A number of companies have taken advantage of consumers' demand for bottled water and desire to lead healthier lives by developing nutrient-enhanced, flavored bottled waters. In fact, the sales of Propel, a vitamin-enhanced water beverage, topped $100 million in 2002, according to a press release issued by Pepsi Co.

Many vulnerable people who are at risk for heart disease, and even those who are not at risk, routinely take antioxidants to ward off heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems. Alternative medicine practitioners and vitamin companies advise people to take antioxidants, such as vitamin A, vitamin E, and vitamin C, both as a preventative nutrient as well as a treatment after heart disease has been diagnosed. The disease-fighting hypothesis is based on the fact that oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL, a.k.a. "bad cholesterol") is taken up by the arteries, leading to plaque formation.

SHOW: Today (7:00 AM ET) - NBC
June 12, 2003 Thursday
HEADLINE: New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz and Dr. Elizabeth Whelan discuss a proposed tax on junk food as a way to control the obesity crisis
ANCHORS: LESTER HOLT
LESTER HOLT, co-host:
Felix Ortiz is the New York state lawmaker who will introduce the fat tax tomorrow. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health.

[Editor's note: Little more than an hour after ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan appeared on the Today show this morning to condemn the idea of a "fat tax" on certain foods, letter writer Aaron Sugarman sent in the following lengthy condemnation. We salute Sugarman's speed and his passion for the issue. TS]
Dr. Whelan,
It is shameful that you would use your position in what I consider to be the pseudo-science, or junk-science, community to attempt to discredit true scientific reality.
You are thoroughly disappointing as a human being.

[Editor's note: We don't wish to make light of the suffering of ebola victims, but we're pleased that guest poet Jenny Foreit has found some humor in the most dire of situations. TS]
a fever hemorrhagic with consequences tragic liquefying tummy internal organs runny skin with gooey bubbles and other icky troubles

Parthenogenesis, potentially useful as a stem cell creation method, may be considered ethically acceptable by some who previously opposed stem cell and cloning research. Since parthenogenesis involves the division of egg cells that haven't been fertilized and thus do not have a unique, new DNA code anti-cloners are less inclined to view the resulting cell clusters as human embryos.

We're thrilled to see that when Christie Whitman left her post as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, ACSH Director Henry I. Miller, writing for TechCentralStation.com, made the wise suggestion that ACSH head Dr. Elizabeth Whelan would make a good replacement. We agree, though we prefer science to politics. But read what Dr. Miller says:
"Who Should It Be?"

According to a recent UCLA study, "Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Tobacco-Related Mortality in a Prospective Study of Californians" (reported in the British Medical Journal), environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is not as harmful as many anti-smoking activists say. The study, which tracked 118,058 individuals over the course of thirty-eight years, found no significant correlation between exposure to secondhand smoke and death due to coronary heart disease or lung cancer.

The most frequent complaint about us skeptics is that we're party-poopers. How much more fun the world would be, say the non-skeptics, if only we all believed in unicorns, psychic powers, God, or panhandlers who really just lost their wallets and only need a few cents for bus fare back home.

Last week, President Bush signed a bill allocating $15 billion for AIDS drugs in Africa (and funding efforts against tuberculosis and malaria). In his State of the Union address earlier this year, Bush said of the AIDS initiative that "seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many." It's good to hear some cost-benefit analysis being employed even on a grandiose government project, one that could easily be sold with nothing more than a tug at the heartstrings. With luck, it will pay off in millions of saved lives.