An April 6 article by Associated Press writer Libby Quaid about labeling of foods quotes ACSH Advisor Fergus Clydesdale, Ph.D.:
The makers of the butter-like spread Take Control had clinical studies showing it lowers cholesterol. But until they got approval from the Food and Drug Administration, they couldn't put it on the label.
"They had to say something like, 'Maintains healthy levels of cholesterol,'" said Fergus Clydesdale, a food science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who headed the study.

An April 3, 2005 article by Randy Dotinga described possible health benefits of garlic but included this skeptical note:
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition with the American Council on Science and Health, said eating two raw cloves of garlic a day could be both physically and socially challenging.

What if there was growing evidence that an already-existing drug, taken daily, might dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer?
Shouldn't that be more newsworthy than fund-raising walkathons done in the quixotic pursuit of a simple cure? More noteworthy than the latest lab test which classifies an environmental chemical as a rodent carcinogen?
U.S. and Canadian scientists, led by Harvard's Dr. Peter Goss, this week began recruiting thousands of women at high risk of breast cancer to participate in a study of what may well be just such a drug.

This article originally appeared on http://www.Spiked-Online.com.
The new US protocol that says scientists with corporate connections are unfit to judge drug safety smacks of modern-day McCarthyism.

Celebrate. Celebrate. No, that's not the return of the Celebrex TV ad with its aerobic arthritics. That's the euphoria of physicians delighted with a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel's recommendation earlier this year that Vioxx and its cousins Bextra and Celebrex (all medicines known as Cox-2 inhibitors) should remain on the market, despite evidence they increase heart disease risk in some people. The panelists reached their decision after weighing all the data and concluding the benefits of these pain-relieving drugs outweighed the risks.

A March 31, 2005 Dow Jones Newswire report on the Pope's health quoted ACSH Advisor Dr. Marc Siegel:
A urinary infection can produce fever and a drop in blood pressure as reported in the Pope, said Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist in internal medicine at the New York University Medical Center.
The pope's risk of such an infection is heightened because he is elderly -- which suggests his prostate is probably enlarged -- debilitated and run down from the illness that recently sent him to the hospital, Siegel said.

There's a lot of media coverage of this carcinogen and that. Almost exclusively, however, the reports deal with synthetic chemicals that supposedly present intolerable risks to the most vulnerable populations -- infants and children. But in many cases, if not most, the evidence of risk is not substantiated by sound science. There are, however, naturally-occurring chemicals that are known to be carcinogenic.

Helen Palmer from Public Radio International's Marketplace show interviewed ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava about EPA rules regarding kids and cancer risks, and you can download the RealMedia file of the March 30, 2005 broadcast.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), rubella, a virus notorious for causing birth defects, stillbirths, and miscarriages, has been eliminated from the United States. During its last major U.S. outbreak in the mid-60s, there were 12.5 million cases of rubella, resulting in 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome, 11,600 babies born deaf, 11,250 fetal deaths, 2,100 newborn deaths, 3,580 babies born blind, and 1,800 more mentally handicapped.

Virtually everyone "knows" that red wine is the best type of alcoholic beverage to consume if you're concerned about health. After all, the French eat lots of cheese and other high fat foods, yet their rate of heart disease is lower than ours. This observation, known as the "French paradox," has been widely attributed to the red wine the French consume liberally. What is it about red wine that supposedly makes it superior to other alcoholic beverages?