ACSH in the Media: We Can Barely Keep Up!

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We must be doing something right. ACSH has received so much media attention in the past several days, that we can barely keep up! Here's where we've appeared:

1) Our founder, Beth Whelan, was cited by Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post. He wrote a paragraph that is simply music to our ears:

FP Comment’s definition of junk science was adapted 21 years ago from the work of Elizabeth Whelan, founder of the American Council on Science and Health. Junk science occurs when scientific facts are distorted, risk is exaggerated and the science adapted and warped by politics and ideology to serve another agenda.

2) Dr. Alex Berezow, Vice President of Scientific Affairs, will be featured in the second season of Masterminds, a series of web videos by BrainBar. (See the trailer above.) The organization is based in Budapest and hosts a gigantic annual conference that focuses on the future. Dr. Berezow spoke at the conference in 2018, in which he debunked the myth that humans will have to leave Earth.

3) Dr. Berezow also penned an op-ed for USA Today. He argued that the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada is the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste. However, instead of forcing the waste on Nevada, he said that we should pay "rent" to the citizens of the state.

4) An article by Erik Lief, Director of Communications, was cited by AccuWeather and UPI. The topic was the danger of heatstroke, particularly in pushing young athletes too far in hot weather. On average, since 2000, about two NCAA football athletes have died each year from heatstroke.

5) Dr. Berezow's article on the spread of a flesh-eating bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus was cited by the website for the Weather Channel. Some are concerned that this estuary-dwelling bacterium will spread as Earth's temperature rises, however, this is not likely to pose a significant problem. As Dr. Berezow wrote, "While climate change may slightly exacerbate the problem, the fact remains that V. vulnificus already inhabits much of the planet."

6) Dr. Josh Bloom's work on opioids was cited by the Waco Tribune-Herald. The author correctly concluded, "It would be tragic to restrict [opioid] use for those patients who genuinely need them." Unfortunately, our nation is doing just that. The article was also reprinted by the Salina Journal of Kansas.

7) Our article on dispelling myths about a multidrug-resistant fungus was cited by McKnight's, an outlet dedicated to covering long-term care news. The article noted that patients at the greatest risk are those with "tubes and lines going into the body."

8) Two of our articles were reprinted by the Genetic Literacy Project. The first was by Dr. Josh Bloom and Dr. Henry Miller on the "outright fraud" that forms the basis of the dietary supplement industry. The second was by Dr. Christopher Gerry, Senior Fellow of Medicinal Chemistry, who explains why the cost of the drug Zolgensma is over $2 million.

9) The website Fatherly cited our article which discussed the controversy of holding parents legally responsible for the bad behavior of their children. Fatherly noted our concern "about overstepping the nanny state, as well as the burden it might impose on working and/or single parents."

10) Dentistry, a website for dentists in the UK, used us as a source on an article about water fluoridation. The article rightly endorses the widespread use of fluoridation as a way to improve oral health.

11) An article by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, whose content we often reprint here at ACSH, was cited by Fox News and Healthline. A product called Prevagen is being marketed as a supplement that can improve brain health, but there is no evidence to suggest this is true. In fact, as Dr. Schwarcz notes, the company essentially "admits that the product cannot work" because it is broken down in the stomach.