As if vaccine shortages, wars, terrorism and Vioxx weren't scary enough, some folks who should know better are making predictions of worldwide contagion without cure.
Officials from the World Health Organization have sounded the alarm about a "bird flu" pandemic. Spokesmen warned of billions falling sick and millions of deaths. Millions in Southeast Asia have indeed died -- but so far almost all the victims -- except for 32 humans -- have been feathered.

Practitioners and adherents of traditional, so-called alternative medical systems often promote their practices as being more natural and safer than Western medicine. They claim that such systems have been used for thousands of years and that therefore they must be safe. But this is not necessarily the case, as reported in the December 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Now, I do not want to sound like everyone's mother, but let's face it, a lot of what Mom taught us was true.

"Follow the money," Deep Throat warned Woodward and Bernstein as the two reporters were about to break open the Watergate scandal. Generally, this is good advice for anyone seeking to understand what is happening in a complicated business story. But not always. Former New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) editor-in-chief Jerome Kassirer would have us believe that contemporary medical scientific research is so riddled with financial conflicts of interests as to be all but worthless.

The December 8 Associated Press article "Groups to Seek Voluntary Halt to Companies' PVC Use" includes a contrary view from ACSH:
The president of the American Council of Science and Health, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, said there is "no evidence that these chemicals pose any risk to humans."

"It's the world's first significant health treaty. It's a moment we hope will change global health."
Denis Aitken, World Health Organization1

Project Coordinators:
Gilbert L. Ross, M.D.
Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H., M.S.
Executive Summary

New York, NY -- December 2004. Many women rely on magazines for information about health yet surveys show that popular women's magazines feature little or no coverage of the serious health consequences of smoking, the leading preventable cause of death, even while other health topics, serious and trivial, are covered at great length.

Drug giant Merck pulled its painkiller Vioxx because it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Now the company may face thousands of lawsuits.
Are lawyers unjustly driving Merck toward bankruptcy?
Like sharks, tort lawyers are circling Merck & Co. of Whitehouse, N.J., one of the oldest, largest and most respected pharmaceutical companies in the world, their greed whetted by the withdrawal of anti-arthritis Vioxx after a study showed increased cardiovascular risk from 18 months of use.

When regulators began looking for traces of potentially-harmful substances to ban a half-century ago, scientists were capable of finding traces as small as parts per million. Unfortunately, activists continue to panic -- and make news -- each time science improves our ability to detect minuscule traces, even if there's no new evidence these smaller and smaller traces can harm us. Now that we can detect parts per quintillion, it isn't hard to find traces of virtually any substance on the planet in virtually any place on the planet, if that's your hobby.