The Bill Moyers PBS show NOW got one important thing right about genetically-modified crops. "There's no scientific evidence that eating these ingredients hurts our health," says narrator Mark Schapiro in the segment "Seeds of Conflict," which aired earlier this month. Even Moyers' introduction muted the usual "Frankenstein foods" tone of such stories, contrasting "the surprises of nature" with "the precision of science."

I wrote a big essay called LIBERTARIANS, SMOKING, AND INSANITY: How Ideology Affects Ideas About Freedom and Health a few months ago, suggesting that even those who defend the right to smoke including my fellow libertarians should acknowledge that smoking is a very bad idea, often fatally so (see ACSH's booklet, Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You).

From an October 21 MSNBC.com article about an appetite suppressant drug that had the side effect of causing erections:
"The [body] tends to use the same signals over and over" for different jobs, said Philip F. Smith of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Sometimes to keep things organized, it's best to jot down a list. So, faced with a flurry of news items and e-mails about unscientific goings-on, I find myself filing them according to the political philosophies of the people responsible for the goings-on. All of them are in some sense "greens," but I discern seven distinct types or subspecies, if you will. It's worth noting how their priorities differ. (I suspect this list will come in handy in the future.)

Much as famine relief organizations are getting tired of ignorant anti-biotech protesters, the grown-ups at the World Health Organization are getting tired of the reckless kids at Ralph Nader's group Public Citizen. The WHO angrily denies Public Citizen's report claiming that irradiating food to kill bacteria is dangerous (see ACSH's booklet on the topic as well):

When is the truth misleading? When it's on a food label.

Breast cancer is the number one diagnosed cancer for women in the United States and second only to lung cancer in cancer-related deaths. There is much uncertainty surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer: Are mammography and breast self-examination effective methods of detection? Should treatment include lumpectomy or mastectomy? Chemotherapy, radiation, or both?

See also:
* Are Children More Vulnerable to Environmental Chemicals?

By Thomas R. DeGregori

When my friend Ted, who is very skeptical about democracy, sees a crazy person or an idiot, he likes to say, "Remember: that person gets one vote, and you get one vote." The past few weeks have been full of events that make you wonder about the wisdom of the masses but the elites don't come off looking so clever, either: