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DISPATCH 6/13/08: Scary Curtains, Diarrhea, Expired Medicine, Floods, and Fat

Many college freshman students are living on their own for the first time. Students not living at home are now buying groceries, making meals, or living off the school meal plan and are completely in charge of their diet. When one considers this newfound freedom (Cake for breakfast? Why not?) combined with the stress of studying and less time for sports, it's easy to see how the weight can sneak on.

Although Internet drug purchasing is known to be a dicey proposition, the extent of the risk has never been established. A new report by the European Alliance for Access to Safe Medicine (EAASM), the results of which were released last week at the 4th Global Forum on Pharmaceutical Anticounterfeting, suggests the problem may be worse than regulatory agencies heretofore anticipated.

DISPATCH: Hunger, Mercury, Alcohol, Smoke, and Toenails
Norman Borlaug's op-ed on the fight against hunger

DISPATCH: Plastic, Longevity, Gender, and Vitamins
The Anti-Quote of the Day: The dangers of plastic bottles"The truthful answer is that nobody knows" their full health impact yet, said David Ozonoff, a professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. "And because we don't know, it's prudent to avoid something that is avoidable." --_Boston Globe_, April 23, 2008.

A new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine (2008;168:928-35) paints a rather bleak picture of the future health of obese Americans. Dr. G.L. Burke and colleagues confirmed earlier studies that found a high prevalence of overweight and obesity in most American ethnic groups. But of even more concern was their finding that many obese people who were apparently healthy with respect to current symptoms of cardiovascular disease (CVD) had signs portending future heart problems.

Congress has now passed legislation to forbid employers and insurance companies of "discriminating" against people on the basis of information gleaned from tests of their genetic proclivity for disease. I haven't studied this in depth, but forbidding the marketplace to use valid information rubs me the wrong way.

Whether you are traveling around the world or relaxing at home, a safe, healthy vacation will add to your enjoyment.

This piece first appeared in the Washington Times.

This piece first appeared in the New York Post.
Chemical-phobia is in full bloom this spring. Terrifying headlines on cancer risks, infertility, impaired sexual development and more have plastic bottles and rubber duckies being pulled off store shelves.

This piece first appeared in the Washington Times.
A new scientific McCarthyism is alive and well in America today. Nowadays, the inquiring mantras come from journal editors and government panel chairmen. It goes like this:

This piece first appeared in the New York Post.
Get your plastic grocery bags while you can. By Earth Day, that is, Tuesday, the national chain Whole Foods Market will no longer offer shoppers plastic bags -- leaving consumers who don't want reusable canvas bags one choice: paper.
Unfortunately, paper has its own drawbacks, such as: it's preferred by cockroaches -- like those contributing to New York City's asthma epidemic.

¢A March 23, 2008 piece by Denise Mann on WebMD quoted Dr. Ruth Kava on ACSH's review of articial sweeteners: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=56064.
¢A brief letter from Dr. Gilbert Ross about the FDA's finding of no danger from 1,4-dioxane appeared in the March 23, 2008 Los Angeles Times under the title "Toxicant Finding No Basis for Worry."
¢Family-Medical.blogspot.com mentioned ACSH as a counterpoint to CSPI in its March 2008 list of useful nutrition resources.

April 2, 2008 -- New York, NY. scientists' ties to indus

DISPATCH: Environmentalists, Budget-Planners, and Candidates
Quote of the day:
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, said, "But I later learned that the environmental movement is not always guided by science. As we celebrate Earth Day, this is a good lesson to keep in mind." --the _Wall Street Journal_, April 22, 2008.
Earth Day
Happy Earth Day! There are many stories in the news about the environment and what impact we have on it and vice versa.

What started out as a great idea -- replacing our dependence on oil with a renewable clean-burning resource, biofuel -- has quickly sprouted unintended consequences. We are diverting our perfectly good growing land to produce crops used exclusively for biofuel production. We have essentially decided to burn our food supply in attempts to replace our oil fix. This seems about as logical as burning money for heat. We are desperately in need of energy-junkie rehab.

Today is being commemorated around the globe as "World Malaria Day." Note, I didn't say "celebrated" -- clearly an inappropriate descriptor for a disease which, despite the availability of effective preventive measures, continues to kill over one-million impoverished people (mostly young children) annually. The toll of those sickened, both from health and economic perspectives, is incalculable but enormous.

The latest chemophobic scare has centered on bisphenol-A (BPA), a component of strong, shatter-resistant plastic bottles. BPA has been in common use--one might call it ubiquitous--for several decades now, and no human being has ever been harmed by exposure to it. This doesn't matter to the panel members of the National Toxicology Program's Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), who released a draft report yesterday announcing their "concern" that exposure to BPA might affect fetuses and infants adversely.

It should come as no surprise that overweight and obesity are linked to a less active lifestyle. A new report in the journal Pediatrics (Laurson, et al., 2008) quantifies the relative effects of physical activity (PA) and screen time (ST) -- time spent watching TV and playing video games -- on the likelihood that children will be overweight or obese.

Originally devised to help hypertensive patients lower their blood pressure, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) dietary pattern includes relatively large amounts of plant-derived foods, moderate amounts of low-fat dairy foods, and low amounts of animal protein. A new study by Dr. Teresa Fung and colleagues (Arch Intern Med 2008; 168:713) indicates that women who adhere to such a dietary pattern may lower their risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and stroke as well.

We've gotten some encouraging responses to the ACSH report on Scrutinizing Industry-Funded Science:
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We seem to agree on the major issues.

It may be hard to believe, but apparently there really are officials in both the UK and France who are not afraid of the use of biotechnology to improve and expand the food supply.

This morning, the folks who produce NBC's Today show allowed me six seconds (out of a six-minute segment) to comment on an astoundingly alarmist and unscientific "report" on the alleged dangers of plastic water bottles.

For many people, the concept of drinking unpasteurized milk may seem foreign. After all, you cannot legally purchase raw milk in eighteen states, and in four others it can only be purchased as pet food. Even if you could purchase raw milk in your local grocery store, would you want to? Hasn't raw milk been recognized as a microbial hazard since pasteurization began in the 1920s?

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when grocery sellers decide to market their wares by kowtowing to consumer fears. But that's what seems to be happening now. Wal-Mart has decided not to sell milk from cows that have been treated with rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin, or growth hormone) -- even though the FDA has said more than once that milk from such cows is no different from any other milk.