First Lady Michelle Obama recently disclosed her tendency to undergo an occasional dietary cleanse " to clear her palate and change her mindset to Women s Home Journal (WHJ).
The fact that she refers to the diet as a cleanse raises the specter of colonic irrigation and other such unnecessary and unsafe diets; but hers is, in fact, a temporary vegetarian diet, points out ACSH s Dr. Elizabeth Whelan.

Genzyme and Isis Pharmaceuticals have developed a new cholesterol-lowering drug, Mipomersen, which has demonstrated substantial efficacy in Phase III clinical trials but may cause liver problems in 20 percent of patients. Mipomersen is targeted towards patients with a genetic predisposition to elevated blood cholesterol levels (familial

Perhaps the L.A. Times was inspired by our June 29 Dispatch detailing the false belief that all-natural means safe when they decided to cover the new Consumer Reports assessment of several dietary supplements thought to pose substantial health risks.

Permitting parents to opt out of vaccinating their kids because of so-called philosophical reasons is folly, ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross and ACSH trustee and former advisor Dr. Jack Fisher write in yesterday s San Diego Union-Tribune. Twenty-one states allow "philosophical" exemptions for childhood vaccines, but they shouldn't, argue Drs. Ross and Fisher, an emeritus professor of surgery at U.C. San Diego.

The President s Cancer Panel 2008-2009 report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, has been highly criticized by the American Chemistry Council. Not surprised you say? What else would a person expect from a chemical group? Well, there s a real hooker here. The American Cancer Society is also critical of the report, which collects seemingly every cancer-scare hypothesis that s been floated over the past 30 to 40 years and suggests that we really ought to be concerned about them.

According to a study published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, drug trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry report positive outcomes 85 percent of the time, compared with 50 percent for government-funded trials and 72 percent for trials funded by nonprofit or non-federal organizations.

A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine by Dr. Mark Pletcher of the University of California, San Francisco challenges the notion that young adults don’t need to pay attention to their cholesterol. After following 3,200 young adults between the ages of 18 to 30-years-old for 20 years, Dr.

Approximately 27 percent of adults in the U.S. are obese, according to a Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone survey of 400,000 adults who self-reported their height and weight.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles claim that fructose can cause pancreatic tumor cells to proliferate in a study published in the Cancer Research journal.