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In the category of facts that "everyone knows" is the assumption that organic foods (mostly produce) are better for people's health than the same items produced by conventional means. According to a recent article from CNN, a number of schools are now providing children with salad bars consisting of organic foods and are patting themselves on the back about giving the kids more healthful foods.

We certainly applaud making salad bars...

mcDiet

Over the past few months I've written several short commentaries on Morgan Spurlock's movie, "Super Size Me" -- the documentary about how Mr. Spurlock ate (or rather overate) at McDonald's for 30 days and gained upwards of 25 pounds. I mentioned a couple of people who also ate at McDonald's restaurants for 30 days, with very different results -- Ms. Soso Whaley and Mr. Chazz Weaver. Both of these folks managed, on their strictly fast food diets, to lose weight...

Former President Bill Clinton's heart disease and its treatment have been in the headlines of late, and no wonder: heart disease due to atherosclerosis (fatty deposits also containing cholesterol) is the leading killer of Americans, with a death toll of over one-million annually. But for many of us in his age range, the reasons we are so interested are complex: aside from humane concern for his health, we also think: if heart disease can sneak up on an apparently healthy and robust ex-president, who among us is immune?

We all want to know, "what caused it, what were his risk factors?" The media (and even the president himself, when he called in to the Larry King Show from his hospital bed) have expressed a simple cause: too many cheeseburgers. The truth is much more complicated...

America's pharmaceutical industry is under scrutiny and attack more than ever before. Critics have pejoratively nicknamed the industry "Big Pharma" (to associate it with "Big Tobacco"); they characterize it as uncaring, duplicitous, profit-hungry, and manipulative; they claim that the industry excels in price-gouging while at the same time delivering very few products of any real value. The resentment of the industry is palpable from my own conversations with relatives and friends (particularly elderly or infirm ones) to Congress, where advocates are demanding the legalization of drug importation from Canada and elsewhere in a desperate (and, in the long run, futile) attempt to bring drug prices down.

Perhaps nowhere does strident criticism of the...

This unpublished letter was sent to the Wall Street Journal in reaction to a piece of theirs on vaccines and autism:

To the Editor:
Re: "Controversial Study Reignites Debate Over Autism and Childhood Vaccines"

Tara Parker-Pope's September 7th Wall Street Journal article regarding the unproven link between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism included factual errors and left out important points. The result was a mixed message as to whether or not there is just cause for parental concern.

In May, the Institute of Medicine's Immunization Safety Review Committee concluded that the body of available epidemiological evidence favored a rejection of a causal link between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism. But in June,...

These are good times for those who grow and sell organic foods. But there may be trouble in paradise.

Prompted by a quest for safer, healthier diets and a cleaner environment, more American consumers are buying the bountiful harvests of organic farmers. Last year, U.S. spending on organic foods reached close to $10.4 billion, making this the fastest-growing segment of the American food industry. Amid scares over mad cow disease, mercury in fish and produce tainted with harmful bacteria, new customers are joining existing ones in embracing organic foods as a sanctuary from harm and a surer route to long life and good health.

But as organic products and their claims to superiority have grown more common, scientists, policy analysts and some consumers have begun to ask...

Americans are understandably concerned about the possibility of new terrorist attacks. Public health professionals from around the country have urged that people be "prepared." But what does that mean?

Apparently, to the Red Cross it means selling people "preparedness" kits for $49.95 -- and that is per person.

Each Red Cross kit includes a breathing mask, duct tape, food bars, two quarts of water, a radio (with batteries), and a blanket.

But will this Red Cross kit really protect you -- for three days -- as they claim?

No, not really. Forget the kit. Use some common sense instead.

--You do not need the duct tape -- even though Federal Officials have also, on occasion, recommended it. In the case of aerosol release of chemical, biological or...

The authors of a report in the latest Radiology, a peer-reviewed medical journal, estimate that exposure to the radiation from one total-body CT scan -- often called a "CAT scan" -- may increase the risk of cancer by a small, but not negligible, amount. The researchers make this estimate by analogy to the measured radiation exposure of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the rate of cancer in those survivors.

The study authors assert that the increased risk of fatal cancer attributable to one total-body CAT scan at age forty-five approximates one in 1,250 people. For perspective and comparison, the risk of dying in a traffic accident in any given year are about one in 5,900.

The danger is cumulative: for an individual who has an annual CT scan...


For over twenty-five years, the American Council on Science and Health has served as the voice of reason and sound science in often contentious debates about the role of food, nutrition, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and lifestyle factors in determining health risks.


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When it comes to fats, I call for eating a smart balance of different types rather than a complete abandonment, every three decades or so, of one type of fat.

"Everything has its pros and cons," Robert M. Reeves, president of a Washington trade group called the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, was quoted as saying in a Washington Post article today about food manufacturers trying to get every last ounce of trans-fats out of foods like cookies and chips.

"When major food companies began widely using partially hydrogenated oils [the kind that contains trans-fats] in the 1970s, they thought they were making their products more healthful. Consumer groups and...