To the Editor:
No one can dispute the inclusion of Rachel Carson on your list of "25 Shapers of the Modern Era"(Dec. 27), However, I was stunned to see the name of Leo Burnett on the list. But after some reflection, I now understand your rationale:

Billing itself as a source of ''mainstream scientific information'' on health issues related to food, chemicals and the environment, to name a few, ACSH provides summaries of scientific findings on many ''hot topics'' in medicine.
Comprising 250 doctors, researchers and health-policy experts, the New York-based ACSH populates its Web site primarily with its consensus papers and articles from its magazine, Priorities. Luckily, they're plain-language materials.

To the Editor:
That tobacco companies are currying favor with minority communities is neither new nor surprising (Tobacco and Its Money Have Minority Allies in New York, January 4). Yet, the backing of tobacco interests by some black and Hispanic New York lawmakers and their tacit promotion of cigarette smoking is shameful.

At least two United States senators have concluded that American children are at risk because parents are not warned about pesticides sprayed at schools. Some scientists disagree and claim that the senators are unnecessarily alarming parents based on an unfounded health scare and are consequently misdirecting priorities for children's health.

Introduction

Does the relative ability of individual foods and diets to raise blood glucose have a unique or tremendous influence on human health?

By William M. London

Credit: William M. London

Every day a 135-year-old woman smokes two packs of cigarettes, plus at least a pipeful of tobacco.
Colored glasses permit dyslectics to read normally.
In a quiet little Pennsylvania town where radioactive waste is buried, mounds of dirt glow at night as bubbling pools change color.

Your article "Monsanto and Pharmacia to Join, Creating a Pharmaceutical Giant" (front page, Dec. 20) states that Monsanto has been under attack in Europe and in the United States for developing genetically modified crops that are substantially superior to regular varieties.
While opponents of genetically modified products fan the flames of public fear of use of such crops, the truth is that they do not threaten food safety, and in fact hold much promise for present and future generations.

The term "Love Canal" has become synonymous with "corporate-polluted, health-threatening neighborhood."
Indeed, Love Canal has become one of the key buzzwords in the alarmist environmental vocabulary. Just last month, while trying to exhibit his environmental credentials, Vice President Al Gore claimed to have "found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal." While this claim ranks up there with his claim to have invented the Internet, the misrepresentation of health risks due to exposure to low levels of "toxic waste" is the more serious issue.

Page through The Art of Simple Living, a new magazine published by a division of Hearst Magazines, and notice that it looks like most feel-good women's magazines. There is a profile of the pop singer Sarah McLachlan, an article about growing an indoor herb garden and step-by-step instructions for brewing tea.