Vaccine Court Rules in Favor of Science
Three cases were chosen from a pool of over 5,300 parents who had filed claims with the vaccines court, a branch of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, seeking damages because they believed their children had developed autism as a result of vaccinations. The cases were used to test the claim that the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal causes autism, and they were all denied.

A Likely Answer

Smoking Kills a Half Million People Every Year, BUT...
Researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Science studied over 300,000 men and women for ten years and concluded that smoking helps prevent Parkinson’s disease.

Jeff in Forbes

This piece first appeared on the site Daily Caller.
While there may be a few valid illness claims buried among the 10,000 or so cases in the big 9/11 lawsuit now approaching trial, the overwhelming majority clearly relies on junk science. Sadly, there s a whole industry set up to supply that junk -- funded by lawyers eager to fuel such lawsuits, staffed by researchers eager to push bizarre theories, and promoted by ignorant reporters and politicians.

Jeff in the Daily Caller

The Award for Best "Eco-Mom" Goes to: Meryl Streep

A subtle and probably pernicious trend in the U.S. food supply seems to be occurring virtually unnoticed. If one reads the information on a food package, as it seems few do, one finds that many food in the U.S. today are composed almost entirely of ingredients. The use of ingredients in foods has become so widespread and flagrant that one can hardly guess what will appear next on the growing list of polysyllabic horrors printed on packages. Through insouciance or ineptitude, we have let the situation get quite out of hand.

When Senators Play Doctor
As ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross wrote in yesterday's Washington Times, two senators have been attempting to turn criticism of one GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug into an excuse to create an entire new drug-approval bureaucracy -- even slower than the existing one. "Grassley and Baucus sent this 300-page report to the Senate and the FDA attacking GSK," laments Ross.

ACS on PSA
The American Cancer Society (ACS) is urging doctors to talk frankly with their patients about the risks and limitations of the PSA blood test used to screen for prostate cancer.