Alternative medicine has once again crept into popular fashion, to the chagrin of legitimate medicine. The only thing that these practices provide is placebos, says ACSH s Dr. Ruth Kava, which is not something most people seek from medical professionals.
ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross has noticed the regrettable trend: Despite the fact that there s no such thing as legitimate alternative medicine -- only real medicine and fake medicine -- it seems that more and more people and even doctors are buying into the power of superstition.

The FDA s tobacco regulation bill will not provide immunity from consumer lawsuits even for the tobacco companies that comply with the FDA s requirements. The law does not grant preemption to tobacco companies, explains ACSH s Jeff Stier. They can t veer from federal law, but if they are sued [at the state level, for instance], they have no guaranteed federal protection. The arrangement will be a Catch-22 for the cigarette manufacturers. They can t even say things to protect themselves from liability, since the law dictates what they re allowed to say, says Stier.

Former New York health commissioner and current CDC chief Dr. Thomas Frieden plans to continue on a national stage the battle against smoking that he waged in New York. ACSH staffers are concerned about how he plans to approach the smoking issue. If he s going to make it a top priority to get people off cigarettes, we can t object to that, says ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, but we hope he goes about it in the right way.

ACSH staffers are generally disinclined to dignify frivolous Internet gossip with recognition, but in the case of a natural cosmetics peddler s recent blog post attacking synthetic chemicals in cosmetics, which has been getting some undeserved attention, we figured we d point a few things out before it gets out of hand. This shouldn t be too surprising. She s a salesperson for natural cosmetics, so she has to spread rumors to sell her products, says ACSH s Jeff Stier.

The World Health Organization recommended that new rotavirus vaccines made by GSK and Merck be included in all national immunization programs. The original vaccine against rotavirus, which kills over half a million children under five around the world each year, was removed from the market ten years ago because of a rare, potentially deadly side-effect.

Dr. Anne Hoch of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee reported on a study of ballerinas that indicated they are especially vulnerable to the female athlete tetrad, a medical syndrome involving combinations of premature heart disease, osteoporosis, disordered eating, and menstrual dysfunction.

This piece first appeared on TCSDaily.com.
Despite the plethora of bad economic news this year, good news abounds for pro-regulatory, litigation-happy "consumer activists" on the left -- and their attorney camp-followers.

CNN notes that fewer teens are smoking and correlates that to fewer smokers in movies. But it's the American Council on Science and Health that made smoking uncool.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/03/health.smoking.movies/?source=acsh…

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the new FDA commissioner, has eagerly joined the debate on how to correct food safety problems. Food safety legislation is something we ve been following closely, says ACSH s Jeff Stier, and there s no doubt that the country needs improvement in food safety. The question is: how do we do it? Some of the proposed provisions are problematic.

To the surprise of none of the ACSH staffers, an article recently published in the Journal of Urology found no evidence of so-called endocrine disruption as a result of exposure to BPA and certain phthalates. We don t expect this result to be mentioned by many mainstream media sources, though, since we seem to remember making a similar assessment of the improbability of these dangers ten years ago. At the root of the issue is the whole concept of an endocrine disruptor.