An October 21 article in the Star-Ledger Washington Bureau by J. Scott Orr quoted ACSH's President Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, a nonprofit consumer group, said she expects the flu vaccine issue to pass quickly from the nation's political consciousness.

As the candidates vie for an edge in the tight race for the presidency, campaign members should be especially cautious about making statements that could make them vulnerable to attack by the opposition. Last week, in an irresponsible remark perhaps meant less to inspire hope than to gain partisan advantage, Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards handed the Bush campaign such an opportunity by exaggerating the pace of stem cell research.

The recent withdrawal of Merck's blockbuster COX-2 inhibitor, the anti-arthritis pain reliever Vioxx (rofecoxib), was a major blow to a number of interested parties. Merck, of course, took the biggest hit. But the millions of arthritis sufferers who depended on reliable and safe relief from pain since Vioxx's approval in 1999 are also confused and upset, and the federal drug regulators at the FDA are in the midst of a losing streak of unprecedented proportions.

An October 17 article in the (Sioux Falls) Argus Leader by Kevin Dobbs quoted an article by ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:

An October 17, 2004 article in Managed Care Law Weekly noted that scientists at an American Chemical Society symposium last month questioned claims about the health benefits of organic food and quoted ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava:
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health, said her review for the symposium found that claims of higher vitamin or mineral content in organic foods were largely unjustified.

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In June, we noted that a picture of Presidential candidate John Kerry riding a motorcycle while not wearing a helmet was featured on the front page New York Times.

Hot-button health issues during this frenetic political season include spiraling health-care costs, importation of drugs from foreign countries, and the feds' war on obesity. Rapidly heating up is the controversy over stem-cell research.

Fox News network's The Big Story with John Gibson interviewed ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan on October 12, 2004:
HEATHER NAUERT, FOX NEWS: It looks like about as many as 35 million people are unlikely to get a flu shot this season. The government is now rationing the vaccine, trying to get shots to those who are considered to be most vulnerable: those are children and the elderly primarily.

According to a study in the August 2004 issue of Chemical Research in Toxicology, arsenic could be toxic at much lower levels than previously thought, raising the alarm that the new EPA drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion (ppb), to take effect in 2006, might still be too high.(1) But don't dump the glass of tap water yet; the conclusions of this newest study were based on an in vitro study of a rat cell line.