Angelina Jolie’s Op-Ed, which ran in The New York Times yesterday, is an important piece for women who are dealing with concerns about breast cancer — meaning just about all women, and their loved ones. Not only did she provide wide visibility for women facing breast cancer, she also touched on ideals of femininity and [...]
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The United States Supreme Court ruled — unanimously — that Monsanto Corp., the leading innovator and marketer of GM agricultural products, could enforce its contractual patent protections for its “Roundup Ready” soybeans. Roundup is glyphosate, Monsanto’s herbicide in use since the early 1970s. Crops with the Roundup-Ready gene are resistant to its effects, while the [...]
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The number of deaths from drinking and driving among teenagers has taken a backseat to the hazards of texting while driving. Worse yet, “fifty percent of high school students of driving age acknowledge texting while driving.” A new study shows researchers at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park estimate more than 3,000 annual [...]
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So you thought it was all over, right: given the Federal Court’s mandate by Judge Korman one month ago to make Plan B “universally available” OTC, and this week’s decision by the FDA to do just that, but only for age 15 and up, the path to universal access to the morning-after pill seemed nice [...]
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Today’s announcement by the FDA’s Commissioner Margaret Hamburg approving Plan B One-Step for women and girls age 15 and up, while welcome in the “better late than never” category, does not come close to complying with Federal Judge Ed Korman’s ruling of April 5th. That ruling, finding for the plaintiffs in a 2001 lawsuit against the Bush-II [...]
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The regulators in Europe continue to ban chemicals at the drop of a rat. In the latest instance, the head of the European Commission has decided to take it upon himself to ban a class of pesticide called “neonicotinoids,” on the slimmest evidence that this class of chemicals might have contributed to the loss of [...]
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Today marks the 7th annual celebration… no, that’s not exactly the best word…the 7th annual official recognition, via World Malaria Day, of the horrendous toll taken by the mosquito-borne infection: Malaria. Historically, malaria has been so severe and widespread as to determine the fates of entire civilizations. A little-known fact is that malaria remained a [...]
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This week’s announcement from Mount Sinai Hospital’s World Trade Center Health Program that Ground Zero workers have been found to have a “15 percent higher rate of cancer” than expected set off cries for more compensation for the heroic WTC victims of the toxic dust at the site of the terrorist destruction over 11 years ago. [...]
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After the politically-motivated listing of the plastic hardener Bisphenol-A (BPA) was at last squeezed onto California’s nefarious Proposition 65 list of allegedly toxic chemicals, a local Sacramento judge kicked it off, correctly stating that the chemical’s listing flew in the face of scientific and regulatory evidence. A division of California’s environmental agency finally figured out [...]
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According to the latest New York Times editorial, the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act must be “reformed,” since it’s “toothless.” How did the expert scientists writing the Times‘ editorial know how ineffective TSCA was? Well, here’s their irrefutable logic: “The failure of the law can be read in these dismal statistics: since 1976, [out of 85,000 [...]
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