Two preliminary studies suggest that eating foods containing acrylamide, recently discovered to be common in fried foods rich in carbohydrates, does not increase the risk for several types of cancer, a scientist said Monday.

A new study finds that cholesterol-lowering statins can lower the risk of breast cancer by up to 30% for women who were on the drugs for more than five years. (See http://www.ajc.com/health/content/shared-auto/healthnews/drug/518552.ht….) Surely, these findings are preliminary; it is only one study and surely there are holes that can be poked in the methodology.

Earlier this year a documentary called Supersize Me won awards at the Sundance Film Festival. The producer and star, Morgan Spurlock, gorged his way to fame by overeating at McDonald's restaurants for a month, putting on nearly thirty pounds and developing a fatty liver in the bargain. In about a week, the movie will be released to the public. To get a nutritionally sound view of Mr.

A 2001 Democratic National Committee commercial attacked George W. Bush's policy on arsenic levels in water: a young child asking, "Can I please have some more arsenic in my water, Mommy?" The underlying premises of the ad were that current environmental standards tolerated dangerous levels of naturally occurring arsenic in drinking water and that was just fine by President Bush.

Is New York City s new deal with Snapple hypocrisy, nutritional naivete, or just a financial a boost to the educational system? Perhaps all of the above.

At times it seems as though even scientific journals can morph into fiction. An article appearing in the April 24th issue of the medical journal The Lancet, entitled "Uganda considers DDT to protect homes from malaria," is so incredible to anyone interested in public health as to have been written by Asimov or Crichton. Using the impending "celebration" of "Africa Malaria Day" (April 25th) as a rationale, the story describes the current status of malaria-control measures in Uganda, an impoverished land in eastern Africa best known to Americans for AIDS and Idi Amin.

The headline in the April 11 New York Times Magazine said it all: "What the World Needs Now Is DDT." Given the prestige of the Times, one hopes that it reopens the public discussion on the use of DDT for control of the mosquito vector for malaria and for control of other insectborne diseases. For some of us over the last three decades, the issue was never closed, but we were voices in the wilderness, unheard except occasionally to be condemned as strange or worse.

At today's Earth Day celebrations, environmentalists will likely point to the clean-up of the toxic waste dump at New York's Love Canal as one of their biggest victories. But was there really a terrible environmental menace to combat at Love Canal in the first place?

The media has a responsibility to present information that is both pertinent and based on empirical data. Unfortunately, the media frequently reports health information that piques mainstream interest but diverts attention away from issues of genuine significance. Take the piece called "The Unhealthy 10," which appeared in the April 14, 2004 Star-Ledger, New Jersey's largest newspaper. Meg Nugent gives readers a list of the "Top 10 dopey, unhealthy things we do that damage our health." Ultimately, it is the list that is dopey.

An April 16, 2004 article by Arnold Kling on regulation notes an article from Reason magazine by ACSH's Todd Seavey: