The New York State Assembly health committee is about to vote on a bill to outlaw e-cigarettes. Yet both the proposed legislation and the hearings on it appear to be founded on a series of fallacies, reports ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Siegel. He writes:

The underlying science used by a coalition of global public health groups to promote the restriction and ultimate banning of DDT use for eradication of malaria is false, dangerous and misguided, a new study published in the journal Research and Reports in Tropical Medicine says. Study authors Dr. Donald R. Roberts of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and Dr.

Much like counting sheep won’t get you to fall asleep any faster, counting calories at Taco Time won’t get you to change your order from the Big Juan burrito combo meal to a bland garden salad any sooner either. At least that’s what researchers concluded upon analyzing the ordering behavior of consumers after a law requiring chain restaurants to post nutritional information on menus and boards was implemented two years ago in King County, WA.

Environmental Health News reports on a new study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology alleging that exposure to the phthalate DINP (di-isononylphthalate) causes developmental abnormalities in rats. To get their results, researchers had to inject the rodents with phthalate levels that were from 300 to 90,000 times greater than the exposure level found in humans.

In a report issued Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin reminded mothers about the importance of breast-feeding their children for the first six months while also outlining plans to expand and improve community programs that provide support and peer counseling for moms.

ACSH staffers were pleased to read an op-ed by Michael Willrich in today’s The New York Times promoting the notion already long upheld by scientific communities that vaccines are a safe and extremely effective public health measure. Many large international studies have tried to find a link between autism and vaccines — all have shown no such effect. Scientifically, the issue is a closed book.

Sometimes the first time’s a charm, at least when it comes to breast cancer biopsies. According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, extensive lymph node dissections, used to detect breast cancer cells following an initial sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy, may not be necessary if the SLN biopsy is found to be negative.

ACSH recently identified actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s unhealthy fad dieting as the likely culprit behind her diagnosis of early onset osteopenia, a risk factor for osteoporosis. Perhaps the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had her in mind when it updated the guidelines for assessing osteoporosis to recommend screening younger women who present the same risk factors as 65 year-old white women.

About 80 percent of stage II colon cancer can be cured by surgery alone. But what about those for whom surgery isn’t enough? Can they be identified? Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. has developed a genetic test that may predict which stage II and III colon cancer patients are most likely to experience a recurrence following surgery.

Moderate alcohol consumption may be a double-edged sword when it comes to heart health, according to a recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Researchers with the University of Tsukuba Institute of Clinical Medicine in Ibaraki, Japan found a dose-response relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of atrial