How in the world did so many people get so fearful of the very science and technology that have lifted humanity out of malaria and mud huts? That's the fundamental question asked and discussed at length in the new book by ACSH's Thomas DeGregori, Origins of The Organic Agriculture Debate.

When does it become fair to say that offbeat, unscientific ideas are not just harmless intellectual errors but dangerous? Well, to take a few examples, maybe...

when a trainer at hip Crunch Gym, according to a lawsuit, gives a woman with high blood pressure supplements that were meant to enhance her performance but instead caused a stroke (one of several cases prompting recent regulatory action against ephedra)...

Morgan Spurlock wanted to be in a movie. And he was in a movie one he made himself which he then presented to the world at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. The subject of the movie was the fattening of Morgan himself he managed to gain 25 pounds in a month by overeating at McDonald's restaurants. The name of his documentary, "Supersize Me," should serve as a warning to the rest of us that eating too much will make us fat (which we might have heard before).

Tremendous publicity was given recently to a new study that found farmed salmon has significantly more pollutants than wild caught salmon. However, the impact of the findings is less than clear.

New Jersey recently announced its intention to become a stem-cell-friendly state. It will be subsidizing this groundbreaking research into how to use people's existing cells to make batches of pliable new ones, from which would be made new tissue in order to treat disease.

A state assemblyman from San Francisco has proposed perhaps the most unscientific law in American history: making the California Building Standards Commission impose the principles of feng-shui on new construction.

The Jan. 20 article in the Health Journal, "Toxins in Breast Milk," conveys unscientific assumptions that will needlessly alarm many members of the public, especially women who plan to breast feed. The assertion that a study subject's body "carried 105 chemicals in measurable levels" is meaningless on its face. We all have thousands of "chemicals" in our bodies, both natural and synthetic. Why was the discussion centered on synthetic, to the exclusion of natural chemicals?

There's something odd about the photo of the man PETA just declared the "sexiest vegetarian alive," as ACSH's Jeff Stier noticed. Twenty-one year-old Zachery from Yale is a vegan and thus probably thinks himself purer than thou for avoiding meat but what's that impure thing in his mouth...?
http://www.peta.org/feat/sexiestVegVote/

Summarized by: William D. Evers, Ph.D., R.D.
Department of Foods and Nutrition
Purdue University West Lafayette IN

The furor continues over acrobat Matthew Cusick, who was hired by the Cirque du Soleil to perform aerial acrobatics, then fired shortly after he disclosed his HIV-positive status. In a letter terminating Cusick's employment, the Montreal-based circus stated that his HIV-positive status "will likely pose a direct threat of harm to others, particularly in the case of future injury," according to a January 5 report on the Kaiser Network website.