Because the government's first regulator of food products and patent medicines, Harvey Washington Wiley, lacked the statutory authority needed to impose the controls he believed necessary for the public's welfare, he established his indelible imprint on Congress and the people by sheer force of will. Yet, when he wielded that power in the early decades of the twentieth century, he often collided with the federal judiciary. The original pure food and drug law was flawed by its ambivalent language.

The dreaded mad cow disease has finally arrived. How worried should we be? Should you avoid the range cattle you come across on hikes in Montana or skip that steak when you visit Bozeman?

I won't pretend to be objective about ABC News anchor John Stossel. I worked for him from 1995-2001, as an associate producer on one-hour specials very much like the one airing tonight (10pm Eastern), called Lies, Myths, and Downright Stupidity.

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 twenty-five 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).

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis in the United States, affecting more than 40 million Americans. A new report released by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) discusses the various manifestations of this slowly progressive disease and notes that newer treatments, both medical and surgical, have changed the outlook for alleviation of pain and restoration of function for most of those affected.

Not so long ago, hunger was the only food issue over which it was worth issuing international reports, but the World Health Organization recently suggested that governments around the world should start fighting obesity by using taxes and subsidies to get people to eat healthy foods. That inspired the U.S. government to tell the U.N., correctly, that it is one's total diet, not specific "good" and "bad" foods, that determine one's weight (and overall health), as the AP's Jonathan D. Slant reported on January 16:

Editor's note: What follows is a speech delivered to attendees of the Hayek Lecture Series in Brussels earlier this month.
The title of today's discussion is "Did the EU Get the Chemicals Regulation Right?" A title like that makes the job of a panelist pretty easy, when you can clearly and unequivocally answer the question with a one-word answer: NO!

ACSH has repeatedly lamented the green/environmentalist movement's opposition to life-saving chemicals such as DDT, and we see that the civil rights group CORE will protest this tragedy today:
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Contact: Cyril Boynes, Jr. 212-598-4000
Press release: January 15, 2004; event: January 20, 2004
CORE to hold teach-in, demand end to "Eco-Imperialism"; Greenpeace co-founder to denounce his former colleagues

One cow known to be infected with BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, a.k.a. mad cow disease) has set-off such a blizzard of comment that one hates to imagine what the response would have been had there been the 100,000 to 200,000 infected cows, which was the experience in the United Kingdom. A Rip Van Winkle who took a brief month or two snooze before Thanksgiving and awoke amidst the extended media response would have wondered what public health catastrophe had blighted our fair land, driving some people away from meat consumption and mainstream agriculture.