After New York Times columnist Ariel Kaminer conducted a risk-to-benefit analysis of seasonal flu shots in her most recent article, ACSH staffers ran a similar analysis and concluded that while Ms. Kaminer’s science-based discussion on the safety of the vaccine is a good for her readers, the article’s headline “Flu Shots: No Panic, Just ‘No’” is not.

Tobacco companies such as Philip Morris International (PMI), spun off from Altria Group Inc. in 2008 to expand the company s foreign market share and evade American regulation and litigation, have assumed the role of big, bad bully on the foreign block. The companies and others like it are using expensive lobbying campaigns and lawsuits to prevent ad restrictions, larger health warnings and higher cigarette taxes from being enacted in countries like Brazil, the Philippines and Mexico.

There’s good news when it comes to treating tuberculosis. New therapies are on their way to treat patients with hard-to-treat drug-resistant forms of the infectious lung disease, the director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department says.

Long-term statin use is unlikely to affect overall cancer risk, a new large study has found.

Advocacy group Food & Water Watch argues that consumers need more food labeling so they can know what poisonous ingredients may be in their food — specifically, their chicken. On Tuesday, advocates in Maryland rallied against the use of chicken feed and medicines containing arsenic, which the poultry industry defends as a safe and effective means of stimulating growth, promoting chicken health, and producing the pinker meat consumers prefer.

Wendy s fries continue to lose taste tests to McDonald s, so they ve decided to reformulate for the first time in 41 years by upping the sodium content with sea salt. Compared with regular salt, sea salt has larger granules that pack more flavor with each dash, yet instead of adding less sea salt to achieve the same sodium levels, it s actually making their fries saltier.

A new retrospective analysis by the U.S. government of all influenza vaccines administered to pregnant women over the past 20 years shows that they are quite safe.

African-Americans, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska natives were nearly twice as likely as whites to be hospitalized for the flu during last year’s H1N1 pandemic, according to a new report. The Trust for America’s Health says vaccination rates for those minority groups were lower than for whites.

ACSH friend Bill Godshall of Smokefree Pennsylvania supplies some needed background to yesterday’s Dispatchitem about graphic labels on cigarette packs. Commenting on the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposal to mandate scary images on cigarette packs, Dr.

Namibia’s minister of health and social services writes in The Wall Street Journal Europethat when it comes to using DDT for malaria control, his country and others still face pressure from anti-insecticide activists and restrictions from an international treaty called the Stockholm Convention.