It looks like Dr. Dustin Ballard, a Marin County Independent columnist and emergency physician at Kaiser Permanente San Rafael, has also caught wind of the scare season. In fact, while addressing excessive fears over minor head bumps following the death of actress Natasha Richardson, he references ACSH as “an advocacy group dedicated to providing sound health information to consumers.” ACSH would like to offer a seat at the table to Dr.

ACSH staffers are amazed at the plethora of baseless scares making the news this week. Perhaps, as ACSH’s Jeff Stier predicts, this silly scare season is associated with activist rallying to promote legislation on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA reform), including an effort by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to enact a BPA ban — or attach such a ban to the Food Safety and Modernization Act, now under consideration in the Senate, after languishing there for over a year after House passage.

In an op-ed in today’s New York Times, Dr. Sanjay W. Pimplikar, an associate neurosciences professor at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, advises against the use of biomarkers, brain scans and spinal fluid analyses to promote early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. The danger, he asserts, is disease over-diagnosis, which he inaccurately parallels to prostate-specific antigen tests, warranting ACSH's Jeff Stier to say, “those are such different cases.”

Women in China may disappear in a puff of smoke, literally. Out of the current 350 million smokers in China, 4 percent are female, but that figure is growing rapidly. According to the World Health Organization, 20 percent of women will be smokers worldwide by 2025, as compared to the present rate of 12 percent.

It seems that ACSH staffers may have discovered that the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA, which revise dietary guidelines for Americans every five years, are even more reluctant to admit to a mistake than your average guy.

A promising new vaginal microbicidal gel could be used to sharply reduce HIV infection among women, according to a study released yesterday at the XVIII International AIDS conference in Vienna by a South African AIDS research center. The gel contains tenofovir, an antiretroviral medication, that when applied 12 hours before and after unprotected sex, reduced the risk of HIV transmission in women by 39 percent and by up to 54 percent if the gel was used regularly.

If you ask 100 people what a vitamin is, at least 100 of them will get it wrong. They will have some vague ideas: everyone should take them, they are derived from natural sources and the more you take, the healthier you will be. All of this is wrong.

This weekend was full of surprising news stories. The strangest came from a Sydney Morning Herald article claiming that ingestion of environmental chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) may have caused the increase in women’s breast size observed over the past 50 years. While the article addresses other health concerns such as obesity, it places a strong emphasis on chemical exposures.

A study published in Nature Medicine shows promise for a new vaccine delivery system involving patches that contain dissolvable microneedles. The researchers who developed the patch tested its ability to immunize mice with an influenza vaccine and found that it might provide a better immune response over traditional needle injection. They hope one day to make the patch available so patients – especially those who are afraid of needles – can self-administer vaccines at home.

ACSH staffers are astounded to learn that cigarette makers are promoting their brand at U.K. music festivals and youth social networks such as Facebook, even though such marketing is supposed to be banned in the EU. Action on Smoking and Health’s chief executive, Deborah Arnott, details the companies’ motives: