Our recent report on the role of beef in the American diet noted some beef benefits, but that didn't please everyone. Below is a prime example of how some of beef's detractors react to such news but we will not be cowed.
Responses:
February 11, 2003

The Associated Press reported last week that "health officials said Wednesday that concerns over compensation for people injured by the smallpox vaccine are hampering the inoculation program, which has vaccinated just a few hundred people so far. Federal authorities acknowledge the problem but still have no solution." Workmen's compensation is one possible channel for funds to the small fraction of vaccine recipients who suffer side effects. Here in fiscally troubled New York City, officials will delay the vaccination program for months, pending a solution to the compensation problem.

We're pleased to see the esteemed British journal The Lancet noting the American Council on Science and Health in the conclusion of its February 1 article on the tumultuous debate over acrylamide in food. The Lancet emphasizes the unknown but at least recognizes that there's no evidence of harm:

Two biotech companies agreed last week to pay $110 million to corn farmers who lost money because of consumer fears three years ago when some genetically-modified StarLink corn, intended as animal feed, found its way into the human food supply.

This week saw the arrest of sixteen teenagers in Westchester County for underage drinking at a party which is not big news, but the report made passing mention of the presence of several tablets of Ritalin, the drug prescribed with growing frequency as a treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and said that the drug is sometimes used recreationally. It's ironic that at the same time some people are concerned that some kids are overmedicated with Ritalin to keep them under control, other kids are rebelling by using more Ritalin than they're supposed to.

Australian researchers note the immense cost to society of smoking compared to illegal drugs...

For some reason, Marion Burros of the New York Times seems to have it in for food irradiation. In an article published in the Times on January 29 ("The Question of Irradiated Beef in Lunchrooms"), Ms. Burros and some authorities she quotes mislead readers about the proposed irradiation of beef used in school lunch programs.

Europeans, out of some romantic rebellion against America and high technology, were shunning U.S.-grown food containing G.M.O.'s [genetically-modified organisms] even though there is no scientific evidence that these are harmful. But practically everywhere we went in Davos, Europeans were smoking cigarettes with their meals, coffee or conversation even though there is indisputable scientific evidence that smoking can kill you.
Thomas Friedman, in his February 2 New York Times column.

French scientists, writing in the February 8, 2003 issue of The Lancet, claim success in treating a heart attack victim with muscle stem-cells transplanted from his thigh to his heart. Though the seventy-two-year-old patient died eighteen months later, examination of his heart showed that the grafted stem cells had taken root and were differentiating into myotubes and contractile tissue.

The current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) carries a lead article and accompanying editorial that are long on advocacy, short on data. The topic: alcohol consumption in America, who is drinking how much and how much is too much.