The New York City Council approved a bill Wednesday expanding the City’s public smoking ban to beaches and parks after a study showed 57 percent of New Yorkers had cotinine, a nicotine byproduct, in their blood compared with a 45 percent national average. Proponents of the measure argue that it was passed in the name of public health.

An op-ed by Stanton Peele in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal affirms something we’ve said previously: moderate alcohol consumption has been shown to contribute to good health. Peele faults the American medical establishment, accusing it of trying to keep this a secret from the public out of moralistic fear of alcoholism. We simply say, “Drink up — in moderation.”

A new report which can be found here makes a devastating and overwhelming case that DDT spraying can save hundreds of thousands of lives every year and that UN and other NGO opposition to it is, as ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross puts it, “scientific fraud, as the authors document with copious evidence.” For any readers who may still have doubts about the issue, we suggest examining the evidence.

A study published in The Journal of Pediatrics presents an interesting hypothesis: vaccination may lower a child’s likelihood of suffering lymphoblastic leukemia. This theory was buttressed by epidemiological data from Texas counties during the years 1995-2006.

The question of whether the federal government has its priorities straight arises again with news first reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. A new macrolide antibiotic called fidaxomicin has been found to be more effective in treating the common but deadly bacterial infection known as C. difficile than the standard antibiotic currently in use, oral vancomycin.

While the EPA was busy creating needless regulations, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) was warning Americans about a very real public health threat, one about which ACSH has also been an active voice. Shockingly, only about forty percent of U.S. health care workers have been vaccinated against the flu.

Yesterday we reported on a bizarre letter from EPA administrator Lisa Jackson that ran in USA Today. Coincident with the missive’s appearance, the agency announced that it was setting new limits on the amount of “toxic substances” permitted in U.S. drinking water. Among the chemicals specified by the EPA as a target is perchlorate.

A simple five-point check list implemented by hospital staff to ensure strict hygiene standards reduced intensive care unit (ICU) death rates by ten percent, a new study published in BMJ shows.

In a surprise ruling, the FDA decided yesterday to reject the weight-loss drug Contrave even though an advisory panel ruled 13-to-7 to recommend its approval in December. Developed by Orexigen Therapeutics Inc., Contrave was shown to reduce body weight by 5 percent or more in at least 35 percent of patients, but the agency dismissed the drug’s potential benefits after research revealed it caused a slight increase in blood pressure and pulse rates compared to placebo.

Evidence from a new placebo-controlled study published this month in Clinical Infectious Diseases may dispel the popular notion that cranberry juice is an effective preventive against recurrent bladder infections. Researchers recruited 319 women who had just recovered from a bladder infection and assigned half to drink 16 ounces of low-calorie cranberry juice cocktail daily for six months.