Something in the water, The neighbors all lament. Can't trust the companies, Can't trust government.
But we know, you know, they know, Though science can't say why we're sick, We'll ferret out the truth This isn't just some lawyer's trick.
Hired that lawyer who wrote A Civil Action, Played in the film by John Travolta. Without him digging up the truth, You think the companies would've told ya?

When a fifteen year-old of Middle Eastern descent who expressed sympathy for Osama bin Laden crashed a small, stolen plane into a Tampa skyscraper last month, killing only himself, few expected acne medication to get the blame. In fact, most people probably thought they had a rough idea what caused the incident: some combination of politics and youthful emotional instability.

A lot of health-related politics has less to do with philosophy than with tribal allegiances. Those tribal allegiances are strong and make people disinclined to listen to each other or to examine the weaknesses in their own arguments.
In a saner, calmer world, for instance, one probably would not have to deal with people who regard it as un-American to avoid eating beef fat nor with people who think that evil corporations will destroy the world merely by sewing genetically-modified corn.
But here we are.

Last month, like most months, saw advances and setbacks in biotechnology.
The cloned sheep Dolly appeared to be developing arthritis, but Japanese researchers found cloned mouse embryos in better shape than previously feared. The best news may have been the cloning of so-called "knockout pigs," pigs modified to eliminate a gene that in normal pigs prevents their organs being transplanted into humans. The worst news was the long-anticipated convening of the President's Council on Bioethics.

Sometimes, a national crisis strikes a sudden reminder of mortality that makes the average citizen stop and rethink his priorities. So it was for many of us recently when President Bush choked on a pretzel.
Indeed, I declare Bush's pretzel-choking incident the rebirth of irony.
After months of Americans fearing death by terrorist pilot and death by anthrax threats, frankly, too large and horrible to be genuinely funny along came the pretzel incident to remind us of three important truths:

Complementary Medicine: An Introduction to the Debate
By Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D, M.P.H.
The January l9th New York Times obituary for Dr. William R. Fair, a renowned prostate cancer surgeon associated with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, raises questions about so-called "alternative" and "complementary" medicine.

George Harrison, the "quiet Beatle" died in December, 200l at age 58. The cause of Mr. Harrison's death a death which clearly by any definition can be characterized as "premature" was cigarette smoking. In their December l0th issues, both Time and Newsweek extensively covered Harrison's death. Coverage noted, among other details, his devotion to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi but neither magazine mentioned the most critical factor: cigarette smoking as the cause of death. Both magazines carry cigarette ads.

The story of the man-breasts was not the first sign that an anti-Aspartame paranoia campaign was growing.
I must confess that my own dear mother recently expressed concern about the sweetener Aspartame, found in many diet sodas, after hearing the testimonials of some daytime talk show guests, who attributed their aches and pains to the substance. The show even inspired my mother to give up diet soda.

Food allergies afflict perhaps 2-2.5% of the U.S. population or 6-7 million individuals. The symptoms can range from comparatively mild reactions such as hives, itching, and gastrointestinal distress to life-threatening reactions such as laryngeal edema (throat swelling), asthma, and anaphylactic shock. An estimated 29,000 Americans visit emergency rooms each year as the result of inadvertent ingestion of foods to which they are allergic; an estimated 150-200 deaths from food allergies occur each year in the U.S. also.

Science was with them, but not the courts. The producers of one of the drugs used in the "fen-phen" weight-loss drug combination, finalized a $3.75 billion settlement last month. Thousands of claimants say they were harmed by the drug. The manufacturers, American Home Products (AHP), have spent a total of $13.2 billion to cover the settlement and individual lawsuits, according to a company spokesman. In August 1999, AHP was held liable by a Texas jury for heart-valve damage alleged to have resulted from the use of its anti-obesity drugs, Pondimin (fenfluramine) and Redux (dexfenfluramine).