday’s criticism of environmental activist reports on the threat of pesticides and toothpaste to young children. The author, who works in the office of communications for the National Institute of Health (NIH), objected to our characterization of what she calls “environmentally-conscious groups that are obviously trying put forth useful information,” calling our opposition to them counterproductive to the goals of public health. More interesting, however, were her closing remarks: “This is ingenuous [sic] reporting. Why don’t you report on the chemical companies that are making big bucks at the expense of poisoning us and polluting our environment?”
“She really showed her hand with that last statement,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “For an NIH employee writing from an NIH.gov e-mail address to admit that corporate profits are what upsets her is very revealing. You can disagree with us about the science of our criticism, and that’s fair game, but for an NIH staffer to have an obvious bias against corporations says a lot about what is wrong with government today. Her real concern is if the companies who are ‘poisoning us’ are doing it to make a profit. If she thinks companies are poisoning people, it shouldn’t matter if they’re doing it at a profit or a loss. This is an ideology, not science.”
“She also has it backwards,” says ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. The science-related non-profits “actually making big bucks are the well-funded activist groups whose sole mission is scaring the public based on phony health threats in order to generate publicity and donations. Corporations don’t stand to profit by intentionally hurting their customers.”
E-Cigarettes Get Predictably Bad Publicity
ACSH staffers were disappointed, though not surprised, to see an FDA news release declare yesterday that “a laboratory analysis of electronic cigarette samples has found that they contain carcinogens and toxic chemicals such as diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze.” Electronic cigarettes are battery-operated nicotine delivery devices that closely simulate cigarette smoking and could be a promising cessation device. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, principal deputy commissioner of the FDA, led the FDA charge against e-cigarettes.
Stier is not surprised to see him taking a counter-productive approach, as he warned us about Sharfstein in his Forbes.com article upon Dr. Sharfstein’s appointment in May: “I talked with Dr. Sharfstein while he was on Rep. Waxman’s staff, working on legislation that would give the FDA authority to regulate tobacco. I tried to encourage him to be open to the concept of harm reduction for smokers...What startled me was that, despite his knowledge of the facts, he was still ardently against it...He dismissed the approach out of hand, choosing instead the ‘quit or die’ approach that has been failing smokers for years.”
“It looks like he’s falling in line with that prediction,” says Stier. “The attack on e-cigarettes is wrong, and unscientific. Ironically, they have legitimate legal grounds to say that this is a cessation product that has not been tested for safety and efficacy, and it should indeed undergo more scientific scrutiny before being approved for widespread use, just as other cessation devices and pharmaceuticals must, but that’s not what [FDA] did. Instead they took the low road and talked about carcinogens in e-cigarettes in order to scare people away from them as an alternative to cigarettes. This is a harbinger of how this FDA will regulate tobacco, and it’s not a good sign.”
“The implied message to smokers is to stick to cigarettes,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “While the White House is claiming to try to lower health care costs, they’re actually making it harder to quit smoking.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross agrees: “They’re calling these devices a health concern. There are 45 million addicted adult smokers in this country. Over 400,000 of them will be dying in each of the coming years and running up health care costs in the process. Is that a public health concern?”
PCRM: Hot Dogs Want to KILL YOU
The Cancer Project has filed a lawsuit against several food companies on behalf of three New Jersey residents who believe that hot dogs should carry warning labels as a risk factor for several cancers. “It’s that time of year,” says Dr. Whelan. “People are cooking out more, so you need a headline like this to get attention.”
Stier adds, “You also need an action, a verb in the headline to get noticed. These accusations have been made before. They had to file a lawsuit to be newsworthy.”
The Cancer Project, a branch of the categorically anti-meat Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), compares hot dogs to cigarettes in the hackneyed style of many activist groups who seek a hyperbolic illustration of a product’s danger for the sake of shock-value: “Just as tobacco causes lung cancer, processed meats are linked to colon cancer,” said Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Cancer Project.
Dr. Barnard fails to make the distinction between cigarettes and tobacco in general (which includes such smokeless products as snus -- decidedly not a cause of lung cancer), a topic discussed above, but the Cancer Project also fails to make the distinction between, on one hand, a dubious linking of nitrite preservatives and increased cancer risk and, on the other hand, definitive epidemiological evidence for such a link.
Not everyone is going for the bait. As noted on a New Jersey news site, Janet Riley of the American Meat Institute and the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council correctly notes, “[PCRM is] an animal rights group. Their solution to every possible illness is vegetarianism. Their objective is to end meat consumption, period...It's a very selective use of the science to further their animal rights agenda.”
The feedback from New Jerseyites who follow the news is also encouraging. “Most of the online comments on this story are incredulous,” says Dr. Ross. “Rightly so. This is ridiculous.”
July 22nd, 2009
Fruit, Toothpaste, Lead, Radon
By Curtis Porter
Remembering Walter Cronkite
In memory of Walter Cronkite, we would like to share once again ACSH’s video Big Fears, Little Risks in which he offered his help in dispelling rumors about environmental chemicals.
Environmentalists Attack Fruits and Veggies
ACSH staffers were troubled by a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives which declares that children under age seven are more susceptible to the toxic effects of certain pesticides than adults, based on their lower levels of the paraoxonase enzyme. The researchers say this enzyme plays a key role in helping the body neutralize and eliminate organophosphate pesticides, which are widely used in agriculture.
“There are so many fallacies here, I don’t even know where to begin,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “First, they just assume that children are more vulnerable to these chemicals. Then, they claim to have found an enzyme that catabolizes pesticides in children, which happens to be one that has a lower concentration in children and therefore supports their original assumption. In fact, there is no evidence that pesticides used as directed pose any risk to children -- or adults, for that matter. Further, children may not be more vulnerable to these pesticides, and this enzyme might be completely unrelated to any of this. The headline ‘Children More Vulnerable to Pesticides’ is merely a scare tactic to attract media and readers.”
ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava agrees: “They are also assuming that because levels of this enzyme are lower in children, the kids can’t handle exposure to these chemicals. But all they do to ‘test’ that assumption is to measure the level of an enzyme. They don’t mention any real effects. What they are really trying to say is that kids should only eat organic fruit.”
“That sends the wrong message,” adds ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “In light of all our childhood obesity problems, we want children to eat more fruits and vegetables, and these radical environmental activists are saying that people shouldn’t be eating them unless they spend a lot more for something labeled ‘organic’ that isn’t any safer.”
For more information, see ACSH’s publication asking Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals?.
Environmentalists Attack Toothpaste
Besides scaring your children into limiting their produce consumption, environmentalists are also apparently trying to get them to stop brushing their teeth. The self-described “Eco-Blog for Moms and Kids” relays an equally non-authoritative blog’s list of chemicals to avoid in toothpaste, including such demonstrably beneficial substances as fluoride and triclosan. They mention the threat of “hormone disruption,” since it just wouldn’t be an environmentalist horror story without some mainstream pseudoscience.
“These two cases illustrate why we get upset about scares that are obviously unfounded,” says Stier. “These people undermine sound public health strategies like eating fruit and vegetables and getting people to brush their teeth just to promote an anti-chemical, anti-industry message.”
CPSIA’s Warpath
Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chairman Inez Tenenbaum is promising to enforce the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) to its fullest extent for any violations of its new, stringent standards for children’s products. For example, as of August 14th, the maximum civil penalty the agency could impose for violations increases significantly, from $1.8 million to $15 million. She claims this is part of her effort to offer “common-sense guidance to business on how the law applies to kids’ products.”
Stier reiterates what he pointed out via Twitter yesterday: “Common sense and CPSIA have irreconcilable differences. Her promise to crack down on lead levels will do nothing to improve public health ,since current lead exposures from commercial products pose no threat.”
“The whole mission to eliminate lead is based on the unscientific principle that there is no safe level of exposure to toxic substances,” says Dr. Ross. “This law is ridiculous. Hopefully, she’ll enforce it to the maximum extent and people will march to Capitol Hill and have it repealed after they see how useless -- indeed, counterproductive -- it is.”
“To illustrate how bad this is,” says Stier, “there is an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about a website that allows moms to save money by swapping baby clothes once their children outgrow their own. Since they are exchanging goods, they are technically a business, and these moms are probably not testing their children’s clothes by CPSIA standards, so they could face a $15 million fine in August. That’s how ridiculous this is.”
Confounded Radon Studies
Officials on the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) claim to have found direct evidence of a lung cancer risk from the presence of colorless, odorless radon gas in many homes, as reported Tuesday by a United Nations committee.
According to Jerry Cuttler, who co-authored ACSH’s publication on nuclear energy and health, “UNSCEAR used to be a reputable scientific organization. With so many people smoking, especially in Europe and China, I question whether these...studies are of any use.”
July 21st, 2009
Stossel, Beck, Green Greenbacks, More Wine
By Todd Seavey
Stossel, MD, BPA, and More
A brief apology to anyone whose unsubscribe e-mail didn't work in the past few days -- we think the link down there will work now (but would prefer you stick around, of course). One person who enjoyed a prior Morning Dispatch e-mail is ABC News's John Stossel, who mentioned it on his blog, linked to our report vindicating phthalates, and noted ACSH staffers Dr. Gilbert Ross and Jeff Stier's defense of the chemical bisphenol-A. It's nice to know there are a few media figures more interested in the science than the scares and hype. (And more people interested in receiving Morning Dispatch are welcome to e-mail us.)
Melinda Beck Says: "Huh?" and "Duh!"
Much as we at ACSH prefer peer-reviewed science journals to hastily-written press releases from crackpot organizations, it's worth noting that the scientific gold standard isn't always so shiny either, with even prestigious journals increasingly willing to print politically-engaging pap or to just keep cranking out reports of no known value to anyone save the grant-receiving researchers themselves.
Indeed, science doesn't seem to be in desperate need of stimulus funding, considering some of the obscure topics already being studied, as Melinda Beck notes in an amusing Wall Street Journal piece, in which she suggests two new medical journals to add to the 5,200 currently in existence, titled Duh! for studies confirming the obvious (such as that toddlers who don't nap may get cranky) and Huh? for studies that seem unlikely to yield practical benefits for humanity (such as one showing that men are better at hammering in the dark than women).
One study shows the startling result that high-IQ people are more likely to make wise economic decisions, and Stier, jokingly recalling a recent junk-science study about a purported environmental cause of lower intelligence, says, "They must be people who don't live near pollution."
With so much of elite civilization seemingly engaged in a tacit agreement not to point out that much of what's going on is useless nonsense, it's nice to see Beck question the greybeards (and their overfunded young grad students).
New York City Department of Health Expands Bad, Green Program
With a seasonal swine flu vaccine now approved and the largest mass-immunization effort in fifty years thus imminent, you'd think New York City would have enough to do without wasting money subsidizing fashionable green causes.
Nonetheless, the City Department of Health has announced it's expanding its "Health Bucks" program, which is little more than a subsidy designed to shift poor people's fruit and vegetable purchases away from traditional grocers and toward so-called "green markets," organic-friendly, often open-air sellers with no greater health benefit than the produce poor New Yorkers could be getting -- on a far more steady, non-seasonal basis -- from their local supermarkets. As it happens, Jeff Stier pointed out the feel-good pointlessness of the Health Bucks program one year ago today in New York Post, and his points remain just as relevant. Obesity and a poorly-balanced diet are health problems -- failure to go green (market) is not.
Red Wine, White Wine, Maybe
Anahad O'Connor of the New York Times tackles the question "Is red wine better for you than white wine?"Like coffee, wine is the subject of near-constant, often conflicting health studies -- and like coffee, wine is a popular substance, so even very preliminary studies tend to get reported. O'Connor explains some of the basic arguments for thinking red might be slightly better, including red's higher levels of heart-healthy substance resveratrol -- but what pleases us most, scientifically speaking, is the article's welcome caveat at the end that the research is ambiguous, epidemiological evidence on white vs. red limited, and the studies prone to yield contradictory (and thus likely not very significant) results.
If that level of caution were more common, we'd live in saner and less panicked world -- perhaps one where the most popular medical journal, sitting on the shelf next to Huh? and Duh!, was the unfazed, low-key, and dismissive journal Meh. In the meantime, given the mixed red/white results, ACSH Nutrition Director Dr. Ruth Kava finds herself tempted to recommend a rosé.
July 20th, 2009
Cronkite, When Swine Flu Flies, Air vs. IQ, Sand, Cigarettes
By Curtis Porter
Hearty Welcome
We once again take the opportunity to welcome new readers to our very popular Morning Dispatch (MD).
MD is more than a daily roundup of the latest health news -- it is ACSH staffers’ reactions to the day’s top health and science stories. Keep up to date with the current scares, policy debates, and medical developments, with explanations and personal insights from our experts. MD gives you an insider’s perspective as you have a seat at our breakfast table each day. It’s easy to unsubscribe by clicking at the bottom of the e-mail -- but of course we hope you’ll continue to enjoy the wisdom of our experts as reported in the mellifluous prose of yours truly, the intrepid ACSH intern.
Walter Cronkite
ACSH staffers offer our condolences to the friends and family of the late Walter Cronkite. The most trusted man in America had a special relationship with ACSH. “We worked with Walter in 1990 on our Big Fears, Little Risks video,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “He was enormously enthusiastic.”
“He was also well aware of the fact that the science-based positions in the video would attract the calumny of the activists groups,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Now the message of that project is more relevant than ever, I would say. We’re dealing with different chemicals, but it’s the same message from the activists: Chemicals are bad for you at any level. We’re glad he took a stand.”
Danger in the Air, Part One
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have both declared that passengers suspected of having swine flu will not be permitted to board flights. “That’s ridiculous,” says ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. “This is a completely impractical solution.”
Dr. Ross agrees: “I foresee many bureaucratic, pseudo-medical reactions to this. They’re obviously trying to do this merely to evade litigation rather than to promote public health.”
Danger in the Air, Part Two
A study released today in the August issue of Pediatrics purports to demonstrate that prenatal exposure to air pollution can lower the IQ scores of children from mostly low-income neighborhoods in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx by an average of four to five points. “This whole thing reeks of junk science,” says Dr. Whelan.
“These studies were conducted in low-income areas,” says Dr. Kava, “where many other factors that might limit a child’s intellectual stimulation could easily confound the study.”
Dr. Ross adds: “This is all junk, and it has been going on for a few years now. It’s a typical example of the diminishing integrity of peer review journals.”
Epilogue: Danger in the Sand
Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Environmental Protection Agency published a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology which suggests that “Children and adults who build castles and dig in the sand at the beach are at greater risk of developing gastrointestinal diseases and diarrhea than people who only walk on the shore or swim in the surf.”
“I don’t think these people have enough to do,” says Dr. Whelan.
ACSH’s Jeff Stier adds: “For a more reasonable look about how to be safer for the summer, see our booklet on Health and Safety Tips for Your Summer Vacation.”
The War on (Cheap) Cigarettes
An article in the Wall Street Journal chronicles the attempts by some states to reduce cigarette smuggling: “Studies indicate states are losing about $5 billion annually in tax revenue because of illegal tobacco sales,” said Phil Awe, who heads the tobacco-diversion division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Some states, such as Michigan, are considering the release of inmates and closure of prisons to offset the decreased revenue.
“None of this is surprising unless you step back and ask why you would release inmates because of budget hits from cigarette smuggling,” says Stier. “It just goes to show how invested states are in people continuing to smoke cigarettes. Those who proposed increased cigarette taxes used to say they needed the money for health expenses and smoking cessation programs, but they’re clearly using this money to fund day-to-day operations. Even the state governments are addicted to cigarettes.”
July 17th, 2009
H1N1 More, Bayer Facts, Brain on (Meno)pause, Tested and Unproven
By Curtis Porter
Jeff on Twitter
It’s Friday, and as usual, there is a weekend scheduled for the next two days, which means no Morning Dispatch. Fear not, however, because you can keep up with ACSH’s Jeff Stier as he brings you all the health news that’s fit to tweet at http://twitter.com/JeffACSH.
WHO Gives Up
Yesterday, the WHO revised its requirements so that national health authorities need only report clusters of severe cases or deaths caused by the H1N1 flu virus, saying that it is now pointless to attempt to keep track of every case of the swine flu.
“They’re basically throwing their hands in the air, saying that they just can’t count them anymore,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “There are so many references to H1N1 in this report as this really infectious, contagious threat, which ignores the fact that most of the cases are very mild.”
Even the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has the swine flu, according to UK media reports. “That kind of puts a face on this disease,” says Dr. Whelan. “Everyone knows someone who has been affected, at least indirectly. This is something we have to keep an eye on.”
Bayer Tones Down
Bayer will be changing the health claims on the packaging of their One-a-Day Men’s vitamin supplements following a threat from the Center for Science in the Public Interest to sue over unsupported cancer prevention claims about selenium on the products’ labels. “They were trying to push the envelope with those labels,” says Stier. “Particularly saying that selenium helps prevent prostate cancer. That’s not a scientifically supported claim.”
“They can say it ‘supports good health,’ which is a legalism to make sure they don’t violate the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act,” explains ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. “It’s just like labeling red yeast rice as supporting good heart health because it contains lovastatin, which can lower cholesterol. It’s all very vague.”
“The most interesting point is that pharmaceutical and supplement companies used to be separate,” says Stier. “The supplement makers were used to making outrageous claims whereas the pharmaceutical companies had to act like adults. So the pharmaceutical companies starting buying these supplement companies, and now they’re finding out that they have to make unsupported claims to sell their products. It’s making them a little uncomfortable.”
This Is Your Brain on Menopause
The June issue of Psychosomatic Medicine reports on a dubious University of Pittsburgh-based study that suggests that women who put on weight between the premenopausal and postmenopausal years risk losing nerve cells in the brain. “They only analyzed brain imaging on forty-eight women,” says Dr. Kava. “Other than that, there aren’t any real figures being reported here. This doesn’t seem very useful.”
“The moral of the story is that it’s not a good idea to be carrying around extra weight, especially for postmenopausal women,” adds Dr. Whelan. “Whether or not your brain gets fried as a result of being overweight, I can’t say.”
Testing Cancer Tests
ACSH staffers were pleased to see that the front page of the New York Times features an article questioning the validity of mainstream cancer screening methods. The story examines, among other topics, the misguided legislation sponsored by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Her proposed breast cancer education bill would do more harm than good, according to several cancer and public health organizations, as earlier reported in Jeff Stier’s article for Roll Call.
The New York Times piece highlights several screening procedures with questionable track records, including breast self-exams and PSA screening for prostate cancer. Also, in what Stier called a “gutsy article” on his Twitter page, University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication Publisher Gary Schwitzer calls for evidence of the efficacy of colorectal cancer screening.
“He really shakes things up by suggesting that colonoscopy hasn’t been proven to be an effective tool for prolonging life,” says Stier. “Of course, we agree with Schwitzer when he says ‘This, let me be clear, is NOT an anti-screening message. It is simply a call for evidence.’ Right now, people have faith in it based on very little evidence. By the same token, I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said, ‘Breast self-exams do work. My cousin did a self-exam that saved her life.’ Well, researchers have established that breast self-exams are a practically useless diagnostic tool, but many people prefer to rely on them based only on anecdotal evidence.”
July 16th, 2009
Homeo-pathetic, DART on Target, plus Vitamins, Phthalates
By Curtis Porter
Thursday Video Break
ACSH staffers were amused by video clip of the British comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, parodying homeopathic medicine. It’s “therapeutic” to see such ridiculous pseudoscience treated with the sarcasm it deserves.
Good Job, DART
Multiple seats at the table go out to the members of California’s Developmental and Reproductive Toxicant Identification Committee (DART), which ruled yesterday against classifying Bisphenol-A (BPA) as a toxin under the purview of the state’s infamous Proposition 65. “This is the story of the day,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “It’s truly amazing that sound science prevailed in California and suggests that there is hope for scientific integrity.”
BPA is a chemical used to harden plastics and protect processed food from contamination. It is frequently and erroneously accused of causing reproductive harm in humans based on animal tests. “Every scientific evaluative body that has studied BPA has rendered the verdict that it is not harmful to humans at current levels of exposure,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross.
The outrage in the activist community is palpable. “When the decision was announced, the group Change California began to repeatedly refer to the DART committee as a ‘politically-appointed committee’ in order to discount their decision,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier.
This ruling is not entirely conclusive, and it is unlikely that activist groups will be convinced by legitimate scientific inquiry. “It’s not over,” says Dr. Whelan, “These activists are not going to give up. They are going to keep trying to scare people.”
For more information, see ACSH’s publication on BPA.
Don’t Take Your Vitamins
Katherine Hobson points out in U.S. News & World Report that the benefits of vitamin and antioxidant supplements may be oversold and that these products may actually be hazardous to your health. “It’s a well-done article,” says Stier. “The author does a good job of demonstrating how the precautionary principle isn’t ever applied to these products.” Stier has made this point before on HuffingtonPost.
“She explains that supplements are unreliable both in terms of quality control and proven efficacy and that the nutrients in those products are not necessarily even the same as they are in food,” says Dr. Ross. “She also does a good job of pointing out that results obtained in a lab don’t always extrapolate well to humans, since lab animals are not little people.” Gary Schwitzer effectively made the same point on his blog yesterday.
For more information, see ACSH’s publication on drug-supplement interaction.
Flagrant Fear Tactics
ACSH staffers were disappointed to see Nicholas Kristof buy into the panic surrounding phthalates in today’s New York Times. His arguments are predictably bad, since the case against phthalates is decidedly unscientific. “The only good thing I can say about this article is that it mentions the Fisch study that proved that there has not been any increase in male genital abnormalities in the past decade,” says Dr. Ross. “Other than that, it’s about as bad as it can be.”
Perhaps Kristof’s most shameful move is exploiting terrorist threats to augment his fear-mongering: “If terrorists were putting phthalates in our drinking water, we would be galvanized to defend ourselves and to spend billions of dollars to ensure our safety. But the risks are just as serious if we’re poisoning ourselves.”
That sounds scary, but of course we are not poisoning ourselves with the minuscule levels of phthalates we are exposed to, as has been repeatedly shown.
July 15th, 2009
Daily Sci-Skepticism; Smoke in Theatre and War; Flu and Cancer
By Curtis Porter
Welcome to Morning Dispatch Newcomers!
With today’s 475th Morning Dispatch e-mail, we’re replacing our old “FactsAndFears” and “Updates from ACSH” e-mail lists with a new, expanded Morning Dispatch e-mail list. For those who have not previously received these daily e-mails, know that they’re ACSH’s morning-meeting take on that day’s health news, usually reaching you early-afternoon Eastern time. It's easy to unsubscribe by clicking at the bottom of the e-mail -- but we hope instead you’ll let us keep you updated on the latest science, insanity, and health hokum, torn from the day’s headlines.
E-Cigarettes on Broadway
ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan had an encouraging tale for us this morning: “Over the years, my husband and I have been to many Broadway plays. Many of them are set in the 1930s and 40s, and when the actors come out I just know that they are going to light up and smoke on stage. I’ve been to a play where one guy came onstage and lit up and filled up the whole auditorium with the smoke of just that one cigarette. However, in the most recent play I saw, the actor came on and started saying he needs a cigarette, and so he immediately ‘lit up’ an e-cigarette. I was so excited. I think I was the only one who could tell the difference, and I thought, ‘This is really a godsend.’ If someone that I really cared about was a smoker, I would pay for them to get e-cigarettes.”
Smoking in the Military
The Defense Department is being urged by a Pentagon-commissioned report to ban smoking in the military, even by combat troops in battle zones. Smoking and tobacco-related illnesses cost the Pentagon more than $800 million per year in lost productivity and health care expenses, and more than 80% of the $5 billion annual Veterans Administration cost of treating pulmonary disease among military retirees is attributable to smoking.
Still, the issue is contentious among service members who feel it is the right of the troops to smoke, and public opinion is strongly divided. “Every once in a while I see these online polls about whether or not tobacco should be banned in the military, and I know they’re not scientifically rigorous, but I’m interested to see opinions,” says Dr. Whelan. “We’re very much against smoking at ACSH, but I think about these young men and women who are addicted -- especially those in combat -- and how many problems they already have without having to worry about giving up tobacco, and it’s a difficult situation. Historically, the military was the gateway to cigarettes. General Pershing’s famous quote, issued in France in 1918, was, ‘Don’t send me bullets, send me cigarettes.’”
“Well, back then, the life expectancy was around fifty,” explains ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Cigarettes had a much less dramatic toll than they do today. If you go to any VA hospital -- and I’ve been to a few -- you’ll see wards and wards of people on respirators and people with end-stage emphysema, some of whom are still smoking. No one is saying they should get cigarettes off the battlefields by tomorrow. They’re just trying to address the problem somehow.”
“The best way to start addressing the problem would be to use scientific methods and alternatives to smoking like snus and other harm reduction products,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “It would be a more gradual approach that would still be good for the soldiers.”
Dr. Ross agrees: “As always, we are completely against smoking, and we support any efforts to reduce the harm caused by cigarettes.”
Flu Concerns
British researchers worry that the new variety H1N1 virus (“Swine Flu”) might be having a greater impact than is currently reported. Dr. Tini Garske warns in the British Medical Journalthat inaccurate numbers could be detrimental to preparation efforts for the coming flu season, while the CDC estimates that swine flu is much more widespread than the 94,512 global cases and 429 deaths so far confirmed by WHO. “The bottom line is that we have more questions than answers right now,” says Stier.
“It is best to be precautionary in this case,” adds Dr. Ross. “We know that the H1N1 virus will be a factor in the next flu season, but how bad it will be is uncertain. Though it does seem to be considerably less virulent than the seasonal flu, the efforts to develop and stockpile an effective vaccine are definitely a good idea.”
HRT and Ovarian Cancer
A large Danish study reported in the July 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that hormone replacement therapy might increase women’s risk of ovarian cancer. “Reports like this can easily focus too much on relative risk and not on absolute risk,” says Stier. The absolute risk is still very slight.
“The risk of ovarian cancer in the population is quite small,” says Dr. Ross, “but it is often a lethal cancer, and is very difficult to detect early, so it’s a feared cancer. Increasing an uncommon cancer by 38% means it will still be uncommon. Statistically speaking, 8,300 women would have to have hormone replacement therapy to amount to a single additional case of ovarian cancer.”
July 13th, 2009
Breast Cancer, Celiac Disease, Drug Imports, Alzheimer's, and Industry
By Curtis Porter
Breast Cancer Treatment
Research published Friday in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, suggests that one in three breast cancer patients identified in public screening programs may be treated unnecessarily. The difficulties of addressing risk factors and detecting breast cancer are well known, as mentioned in an article for Roll Call by ACSH’s Jeff Stier about Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s proposed breast cancer education bill.
“There seems to be no good choices in this situation,” says ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. “It’s similar to the fact that PSA screening is used to detect prostate cancer and frequently causes unnecessary treatment.”
“These results are very unclear,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “Which one third of patients is it that don’t need to be treated? It’s easy to say in retrospect that treatment was unnecessary. However, if you’re a practicing physician and you order a mammogram on your patient and something is detected, you can sit down and discuss options with her, but you know that if she gets breast cancer at any point and you didn’t advise treatment, you’re probably going to be sued. If there was significant tort reform and doctors didn’t have to practice defensive medicine, there could be more practical consideration of when to pursue treatment and when it is unnecessary.”
For more information, see Dr. Ross’ article for The American Spectator identifying the negative impact of frivolous malpractice litigation on health care.
Celiac Disease on the Rise
An article from Reuters reveals, “in the United States, celiac disease is four times more common now than it was in the 1950s, according to a study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.” Celiac disease is an immunological disorder caused by a reaction to a gluten protein found in wheat.
“The apparent incidence of this disease is increasing, but that could be because people are becoming more aware of it,” says Dr. Kava. “Elisabeth Hasselbeck of ‘The View’, who suffers from the disease, wrote a book about it, which may have increased awareness. Of course, she has also been spouting some nonsense about how a gluten free diet can help you live longer, which is probably not true for people without the disorder.”
Vitter for Drug Imports
An amendment to allow drug imports from Canada that was sponsored by Senator David Vitter has been approved for addition to a bill funding the Customs Department and other homeland security agencies. However, the good news for the American public is that it is far from certain that the proposal will be included in the final version of the bill.
“This amendment will be stripped off, either in the full Senate or in the House-Senate negotiations,” says Dr. Ross. “Vitter will get his publicity for apparently taking a stand against ‘Big Pharma,’ but the fact is that the American people have been sold a bill of goods with these cheap imported drugs from Canada. They’re not actually so cheap, and often they’re not from Canada. What this plan would do is open the door to cheap counterfeit drugs, which could be ineffective or even toxic.”
“In simplest language, allowing drug importation is a way of imposing price controls,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “When you have price controls, there is less incentive for innovation. Countries with price controls on drugs, such as those in Europe and Japan, have ceded innovation to our country – up until now.” Stier agrees: “We need continued innovation from drug companies, and the only way to encourage that is to let industry charge what they need to in order to fund development.”
Alzheimer’s Gene
In research presented Sunday at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Vienna, director of Duke University's Deane Drug Discovery Institute Dr. Allen Roses has pinpointed a gene that could improve predictions of who will develop Alzheimer's and at what age.
“This report implies that early detection means you can treat early, which is not true,” says Dr. Whelan. Dr. Ross agrees: “It is true that you have to have a reliable diagnostic standard before you can treat, and this may end up being a diagnostic tool. Such standards are necessary to judge the efficacy of new drugs in future clinical trials. But is this useful to people who currently have Alzheimer’s? No, but it could be important for future patients.”
Dr. Stossel’s Army
ACSH Trustee Dr. Thomas Stossel, the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is spearheading a new nonprofit professional organization “to be a forum for what we believe is a hitherto silent majority of individuals engaged in clinical service, medical education and medical innovation ready to oppose a small but well organized and well-funded coterie responsible for an anti-industry movement.”
“Tom Stossel is assembling a conclave to discuss in an unbiased and objective standard the benefits and risks of cooperation between science and medicine,” explains Dr. Ross. “The dogma on that topic dictates that industry-financed scientific research is automatically corrupt. This organization should help to discredit that notion.”
For more information, see ACSH’s publication on the scrutiny of industry-funded science.
July 10th, 2009
Scared Kids, Green Partying, New Zealand Swine, Southern Fat Folk
By Curtis Porter
Seat at the Table
ACSH staffers would like to offer a seat at the table to Raina Kelley for her critique in Newsweek of Jennifer Taggart’s Smart Mama’s Green Guide: Simple Steps to Reduce Your Child’s Toxic Chemical Exposure, a compendium of many of the fashionable environmentalist horror stories about parenting: “I think the only point was to scare the bejeezus out of me...[Taggart’s] endless ruminations on rare causes of harm to an infant's health and seemingly willful avoidance of common things that do put a child’s life in danger (such as accidental suffocation or drowning) means that she’s either trying to drive me crazy with worry or get me to buy something.”
“I’m glad she took on this fearmonger,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “Every parent wants to raise healthy children -- but not paranoid children.”
Bogus Scares House Party
Speaking of unfounded health scares, Sharon Kaplan would like you to attend her “Healthy Home” house party, which promises to be a gathering of friends and family seeking education on the dangerous chemicals all around your home. Word of the party was passed along to us by an ACSH supporter from Ithaca, NY, where it will take place. According to the announcement, you can even bring a toy and have it inspected for toxins, or bring your cosmetics to be crosschecked with the Environmental Working Group’s list of scary-sounding chemicals.
“What I particularly hate about this is that Sharon Kaplan is the director of volunteer services at the Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross, “and she seems to be exploiting that position to make this junk seem legitimate so she can scare parents about ‘toxic’ chemicals. I find that to be a horrendous conflict of interest for someone who has actually volunteered to help cancer victims.”
Swine Flu Spreads
News from New Zealand indicates that the swine flu is more widespread than the seasonal flu, accounting for 80% of all flu sicknesses last week, up from about 48% the previous week. New Zealand is currently in the midst of their flu season, and this report could portend a similar trend in the northern hemisphere in the coming months. “You could say that this is preferable,” says Dr. Whelan. “The swine flu seems thus far to be milder than recent years’ seasonal flu viruses.”
“swine flu is worse in terms of the number of cases but not in terms of morbidity or mortality,” explains Dr. Ross. “We lose 30-40,000 people per year to seasonal flu, whereas H1N1 has only killed about 150 in the U.S. so far, yet people are panicking. There’s no need to. As President Obama and Health Secretary Sebellius said, we should be prepared for the worst but not panicky.”
But it’s not all good news. “We can’t overlook the logistical nightmare that we’re facing this fall,” says Dr. Whelan. “There will be two shots for swine flu in addition to one for seasonal flu, all of which could be available at different times. I just wonder how it will all happen.”
Southern-Fried Obesity Epidemic
A very frank article in Time asks “Why Are Southerners So Fat?” For many years, states in the Deep South have had the highest percentage of obese residents in the nation. The article explores the standard social and economic explanations. “The popular perception is that Southerners simply eat too much fried food,” says Dr. Whelan.
That argument is too reductive, according to David Bassett, co-director of the University of Tennessee’s Obesity Research Center: “I’ve not come across anything that says the diet in the Southeast is worse than the rest of the country...I think [the high rate of heart disease] has more to do with Southerners’ lack of physical activity rather than the food.”
“It’s always important to pay attention to diet,” says ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava, but “people sometimes forget that exercise is just as important; perhaps this sort of information will serve as a wake-up call to our southern neighbors.”
July 9th, 2009
Correctness, Congress, Calories, Cancer, and Collins
By Curtis Porter
Funny Feedback
In response to some quotes in yesterday’s Morning Dispatch that lamented the degradation of the integrity of peer-reviewed scientific journals, one of our alert correspondents replied, “Excellent quotes! Peer review doesn’t help if all the peers are politically correct lemmings.”
As always, we appreciate your feedback, especially feedback with humorous imagery.
Bottled Water
A congressional panel met yesterday to discuss the safety of bottled water, which may become subject to FDA regulation. “The FDA has admitted that they don’t have much authority over bottled water, so they can’t figure out if there are toxins in the water,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “If we’re talking about actual bacterial or chemical contamination, then that is something they should be able to investigate, but if they extend the search to include chemicals that have leached into the water from the bottle, it could quickly become a witch hunt. Further, I don’t recall any actual instance of a bottled-water-related health event, so this seems to be just looking for a non-existent problem as a cause to regulate.”
ACSH’s Jeff Stier agrees: “My concern here is that people are piling on evidence against bottled water because there are lots of perceived problems with it. In some cases, it’s inefficient, expensive, the bottles pile up and become an environmental problem in disposal, the water isn’t fluoridated, etc. People who want to get rid of it will think that the end justifies the means, and that it’s okay to trump up health charges against it with BPA and other alleged ‘toxins’ just to get it banned. They need to focus on actual problems to make their case.”
The Obesity Problem
The CDC revealed yesterday that more than 26% of Americans are clinically obese -- up slightly from previous years -- based on its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a telephone survey of 400,000 adults. “I’m guessing that telephone surveys like this are going to under-report weight,” says Dr. Ross, “since people will tend to err towards lower estimates of their own weight.”
“If this trend continues, we will likely see increases in healthcare costs for obesity-related diseases,” according to the CDC’s Liping Pan, who headed the study.
“ACSH believes that balanced nutrition with an eye towards calorie intake and exercise will help fight the obesity problem,” says Dr. Ross. “There are also promising developments of new pharmaceuticals as well as specialized food products designed to help reduce weight.” For more information, see ACSH’s publications on obesity and current pharmaceutical and technological responses.
Not the Obesity Solution
An article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal criticized the laws requiring fast food restaurants to include calorie counts on their menus, arguing that they may not be affecting enough restaurants to have a significant impact and that they do not account for unhealthy eating practices in homes.
“This is a very perceptive article, raising questions we’ve raised before,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “These laws only affect a minor portion of the people who eat out, and they completely fail to address the full scope of the problem.”
According to the article, “[New York City’s] health department has claimed that menu labeling will reduce the number of obese New Yorkers by 150,000 over the next five years and prevent 30,000 cases of diabetes.” Dr. Ross is not convinced: “These projections are all extrapolations from nonsense. There’s no data to suggest that.”
ACSH’s friend Jacob Sullum, senior editor of Reason magazine, wrote a blog post (regarding the use of disturbing imagery of health defects to deter people from buying cigarettes) in which he quotes Clyde Haberman, who says, “Why not require pictures of morbidly obese people at candy counters, to show what too many Snickers bars can do? Or photos of clogged arteries at fast-food restaurants, to discourage orders of double cheeseburgers?” New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Farley didn’t reject the idea outright. “It’s interesting that the city wouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing that,” says Stier.
Dr. Whelan is skeptical: “The problem with interventions like posting warnings or labeling menus is that it creates the illusion that the problem is solved. We obviously still have a problem with both obesity and smoking.”
Cancer and Race
ACSH staffers have long been aware that socioeconomic status is an indicator for the public health risks associated with certain ethnic groups. However, the Washington Post now reports that black people -- even those who receive medical care comparable to their white counterparts -- are more likely to die from some cancers: “the gap in survival between blacks and whites disappeared for lung, colon, and several other cancers when they received identical care as part of federally-funded clinical trials. But disparities persisted for prostate, breast, and ovarian cancer, suggesting that other factors must be playing a role in the tendency of blacks to fare more poorly.”
“This isn’t to say that socioeconomic disparities don’t play a role in the health care statistics for African-Americans,” says Stier. “Those are obviously significant.”
Dr. Ross agrees: “This study suggests that other physiological factors, perhaps genetics, might be effecting the differences in survival rates.”
Dr. Francis Collins
Former director of the Human Genome Research Institute Dr. Francis Collins has been nominated by President Obama to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.
“We’re pretty comfortable with Dr. Francis Collins as the new director,” says Stier. “Often it seems like we’re quick to criticize government officials, so it’s important to point out when we agree with a nomination. He is a real scientist who did groundbreaking work on the Human Genome Project, and he understands scientific and technological development. He’s not an idealogue, and that’s good. We welcome his appointment.”
July 8th, 2009
Flames, Lead, Meat, and Coffee
By Curtis Porter
Jeff on Twitter
ACSH’s Jeff Stier has been engaged in a lively Twitter exchange with the activist group Change California over the alleged dangers of the flame-retardant chemical tris (2,3,-dibromopropyl) phosphate, commonly known as Tris, which was used to treat children’s clothing until it was banned in 1977 after the National Cancer Institute determined that large doses of it caused cancer in test animals.
“I noticed that they incorrectly said that this was the thirty-year anniversary of the ban,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “It’s actually the thirty-second. I remember because it was banned the year my daughter was born, and I couldn’t find any sleepwear for her. It still seems strange to me that they would ban flame retardants to save lives, even now that they are known to be safe.”
For more information, see ACSH’s Facts Versus Fears publication featuring Tris.
Premium, Unleaded Gardening
The media has brewed a storm in a teacup following the revelation that Michelle Obama’s White House garden has soil containing lead in concentrations of as much as 93 parts per million. That figure is negligible in terms of health risks, and the First Lady’s office is denying that there is any cause for concern.
“We would like to congratulate the White House for finally understanding that low levels of lead are not dangerous for anyone, even children,” says Stier, who criticized the White House garden on the Daily Show this spring. “There is such a thing as dangerous amounts of lead in soil, especially in inner cities where lead exposure is a problem already, but the White House is siding with science that says there’s no reason for alarm. We now encourage them to stick with this approach as the FDA considers BPA, the EPA considers all sorts of chemicals, and pressure mounts to revise the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act’s ridiculously low levels of lead tolerance.”
New Twist on an Old Myth
A study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in April declares eating charred meat to be a cancer risk. Dr. Whelan has tried in the past to put these scares in perspective, as in this excerpt from an AP article in 2005 about a list of suspected carcinogens, including those in cooked meats: “[Dr. Whelan] said the ‘not consumer friendly’ list should include information on the types of exposures and dosages that cause cancer, as well as on the health benefits of some of the substances identified, such as tamoxifen, the breast cancer treatment pill.”
For now, the argument just seems like a seasonal rite for activist groups. “This is a summer scare,” says Dr. Whelan. “Something like this comes out every year when people start grilling, and scaremongering groups can be relied upon to exploit this annually-recurring myth.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross agrees: “This is nothing new. The World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research mentioned this in their 2007 report about cancer and diet. They were trying to tie consumption of processed meat to colorectal cancer. They accomplished their goal, but they also ignored a number of studies discounting their research. We have analyzed this subject scientifically and find that there is no reliable evidence that commonly consumed quantities of charred meat lead to cancer.”
“As usual,” says ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava, “such reports also ignore the role of dose in causing illness and thus overstate risks repeatedly.”
For more information, see ACSH’s publication on the role of beef in the American diet.
The Multiple Personalities of Coffee
A new study suggests coffee and general caffeine intake may affect a woman’s levels of estrogen and other sex hormones, possibly increasing cancer risk. “There’s always a story in the media about coffee,” says Dr. Whelan. “On Monday, coffee supposedly prevented Alzheimer’s disease -- at least in mice. Now this.”
“This story is one of the clearest instances of data-dredging I’ve ever seen,” says Dr. Ross. “They use unclear language and cite multiple levels of possible linkages between coffee and hormones that you have to get through before you find anything relevant. It’s complete junk, and somehow it’s published in Cancer.”
Dr. Whelan agrees: “This is a problem. We always used to say that if something went through peer review, you could take it seriously. I guess that’s not true anymore.”
July 7th, 2009
ACSH, Regulations, Carbohydrates, and Helmets
By Curtis Porter
ACSH in the Spotlight
The L.A. Times health section featured a review of health advocacy groups in the context of modern, polarizing health crises. ACSH clearly stands out in their analysis: "Although they don't always reach the same conclusions as other consumer watchdog groups, they genuinely do seem interested in consumer safety and real science."
"The column precisely detected the factitious practices of other groups," adds ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross in reference to the less flattering mentions of organizations such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
ACSH's Jeff Stier makes an appearance in the column, summarizing our mission in contrast to others': "We're controversial," Stier says. "We're always looking for areas where there's a gap between conventional wisdom and science."
Jeff in the Spotlight
Stier has also been cited as a conservative authority in an article about the need for improved FDA regulation on RollCall. We hesitate to accept the "conservative" label, since we are motivated by scientific integrity and not political ideology, but we are pleased with our growing influence in Washington. "In a recent survey, our donors encouraged us to get exposure in a more broad array of media outlets, and to try and get our voice heard by members of Congress," says Stier. "This is an important source of information for many congressional representatives, so we're proud of the fact that we're acting on your recommendations."
Solving a Non-Problem
According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a joint body of the FAO and the World Health Organization, has approved measures to reduce acrylamide, a chemical that is produced during frying, roasting, and baking of carbohydrate-rich foods and which is supposed by some to be carcinogenic.
"The puzzling thing about this story is that they single out acrylamide, which they believe causes cancer. Why don't they go after every chemical in our holiday menu?" asks ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, referring to an ACSH publication that reveals natural "carcinogens" in practically every food you might eat at a holiday meal.
"These are products that 'may' cause cancer, not products that will cause cancer," says Dr. Ross. "People don't make that distinction. Substances called carcinogens by regulatory bodies are in all foods. The regulators distinguish between synthetic carcinogens and naturally occurring ones. If they are natural, they are ignored, but if they are synthetic, they are labeled as carcinogens and dangerous. And all of this is based on the finding that high doses of these substances, administered to lab animals, cause cancer in rats or mice, which is not conclusive evidence of danger to humans."
For more information, see ACSH's publication on acrylamide in food, and ACSH's publication on America's war on carcinogens.
Bicycle Helmets
A survey conducted by the C. S. Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan determined that one in four bike riders between the ages of fourteen and seventeen never wore a helmet, a trend that varies dramatically depending on state laws, which may or may not require a helmet.
Solutions proposed by the researchers include the possibility of providing free helmets to children of lower-income families for whom price might be a deterrent. "A publicly funded bike helmet giveaway program that -- while preventing serious injury to young bike riders -- reduces the medical care costs of children ending up in the hospital is an excellent use of money," says Stier.
"It's been proven time and time again that bike helmets prevent serious injury and death," says Dr. Ross. "And yet, children are not wearing them. If the laws correct this, why don't more states have laws? Or why don't parents require that their kids wear helmets?"
July 6th, 2009
PSA, EARLY, FDA, RID, and Measles
By Curtis Porter
PSA Doubts
An article from Reuters confirms ACSH staffers’ suspicion that screening for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) as a means of prostate cancer detection might not be as promising as was once assumed: “[two] studies, which came out earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, appear to bolster the positions of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and other major medical groups, which do not recommend routine PSA screening for symptom-free men at average risk of developing prostate cancer.”
“As we’ve been saying for years, there’s just no evidence that this saves lives,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “But it has been and continues to be highly touted by urologists for some reason.”
ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross adds: “There has been an impressive decline in prostate cancer deaths since these tests have been used, and a good correlation like that would seem to imply a cause and effect relationship, but it does not. If everyone with a slightly elevated PSA had their prostates removed, prostate cancer would be decreased, but the cost to the health care system and affected patients would be severe. This is not to say that this is a completely useless test or that no one should have his prostate biopsied, but it should be noted that PSA screenings for men between fifty and seventy have not been shown to be beneficial in population studies.”
EARLY Act Doubts
Dubious cancer detection techniques are getting noticed elsewhere as well. Last week, ACSH’s Jeff Stier wrote an article for Roll Call exposing the lack of scientific basis for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s proposed breast cancer education bill (dubbed the EARLY Act), and his insights caught the attention of MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy. Stier was invited onto the show to debate the bill with Rep. Schultz, but breaking news about Michael Jackson shortened the segment. Instead, the eponymous Dr. Nancy Snyderman interviewed Rep. Schultz, defending Stier’s position that the bill could do more harm than good, especially with its emphasis on self-exams for young women.
“Primary care physicians are no longer encouraging women to do self-exams because they’re finding more artifacts than real threats,” says Dr. Ross. “This could create more problems than it would solve as far as putting young women into the maw of the health care system.”
FDA and Cookies
The recent E. coli contamination of Nestle cookie dough and the subsequent revelation that Nestle repeatedly refused -- with perfect legal justification -- to supply FDA inspectors with requested safety information is causing a stir as the bill to strengthen FDA food regulation authority is considered in Congress.
“This will provide more fuel to the fire for more regulation of food,” predicts ACSH’s Dr. Ruth Kava. “We need a law requiring companies to share information that might be helpful in preventing these outbreaks.”
Dr. Ross agrees: “Nestle did the responsible thing with their voluntary recall, though it doesn’t tell us how the contamination occurred. It seems reasonable for the FDA to be able to demand information from a food corporation when there are health risks. There must be a way to keep proprietary information secret while they protect public health.”
Infections on the House
A New York Times op-ed echoes the concern of ACSH Trustee and chair of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths Dr. Elizabeth (“Betsy”) McCaughey in its attention to preventable, in-hospital infections as a strain on the health care system.
“Hospital-acquired infections cause tens of thousands of deaths and suck billions of dollars out of the health care system every year,” says Dr. Ross. “These consequences can be prevented 99% of the time by strict adherence to sterile techniques for patient care.”
Celebrities Spread Measles
An article in the New York Post points out that measles is becoming more widespread as a result of parents neglecting to vaccinate their children for fear of autism. Vaccines have never been suspected to cause autism by anyone with any medical expertise, and the ridiculous rumors to the contrary, spread by celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy, are already proving to be damaging.
New York City’s assistant commissioner for immunization, Dr. Jane Zucker ,claims that parents were forgoing the vaccines because “there’s a general sense that people just want to make sure their child’s OK first.”
Dr. Ross believes that this is a serious misstatement: “She should have made a simple, forthright assertion that superstitious fears about any approved childhood vaccine are disproved and should be condemned.”
The article also mentions anti-vaccine zealot David Kirby’s unfounded assumption that parents are merely reluctant to get three simultaneous immunizations. “This just shows his obvious and oft-repeated ignorance of human immunology,” says Dr. Ross, “We need to decry this claptrap immediately and remind people to get their recommended vaccinations and their kids’ vaccines on schedule.”
For more information, see ACSH’s publication on childhood vaccinations.
July 2nd, 2009
4th Tweets, Senate Alt-Med, Fat States, Fakes, Mt. Sinai, DDT, FDA
By Curtis Porter
Weekend Reading
If you find yourself feeling lonely on this 4th of July weekend, why not look to ACSH’s Jeff Stier for company? Read his latest piece in Rollcall about Rep. Schultz’s misguided bill on breast cancer education, or check out his Twitter page at http://twitter.com/JeffACSH.
Have a Seat at the Table, Orac
A seat at the table goes out to Dr. David H. Gorski, the rogue scientist who goes by “Orac” on his science blog for exposing the ulterior motive of Senator Tom Harkin’s “prevention and wellness” addition to the Senate’s epic health care reform bill: “buried in a news report on the Senate’s work on the massive 600-page health care reform bill, along with measures on malpractice and other issues, is...the ‘alternative’ medicine Trojan Horse that looks so sturdy, so reasonable, on the outside but in whose belly resides all forms of pseudoscience.”
“‘Alternative medicine’ is one of Harkin’s favorite topics,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross.
Stier adds, “He phrases it in the language of prevention, and who could be against prevention? It hides the fact that it’s not real medicine.”
America Is Getting Bigger...
The media is buzzing with the results of a state-by-state obesity study conducted by the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which declares that “adult obesity rates rose in twenty-three of the fifty states but fell in none...the percentage of obese and overweight children is at or above 30% in thirty states [and] Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity at 32.5%,” though Alabama isn’t far behind.
“The South is always known for having high obesity rates,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “There is a correlation between low socioeconomic status and obesity.” Indeed, many suggest that the recent economic turmoil may be contributing to unhealthy lifestyles. “Whatever the cause, this is bad news,” says Dr. Whelan. “I fear that these new data are an omen of deteriorating health outcomes in the future.”
...And It’s All Phthalates’ Fault
Of course, concerned bloggers without medical expertise would not be doing their job if they weren’t blaming something on phthalates.
Former environmental consultant Janelle Sorensen has a hunch that our children are getting fatter because of chemicals in plastics, and she convinced Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, a professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai, to agree with her. Well, sort of. “Right now it’s a correlation; we don’t know if it’s cause and effect or an accidental finding,” Dr. Landrigan said. “The $64,000 question is, what is the causal pathway? Does it go through the thyroid gland? Does it change fat metabolism?”
“At least he admits that there’s no causal relationship, but of course that’s because these chemicals are safe,” says Dr. Ross. “Then he goes on to ramble about causal pathways. If chemicals were ‘going through the thyroid gland,’ it would be easily detectable. He should know better than to make vague, ridiculous statements. Childhood obesity has nothing to do with phthalates or PFOA, it has to do with sedentary lifestyle and excessive calorie intake. For Dr. Landrigan to make such innuendo without a trace of scientific evidence is irresponsible.”
Organic Is Natural and Natural Is Fake. Got it?
Speaking of rambling activist blogs, the Organic Consumers Association would like you to believe that their grassroots organic food revolution is under attack by sinister food industry operatives who label products as “Natural” despite the fact that they are “routinely produced using pesticides, chemical fertilizer, hormones, genetic engineering, and sewage sludge.”
“This just shows that this is all a business that has nothing to do with health,” says Stier. “Neither product is safer or more nutritious than the other, or than the more available, cheaper foods that aren’t marketed as organic. These people are just fighting for a market share.”
Interesting Malaria Vaccine
The Seattle Times reports that scientists at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute “announced Monday they’ve made progress toward developing a malaria vaccine using a weakened form of the malaria parasite [that] has proved 100% effective in trials on rats and mice.”
“This is an unusual approach to a new vaccine,” says Dr. Ross. “They’ve altered the DNA of the parasite that causes malaria so they can no longer develop in the liver, and therefore it can’t cause the disease. They have a long way to go until this has a practical application for prevention -- they haven’t even started human testing yet -- but this is a good step in the fight against malaria. That being said, of course, if DDT was used more widely there would already be a dramatic positive impact on malaria morbidity and mortality all around the world.”
FDA Gives Cigs Another Break
According to an FDA news release, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that it is requiring manufacturers to put a Boxed Warning on the prescribing information for the smoking cessation drugs Chantix (varenicline) and Zyban (bupropion). The warning will highlight the risk of serious mental health events including changes in behavior, depressed mood, hostility, and suicidal thoughts when taking these drugs.”
“The only thing they’re accomplishing is to discourage people from using cessation devices,” says Dr. Whelan.
Dr. Ross agrees: “The numbers they give to justify this warning doesn’t indicate how many people used these products and were not negatively affected.”
Stier finds the idea ironic: “If you compare how FDA is treating cigarettes to how they treat safe, effective pharmaceuticals, it’s ridiculous. They overreact to side effects of medicine, but they only put one label on cigarettes. Of course, they’re prevented by the new law from putting any more warnings on cigarette packs.”
“These together with other cessation devices amount to abysmally low cessation rates anyway,” says Dr. Ross, “so why don’t we talk about successful methods like smokeless tobacco and other clean nicotine delivery systems, which are now much less available because of the tobacco law co-written by Philip Morris.”
July 1st, 2009
Statistics, Conspiracies, Injuries, Bans, and Taxes
By Curtis Porter
Seat at the Table
ACSH staffers would like to offer a seat at the table to New York Times health and science columnist Gina Kolata, who wrote a guest contribution to John Tierney’s New York Times science blog highlighting the recent STATS report that revealed a lack of objectivity in media coverage of the bisphenol-A debate.
“The fact that Ms. Kolata is raising questions about media bias is important since she’s a mainstream reporter, and the mainstream media doesn’t like to criticize itself,” says ACSH’s Jeff Stier. “People aren’t interested in a critical look at the negative news they’ve been putting out, but she’s showing them anyway. Thanks are due as well to John Tierney for highlighting this story initially.”
Jerseyites for Tooth Decay
New Jersery Citizens Opposing Forced Fluoridation is an aptly named organization that is leading efforts to reject bills in the New Jersey Assembly and Senate that would allow fluoridation of New Jersey’s drinking water, a widely accepted practice that is proven to safely prevent tooth decay.
“It’s hard to believe that people are still against fluoride at this late date,” says ACSH’s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. “New York City has had its water fluoridated since 1965, and basically it has wiped out cavities. Of course, if it were up for a vote tomorrow in New York whether we should fluoridate, it probably wouldn’t go through, given the current hysteria about ‘safety first.’ But it is well established that very low doses in the water promote public health, and the fact that the whole U.S. does not have fluoridated water is a public health tragedy.”
Anxious Athletes
According to today’s Wall Street Journal, three Major League Baseball (MLB) players have been placed on the disabled list for anxiety disorders: “Acknowledging debilitating psychological issues represents a significant shift for a sport that historically has emphasized ‘gutting it out’ rather than admitting to injury. The problem may be as old as the pastime, but acceptance of mental-health issues in Major League Baseball has only emerged in the last few years.”
ACSH staffers are pleased to see that legitimate psychiatric conditions are being afforded the consideration they deserve. “We applaud MLB for at least acknowledging that mental health is a major issue,” says Stier. “It hasn’t been recognized in professional athletics as a medical concern, and it should be.”
Acetaminophen Rulings
FDA advisory panelists voted yesterday to ban Percocet and Vicodin, two popular painkillers that contain acetaminophen, because of their potential to cause liver damage. Among dissenting panelists was Dr. Robert Kerns of Yale University, who disagreed with an outright ban of products that many consumers rely on to control severe pain: “To make this shift without very clear understanding of the implications on the management of pain would be a huge mistake.”
ACSH staffers agree. “FDA officials have been over-cautionary in the past, especially on drugs like this that can be used safely,” says Stier. “This is not an FDA that has been tolerant of risk.”
Consumer representatives on the panel included Sidney Wolfe, an outspoken opponent of pharmaceutical companies and drugs in general. “The fact that Sidney Wolfe is a ‘consumer representative’ on a supposedly objective panel is very disturbing,” says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross. “He is taking up a position that should be going to an actual consumer representative and not an activist from the country’s most strident anti-pharmaceutical watchdog group.”
The committee also voted against the ban of over-the-counter products such as Nyquil, which contain acetaminophen in combination with other drugs, though they voted overwhelmingly to require warnings on such products about possible liver damage. “It’s easier to overdose when you’re on multiple drugs that might contain acetaminophen,” explains Dr. Ross. “Given the frequency and potential consequences of unintentional acetaminophen overdose, putting some sort of warning about dosage is a very good idea.”
Ornish vs. Willett
Yesterday’s episode of MSNBC’s new series Dr. Nancy featured Doctors Dean Ornish and Walter Willett debating the proposed tax on soft drinks as an effort to combat obesity. When Dr. Ornish correctly noted that taxing sodas alone among all the causes of obesity is arbitrary and unfair, Dr. Willett pointed out that Ornish had previously consulted with Pepsi Co. and proceeded to question his loyalty to unbiased scientific inquiry.
Dr. Ornish maintained composure when he responded that such indictments were sophistic: “I don’t represent Pepsi Co., I chair their scientific advisory board...I wouldn’t think of questioning [Willett’s] integrity...so please, let’s keep this to the facts here.”
Dr. Whelan was impressed: “We were glad to see him defend himself. It was an excellent rejoinder.”
Similar accusations have been leveled at ACSH staffers for accepting corporate donations. “Anyone who has received any kind of industry funding automatically gets their integrity as a scientist attacked,” says Dr. Ross. “It gives our critics an excuse to ignore the facts that we present in cases like this when we argue against misguided policy decisions.”
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