Soros Should Revive the Old Liberalism (from Financial Times)
A January 17, 2005 column by Amity Shlaes in the Financial Times expresses the hope that the left-wing thinktanks to be funded by philanthropist George Soros will raise the intellectual standards of political discourse. She notes that not all political activists are as good as sorting out perceived and actual risks as the American Council on Science and Health:

They say that it's good for cardiovascular health, but when I saw the price at a Manhattan supermarket, I almost had a heart attack! $7.99 for a twenty-four-ounce (three-serving) bottle of POM Wonderful, possibly the fastest-growing premium refrigerated juice drink, according to Forbes.

Rodents are an insidious health threat -- but I am not talking about disease-carrying vermin. I am talking about rodents in our nation's most prestigious research laboratories. These animals, through no fault of their own, have been scaring us to death for 50 years while restricting our pursuit of an improved standard of living and longer, healthier lives.

Seeing a previously healthy baby begin to withdraw, lose language skills, and become averse to physical or social attention is a nightmare for any parent. A diagnosis of autism can then lead parents down a long road of feeling guilty, trying frustratingly unsuccessful treatments, and searching for an answer to their questions about the cause of their child's disorder. But when parents turn their quest for answers into a blind-faith crusade against public health initiatives, they may actually end up hurting more than they help.

It would be easy to infer from headlines on many news articles that eating red meat increases the risk of developing colon cancer. For example, "Red Meat increases Colon Cancer Risk," states one, while another trumpets "Red meat newly linked to colorectal cancer."
In fact, the story is significantly more nuanced than such headlines (and many of the associated articles) make it seem.

Although it may be appropriate to criticize the revolving-door ethics involved when a former congressman becomes an advocate for an industry with which he had legislative dealings, the issue of government-controlled drug pricing is not a fair target ("Switch raises issues of loyalty," Opinion, Jan. 3). This part of the Medicare drug bill is there for good reason, as witness the current precarious state of our vaccine supply.

Perchlorate is a chemical in rocket fuel that can leach into the ground and find its way into water supplies, but there is no evidence it is harmful to humans in small amounts.

As members of a primarily urban society, most Americans have very little or no contact with the sources or methods of producing their foods. Their understandable ignorance has the unfortunate consequence of leaving them vulnerable to misinformation about food and nutrition. Nowhere is this vulnerability more obvious than with respect to genetic engineering, usually misnamed genetic modification.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently released a set of guidelines calling for stricter control of marketing of foods and beverages to children, in an effort to address increased obesity rates in kids. The guidelines call for all companies, advertising agencies, schools, and other organizations to eliminate any sort of marketing to children that directly or indirectly endorses foods CSPI deems unhealthy.

In an attempt to protect its citizens, the United Kingdom is reviewing proposals to implement its own color-coded alert system evocative of the one in place in the United States.