In the past twenty years, obesity has become an increasingly visible public health problem. More than 300 million adults worldwide are overweight, and many suffer from potentially life-threatening weight-related illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and sleep disorders. Childhood obesity is also a growing problem.

The media frequently report claims by nonprofit consumer groups about alleged health hazards in our food supply and our environment. Often these claims are coupled with suggestions for specific actions to reduce the purported risk of disease or premature death by avoiding or reducing exposure to the allegedly harmful substance.

New York, NY -- June 2005. Journalists can improve their coverage of public health topics by more critically considering health claims made by activist groups. These claims are frequently not based on sound science.

Today, in the weekend section of the Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Bernstein dubbed a donation of $10 million to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine "the Gift of the Week." The funds, presented by Leon D. Black, a founding partner of Apollo Management, L.P., were provided with the express purpose of supporting six new scientists, equipment for a stem cell lab, and a seminar series, all of which will constitute the Black Family Stem Cell Institute.

Fears welcomes aboard cartoonist Marvin Winter, who'll regularly put a thousand words worth of ACSH-related ideas on science and scares into one funny image...

This cartoon may be freely reproduced, so long as Marvin Winter and ACSH.org are credited.

"I confess, that nothing frightens me more than the appearance of mushrooms on the table."
--Alexandre Dumas

A June 9, 2005 editorial in the Free Lance-Star, about DDT's usefulness in fighting malaria and the tragedy of the deadly ban on DDT, quotes ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan on the matter:

With National HIV Testing Day arriving on June 27, it's an apt time to rethink a major public policy impediment to the fight against HIV/AIDS: misguided and unscientific sex education in schools.

This article appeared in the June 12, 2005 Washington Times.
Reports of new vaccines have those of us in public health excited, but these vaccines may never get into the marketplace. Why? A combination of political, economic, and regulatory factors make vaccine development, production and marketing increasingly difficult for drug manufacturers.
Here are a few of the amazing vaccines in various stages of production:

This letter appeared in the New York Times on May 31, 2005:
To the Editor:
Perhaps we should anticipate dedicated couch potatoes' pointing to information that genetic predisposition influences one's tendency to sit still or fidget ("New Weight-Loss Focus: The Lean and the Restless," May 24) as a rationale for being overweight. ("I can't help it; it's genetic.")