The American Council on Science and Health, since 1978 America's premiere pro-science consumer advocacy non-profit, is pleased to announce our new book, "Natural and Artificial Flavors: What's the Difference?", in order to combat growing confusion about health issues related to food.
During the last decade, it has become increasingly fashionable to tout "natural" on product labels. It isn't just fringe companies that prey on the chemophobia evident among less-informed members of the public, larger brands have also been exploiting consumers in this fashion.

Pharmaceutical companies usually provide innovation that helps improve the lives of patients. But AstraZeneca marketed Nexium, a drug that should have never been approved in the first place. The company did it solely for money — without any benefit to society – and it hauled in nearly $48 billion during the past decade.
 

Brown marmorated stink bugs are fond of fruit such as grapes. During winemaking, the critters become stressed (being squashed tends to do that), and the stink bugs live up to their name by producing a compound.  

A new study by a team of University of Washington researchers focusing on the mating habits of fruit flies reached a somewhat surprising discovery, concluding that "mate choice in fruit flies is rational and adaptive."
 
 

An online support campaign has taken women on FB by storm. The idea: put a simple red heart on your wall in support of Breast Cancer Prevention Week. But given the grim tale of metastatic breast cancer, we ought to do more than update our Facebook status.

The surge in fatal "heroin" overdoses are not really from heroin. They're from heroin spiked with, or replaced by, fentanyl, which is far more dangerous. But thanks to the power of synthetic organic chemistry, new fentanyl derivatives are unimaginably potent. One ounce of ohmefentanyl is enough to kill half the U.S. population.

Given that optics and buzzwords can sometimes influence more than a concept or specific technology, nothing baffles us more than how the start-up Theranos was able to rise so precipitously and garner a multi-billion dollar valuation – before its famous fall. That said, here's why Theranos' technology wasn't groundbreaking.

1. A student at Emerson College has gone John Birch Society, alleging he just sort of knows fluoridated water must be bad for us because he read it somewhere on the Internet and thinks being contrarian to accepted science and medicine is journalism. Well, it is. Shoddy journalism, anyway, and the world is already deep in that.

The Massachusetts' legislature recently passed a bill titled, "An Act establishing a board of registration in naturopathy," that will give the naturopaths legitimacy. Regarding the health of the people of the Bay State, it's one of the worst moves that officials there could have made.