In an interview for BBC, ACSH s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan challenges the validity of a recent request by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bar residents who receive food stamps from using them to purchase soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages. New York Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley believes the bill, if enacted, will educate people about the adverse health effects of sugar-sweetened beverages. Ironically, even Dr.

An Associated Press article that ran yesterday should strike fear into the hearts of logicians, scientists and those devoted to improving public health: Erin Brockovich is back in her old stomping grounds of Hinkley, California, once again making claims about the dangers of hexavalent chromium.As we have mentioned in Dispatch

The journal Obstetrics and Gynecology offers a new and intriguing study of 84,401 low-income California women taking birth control pills.

ACSH Trustee Dr. Thomas Stossel offered yesterday morning's readers of the Denver Post a timely editorial on the controversy over professional relationships and contacts among drug researchers. Dr. Stossel, an American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and a director at Harvard University Medical School, is concerned about proposed changes in the rules governing relationships with industry of University of Colorado faculty.He writes:

Yesterday the AP offered its readers a rather creepy story about at-home genetic testing intended to determine if children have certain genes associated with improved athletic performance.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with active, progressive disease will be happy to learn that a needle-free treatment option may be available in the near future. Pfizer’s oral medication tofacitinib has made it through Phase III clinical trials. The drug inhibits a family of enzymes known as Janus kinases (JAK), which are involved in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Pfizer also hopes to use the drug for other conditions such as psoriasis ACSH's Dr.

Four days after investigating the deaths of four Japanese children who died within days of receiving vaccines against pneumonia (Prevenar) and meningitis (ActHIB), the country’s heath ministry has said that it found no link between the children’s deaths and the vaccines.

An alarmist TIME article presents yet another dubious Environmental Health Perspectives study as factual. This time, researchers purport that even BPA-free plastics can leach so-called “endocrine disruptors” into the human body.

Whether it’s in preparation for an upcoming wedding or a high school reunion, many of us find ourselves seeking a quick path to weight loss.

In the largest and most comprehensive survey of eating disorders yet, a sample consisting of more than 10,000 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 yielded surprising and disturbing information: over half a million U.S. adolescents have an eating disorder.