Faced with a life threatening disease or chronic health problems, many patients decide to take matters into their own hands and experiment with alternative medicine. This is usually the result of one of two scenarios: either conventional medicine has failed to achieve desired results or patients simply feel the need to be more actively involved in the process of healing.

That's the finding of the recently-completed study "Electromagnetic Fields and Breast Cancer on Long Island: A Case Control Study," published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The study, part of the ten-year Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project (LIBCSP), is the latest study to come from the project that fails to show a correlation between a perceived environmental risk factor and an actual increased risk for breast cancer. Previous studies discovered no significant association between breast cancer development and exposure to PCBs or to organochlorines found in pesticide.

If there is one bit of nostalgia that is widely shared by anti-modernists and many in the mainstream as well, it is the belief that our diets are bad and getting worse. What's more, our global fast food chains are purportedly corrupting the diets of other peoples. One way to have a best-selling book with minimum effort and thought is to come up with new "evidence" or examples of how horrible modern nutrition is.

Plants do not have digestive systems, but they do have a genome like the rest of life as we know it (unless one counts viruses as a life form). However, the furor over transgenic ("genetically modified") crops has given rise to the belief among many that foodstuffs such as tomatoes do not have genes unless biotechnologists put them there and do not have toxins unless those toxins originate in factories (just this week, New York Times writer Marian Burros wrote another article implying the purity of organic food, and she is far from alone in purveying that message).

Golden Ages, like most any mythic memory, are less about the past than about the present and a set of ideological guidelines meant to transform it. Tradition sanctifies. If it is alleged that some herbal medicine has been used for thousands of years, then it is thought it must have some efficacy that modern medicine cannot match. After all, that which is of ancient vintage has not only survived the test of time but has the added virtue of being closer to nature.

A multitude of dietary gospels are preached in the media, but only a small portion of the population are pure practitioners of any one of them. To hear all the talk of toxins and poisons that standard modern diets supposedly foist on us, one would think that those of us who aren't following the latest fad diets are on a toboggan ride toward debilitation and death. Strange as it may seem to the true believers, though, the evidence indicates the general public is moving in the opposite direction, toward longer life and better health.

A century ago, the government's chief chemist, Harvey Washington Wiley, was well-known for his efforts to pass a law regulating the nation's food processors. When pending legislation finally passed in 1906, it was promptly nicknamed "the Wiley Law." Ironically, Dr. Wiley's own scientific extremism and inflexibility had long stood as a principal barrier to the food law's success.

Saturated fats have been linked to increased blood cholesterol levels, particularly LDL or "bad" cholesterol, which is a risk factor for heart disease. And a recent study has revealed another potential negative effect of elevated saturated fat consumption type 2 diabetes.

In light of the ongoing controversy over fast food lawsuits, the media has called upon ACSH to deliver scientific information regarding obesity and fast food. John Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University is the proponent of the fast food lawsuits, which seek to shift the blame for obesity from individuals to restaurants.

To the editor:
"Pressing Concern: Nearly 50% of N.Y. School Children are Overweight" (July 9, 2003) raises legitimate concerns about the obesity epidemic, however some of the remedies suggested are off base.