Re: "Health groups' donor ties questioned":
In light of the distortions promoted by the anti-consumer-choice, left-wing funded, advocacy group, Center For The Science in the Public Interest, below are some facts about the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). We are disappointed that your reporter did not contact us before publishing misleading information about our work.

The July 1 Health Journal article "Getting Screened for Colon Cancer Isn't Just for the 50-and-Over Set" by Tara Parker-Pope was important. Colorectal cancer is both a major cancer killer and largely preventable with appropriate screening. Deciding who should and should not be screened is crucial, as it would be prohibitively expensive to screen everyone over age 40, instead of the currently recommended age cut-off of 50.

Testimony to the New York City Council on the question of whether to tighten lead regulations, given June 23, 2003:
The ACSH is a public-health consumer-education organization, advised by a panel of 350 scientists and physicians. All of our work is peer-reviewed internally and published in independent, peer-reviewed scientific journals. We are about to celebrate our twenty-fifth year of promoting public health, here in New York and around the U.S.

Anyone who has ever perused the ads for various dietary supplements online or in magazines must be familiar with claims that the product in question is "clinically proven" or is "scientifically proven" to be safe, effective, and a cure for whatever ails one or at least that "research has shown" this is so. We at ACSH have written in the past about the weakness of the regulatory scheme for dietary supplements. We've noted that supplement manufacturers, unlike producers of pharmaceuticals, don't have to prove their products either safe or effective before marketing them.

This month, attorney John Banzhaf, who for years has litigated against tobacco, purportedly in an effort to protect public health, announced his intention to solve another public-health problem obesity by suing fast-food restaurants.
Banzhaf declared that cigarettes were not, after all, the only legally available product that is both addictive and hazardous when used as intended, and that cigarette manufacturers were not the only ones who covered up the hazards of their product.

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) today characterized as "ludicrous" the assertion by law professor John Banzhaf that high-fat, high-sugar foods are addictive. ACSH dismissed as scientifically unfounded Mr. Banzhaf's demand that "fast food" restaurants alert customers that the foods they serve induce physiological changes that leave consumers vulnerable to overeating. ACSH scientists also noted that it is simplistic and counterproductive to target specific foods and food establishments as the cause of the nation's obesity crisis.

If you vaguely recall hearing that smokeless tobacco (chewing tobacco, etc.) is about as dangerous as cigarettes, you're hardly alone but it isn't true.
Smokeless tobacco is only about one sixtieth as likely to kill mainly through oral cancers as cigarettes. Cigarettes cause the premature death of about one third of their users and have a host of other ill effects. See ACSH's newly-revised book, Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You for more on the risks.

The American obesity epidemic is a hot topic. Anyone who doubts that views diverge on what should be done about it should have attended the conference on "Obesity, Individual Responsibility, and Public Policy" at the American Enterprise Institute on June 10. Experts from a variety of fields debated the question of whether obesity is increasing, who or what should be held responsible, and what should be done about it.

In this newly revised and updated edition the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) continues to challenge the widely held popular wisdom that "Everyone knows the health hazards of smoking." This popular belief has become the mantra of those who oppose litigation against cigarette companies.

[Editor's note: Paul Lee, in an article for SkepticReport.com, has argued that complementary and alternative medicine methods are by definition unproven and that we should prefer "evidence-based medicine" but Saul Green cautions that the term "evidence-based medicine" is often used not by responsible mainstream scientists but by CAM adherents who merely go through the motions of performing tests and gathering data without those tests and data producing reliable results in order