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Along with today's frigid cold throughout the country, fear is also in the air. "High" lead levels have been found in baby products, such as a cooler for storing breast milk and a pacifier carrier. ACSH staffers find this a bit outrageous. It's one thing to ban toys that contain lead and can be easily consumed by children, such as jewelry and painted plastic figurines. But it's another story altogether if the products you seek to ban are impossible to bite down on.

Matching the flu vaccine with the exact strain of influenza that is hitting the United States in a particular year is difficult -- and it's amazing how accurate the process usually is. But this year there is a fear the matching isn't entirely accurate, meaning there could be an outbreak of flu even among those who were vaccinated. "It's scary," Dr. Whelan noted. "Especially when we're talking about 30,000 deaths from the flu each year."

This weekend ACSH trustee Dr. Henry Miller had a letter to the editor appear in the New York Times. Dr. Miller's letter called for more FDA reforms, he wrote that the agency's most significant problems are "mismanagement and a culture that is excessively risk-averse." Dr. Miller calls for "competent management, discipline in the ranks, more effective risk-benefit balancing, a commitment to permitting patients to assume more responsibility for the risk of medicines and the banishment of politics from regulatory decisions and policy." Dr.

As ACSH discussed last week, the controversy about the Lipitor Dr. Jarvick advertisements is still heated. ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan said she was at a party this weekend and a man couldn't believe anyone cared about Dr. Jarvick, developer of the artificial heart, using a body-double in the television ads -- Lipitor, after all, is a fantastic drug.
"The point is not that Lipitor is not a fantastic drug," Dr. Whelan noted. "The point is that the ad unnecessarily introduced a level of fiction with the use of a stand-in actor for Dr. Jarvick's alleged rowing scenes."

ACSH applauds the animated sitcom King of the Hill, which last night depicted the town of Arlen, Texas, fighting back against a trans fat ban, which was quickly followed by numerous other food bans. Hank Hill and the other "freedom fighters" in the story (who decide to run a black market food van) explicitly chastised the town's fashionable but unscientific new rules by pointing out they'd do nothing to solve problems like childhood obesity. Eventually the bans were overturned -- and we only wish New York City were as wise as Arlen.

China cannot get a break -- just when talk about how polluted the summer Olympics may be in Bejing is dying down, the New York Times publishes a story on steroids in China's chickens. These steroids would show up in athletes' urine drug tests -- meaning if athletes consume such steroid-contaminated poultry in the weeks or days prior to the games they may be unable to compete.
The article reported that Tyson's is flying in 15,000 pounds of chicken for U.S. athletes, but we wonder what this means for athletes whose countries are unable to fly in their own food source.

The Internet can never be wholly trusted for accuracy, especially when it comes to medical information (remember all of the autism videos on YouTube?). Therefore, ACSH staffers were surprised by the small degree of error found on breast cancer websites according to a study published in the journal Cancer it's only 5%.

A February piece by the Heartland Institute's Melissa Mercer on New York City's calorie-count mandate for restaurants notes the skepticism of ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava:

If approved, the ordinance would affect only 10% of the city's 23,000 restaurants, according to a statement issued by the Department of Health.
"It [seems] unfair -- there are many other restaurants that won't be touched by this regulation," said Ruth Kava, director of nutrition at the Manhattan-based American Council on Science and Health...

Scare after scare appears in the popular press -- with news blaming traces of all sorts of chemicals and "toxins" for causing cancer. But it is becoming ever more apparent that many types of cancer are in fact linked more to lifestyle-related choices such as smoking and, now, obesity.

An article featured in the Wall Street Journal this week may have left many people asking: What's more important, my heart or my brain?

It's rather obvious that people are not rats, but there must be some confusion as many news outlets are trumpeting the results of a rat feeding study as though they could be applied directly to humans. Major newspapers and TV stations, as well as various Internet outlets have posted headlines stating or suggesting that the non-caloric sweetener saccharin can lead to weight gain. What gives? Are there really data substantiating such a conclusion, or was it just a slow news day?

February 1, 2008: Brits, Salts, Clots, and Counterfeits
- Quote to Note: "This is one of the most promising breakthroughs in the management of high-risk pregnancies in more than thirty years." --Dr. John Thorp, about the study he co-authored on how magnesium sulfate -- a familiar ingredient of Epsom salts -- reduce the risk of cerebral palsy in premature births by 50%.

Some activist "watchdogs" are again attempting to manipulate parents' natural concerns about their babies, without medical or scientific evidence. A few days ago, the uproar was over baby powder and lotions alleged to be delivering toxic phthalates; today, it's baby bottles and plastic water bottles leaching supposedly-toxic bisphenol-A (BPA). Both of these attacks are false.

A recent article in USA Today describes how big business can have an impact on food safety. The agricultural industry is increasingly dominated by a handful of high-volume producers, which means no contamination incident is small in size or scope. Add to this the problem of an outdated food-surveillance system that can’t really police the nation’s entire food supply and often prioritizes risks poorly.

An article in the current issue of the medical journal Pediatrics claims that baby lotions, powders, and shampoo contain a chemical known as phthalates, which are absorbed by babies through their skin, leaving them at risk of disease and disabilities.

Legislators all over the country are rightfully concerned that more and more citizens are becoming obese, and they're not sitting still for it! New York City, for one, has demanded that chain restaurants post the calorie content of their foods on menu boards. But Mississippi legislators are going even further. They are rightfully concerned that residents of their state have about the highest proportion of obesity in the whole country. So, what do they want to do about it? Prevent the fatties from dining out, that's what.

January 7, 2008: A Long Way, Baby, Albeit While Coughing
- Quote to Note: "A man may take out a woman who smokes for a good time, but he won't marry her, and if he does, he won't stay married." --A 1914 Washington Post editorial.

This piece first appeared in the New York Post on January 23, 2008:

This piece first appeared on HuffingtonPost.com.
If you knew there were a new product that was:
¢not as well tested as the product it is meant to replace
¢quickly becoming popular in offices and homes -- including homes with young children
¢manufactured by some of the world's largest and most profitable companies
¢possibly responsible for debilitating migraine headaches
¢a risk for skin diseases including skin cancer

There are no legitimate health concerns associated with eating the tuna available today -- in sushi or other forms. Enjoy it without worry.
The front-page story by Marian Burros in the New York Times on Wednesday, January 23rd lacked critical perspective. She confused a legal/regulatory issue with a health issue.

This piece first appeared on January 8, 2008 on TCSDaily.com.
Patients will benefit if the Supreme Court sides with pharmaceutical companies in two cases this session, establishing the general principle that drug makers can't be sued for unforeseen side effects that emerge after drugs have received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. The alternative is to let pharma slowly be sued into abandoning the introduction of new lifesaving drugs, since new drugs always carry some risk.

This piece first appeared on MedicalProgressToday.com on January 18, 2008.

ACSH's Jeff Stier was quoted in the January 24, 2008 New York Sun piece by E.B. Solomont about fears of mercury in sushi (and commented on the story on Google as well):
"Assuming that the numbers reported are accurate, I don't see how anyone is put at any risk," the associate director of the American Council on Science and Health, Jeff Stier, wrote in an e-mail message.

A January 22, 2008 blog entry by Diana Young, R.D., notes ACSH's survey of Nutrition Accuracy in Popular Magazines:

Here's just the first of ACSH's top 10 examples of groundless health scares from 2007, as condensed by the Toronto Star on January 4, 2008:
Condensed from the American Council on Science and Health's list of medical stories that made us worry unnecessarily in 2007: