The beverage industry has taken on more than just the challenge of making good-tasting drinks and is now aiming (or just claiming) to help the public lose weight, gain energy, and increase its physical strength and endurance. Based on sales, consumers seem to trust these claims, but are such benefits possible from a glorified soft drink?

Maybe you're a smoker. Maybe you used to smoke a pack a day but quit twenty years ago (congratulations!). Maybe you're not a smoker but you've lived with one for many years. Maybe you've never touched a cigarette, but you're alarmed that Dana Reeve, a never-smoker with a healthy diet, was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Should you get screened?

Maybe the obituary writer at the New York Times should be the one in jail instead of Judith Miller. The Times report on Peter Jennings' life and death, published on August 8th, and followed the next day by a long business story about Jennings' legacy at ABC News, somehow failed to mention two key words: "cigarettes" and "smoking." This, despite his on-air acknowledgment last April that his terminal lung cancer was caused by his addiction to cigarettes.

An August 9, 2005 article by John Tabin on TechCentralStation.com criticizes ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan and ACSH co-founder Dr. Henry I. Miller for encouraging government spending on stem cell research:

There have been many warnings of late that if A(H5N1), the avian flu strain spreading in Asian bird populations, were to mutate into a form easily transmitted between humans, a pandemic might result on the scale of the 1918-1919 flu that killed tens of millions of people.

At a time when Americans are basking in the summer sun, a study published in this week s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports some sobering news: the incidence of nonmelanoma skin cancer seems to be on the rise in people under the age of forty.

We might expect concerned parents to live by slogans like: "Love them, protect them, tell them about the dangers of smoking" or "Love them, protect them, make them wear their seatbelts" or "Love them, protect them, keep them away from guns." But love them, protect them, never get them vaccinated? Huh?

Last week Senator Bill Frist made headlines with his apparent turnabout in favor of federal funding for research using embryonic stem cells (ESC) -- a break with the policy of President Bush. Almost all proponents of ESC (potentially far more flexible and thus conducive someday to far more treatments than adult stem cells) saw this as terrific news, while opponents -- including a full spectrum of religious groups and social conservatives -- characterized Frist as a traitor. But Frist may not have changed enough to keep him from stifling ESC after all.

Yes, you read it right. If you've read ACSH's report, Bridging the Ideological Divide: An Analysis of Views on Tobacco Policy, you know that normally liberals accuse conservatives of being paid fronts for the tobacco industry, unwilling to condone lawsuits against the industry, while conservatives accuse liberals of using the anti-tobacco measures as a way of increasing the role of government in our lives.

In a surprising move pitting him against President Bush and religious conservatives, Senate majority leader Bill Frist announced last week his support for a bill to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Michael Castle (R-DE), passed in the House but has stalled in the Senate, where several alternative stem cell bills are vying for consideration.