All the news that's fit to scare. That was the thrust of this weekend's New York Times article by Charles Duhigg entitled "Toxic Waters: Debating Just How Much Weed Killer Is Safe in Your Water Glass."

This piece first appeared on August 21, 2009 on the site MedicalProgressToday.com.

FDA advisory panelists voted yesterday to ban Percocet and Vicodin, two popular painkillers that contain acetaminophen, because of their potential to cause liver damage. Among dissenting panelists was Dr. Robert Kerns of Yale University, who disagreed with an outright ban of products that many consumers rely on to control severe pain: To make this shift without very clear understanding of the implications on the management of pain would be a huge mistake.

Yesterday s episode of MSNBC s new series Dr. Nancy featured Doctors Dean Ornish and Walter Willett debating the proposed tax on soft drinks as an effort to combat obesity. When Dr. Ornish correctly noted that taxing sodas alone among all the causes of obesity is arbitrary and unfair, Dr. Willett pointed out that Ornish had previously consulted with Pepsi Co. and proceeded to question his loyalty to unbiased scientific inquiry.

ACSH's view on this issue was noted by John Stossel on his blog today:
It is nothing new for junk science to make it onto the New York Times op-ed page. But some agendas are so far outside the mainstream they have to buy their way onto the page. That's what the Mount Sinai School of Medicine did in buying a platform for their Dr. Philip Landrigan, an activist who has dedicated his career to raising anxieties about "chemicals" in the environment.

Is there any benefit to buying an organic pineapple? How about an onion? Science literate people know it is a little silly, for two reasons: First, is that toxic pesticides and toxic pesticides, whether they are organic or synthetic is irrelevant, you should wash anything you did not grow yourself; second is that foods like that can't have pesticides so buying an organic version which will at least claim to not have a pesticide is a waste of money.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) scare machine rolls inexorably on, generating scary headlines and national media attention, based on nothing more than alarmism, while expert scientists and sound science-based organizations have to scramble to gain any attention. It's a truism in media: good news doesn't sell papers or garner viewers, while a press release asserting that "fruits and vegetables are killing your children" will always grab the lead.

A few weeks ago, I began to feel sluggish for a few days. Out of nowhere I suddenly felt cold. I lay down on the couch and piled on two down comforters to stay warm. As anyone who’s ever lived in Washington, D.C. in July knows, feeling the need to dive under blankets that time of year is just not normal. I spent an hour on the couch, shaking violently with the chills -- only to fling the blankets off the moment the shaking stopped. By then, my temperature was edging north of 102, and I was suddenly burning up.

This piece first appeared on TCSDaily.com.

This article first appeared on the website of The Guardian on July 24, 2009: