Information Tobacco Companies Don't Want Teens to Know About the Dangers of Smoking
Prepared by the American Council on Science and Health
Foreword by Justin Guarini
The refiling of the lawsuit for two obese teen-agers against McDonald's Pelman v. McDonald's brings to mind an old Bill Cosby joke.
Cosby is awakened one morning by his tired wife, who tells him to go down and feed the children breakfast. He eventually does, grumpily, and spies a chocolate cake. His mind goes to the recipe for chocolate cake. There are eggs in chocolate cake. And flour. And milk. There's nutrition in chocolate cake!
Yet another young man has fallen victim to the American quest for a "magic bullet." A couple of weeks ago twenty-three-year-old Steve Bechler, a Baltimore Orioles pitcher, collapsed and died of heatstroke during spring training. The weather was warm eighty-one degrees but not outstandingly hot. Why would a young, strong, athletic man succumb like that? It is quite likely that at least part of the answer is Bechler's use of an herbal weight loss/energizing product containing the herbal stimulant ephedra.
Not everyone is celebrating this year's fiftieth anniversary of Watson and Crick's achievement: the deciphering of the double helix structure of DNA. To some, the molecular biology of DNA is a symbol of the much-despised, modern, Western, reductionist science that is blamed for every conceivable ill from imperialism and male domination of women to environmental degradation.
Break It Down, Build It Up
One of the most hotly contested issues in the popular nutrition press of late has been cutting carbs: that is, whether or not the much-touted low-carbohydrate, high protein, high fat diet espoused by such diet gurus as Dr. Atkins is better at helping people lose weight than a balanced, moderately high carbohydrate diet. Most mainstream nutrition experts have been leery of the rather extreme Atkins diet, partly out of concern that its high complement of total and saturated fats might cause or exacerbate heart-damaging blood lipid levels.
In a newly updated report, Traces of Environmental Chemicals in the Human Body: Are They a Risk to Health?, the physicians and scientists of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) conclude that the mere ability to measure small amounts of environmental chemicals in human blood and other tissue is not an indication of the presence of a health hazard.
Submitted by
The American Council on Science and Health
March, 2003
Overview
If the Environmental Protection Agency bans something, it must be dangerous, right? Well...
The authors of the short volume Misconceptions about the Causes of Cancer (UC Berkeley scientists Lois Swirsky Gold, Thomas H. Slone, Neela B. Manley, and Bruce N. Ames) deserve a great deal of credit for having the courage to write a somewhat dry book. But let me explain.
Somehow, the sociology of bogus scares seems all the more predictable when you see it play out in a foreign land, perhaps because you can ignore the cultural nuances that give a scare the appearance of legitimacy to natives and keep your eyes on the illogic of the scaremongers.
The April 9 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is a theme issue. All the research reports deal with some aspect of obesity, one of the nation's increasingly prevalent health threats. Obesity onset is often insidious: a person doesn't go from being a healthy weight to obese overnight. It can take many years of small changes in behavior to lead to obesity. A new report on data from the venerable Nurses' Health Study at Harvard documents one factor that can increase the risk of obesity.
A new journal is needed. It should be titled The Journal of Obvious Results and Unwarranted and Spectacular Conclusions. The readers of ACSH's webpages have by now seen headlines that read "Organically grown foods higher in cancer-fighting chemicals than conventionally grown foods." Like souls in a Hollywood hell, forced to sit through a bad movie for eternity, we will undoubtedly be having this "finding" thrust at us ad infinitum, as we are in the case of this latest article meant to prove the superiority of "organic" food.
We know that cigarettes are bad for our health, but there is an indirect way they can kill that we rarely stop to think about. Cigarettes are the number one cause of fatal house fires.
The Toll
There seems to be some disconnect from reality when one hears strident voices dogmatically proclaiming that our food system has "failed" and must be entirely transformed, or that the "Green Revolution" (which boosted crop yields through improved fertilizer use) is a failure. People who say that must think, as Tertullian (and later St.
Consumer Freedom (CF) is "a coalition of concerned individuals and businesses working together to promote personal responsibility and protect a full menu of consumer choices." Part of what they do is point out errors in science and tricky statistics that are used by activists to promote particular agendas. And usually they do a pretty good job. So this morning, when I received a list of their latest headlines and observations, I was surprised to see a decided misstep.
For several years the pharmaceutical industry has been under attack by those who are using the industry for political purposes. Some attack the pharmaceutical industry with the goal of establishing a government-run healthcare system, while others are simply gaining votes and campaign contributions from those with a grudge against the industry.
Organic food buffs think they are wiser than the rest of us about what to eat, but:
"The truth is there is no scientific evidence to prove that organic foods are safer or more nutritious than conventionally grown foods. They both must meet the same safety and quality standards based on government guidelines and standards."
Dietician Terrie A. Holewinksi, quoted by HealthScoutNews
A grim reminder that almost anything, not just synthetic chemicals, can be toxic in extraordinarily large amounts:
A Florida baby sitter was charged with murdering a 3-year-old girl by forcing her to drink so much water that she died of "acute water intoxication," police said on Monday...the child, Rosita Gonzalez, died of hyponatremia, which occurs when the body contains so much water that sodium levels are dangerously diluted, causing cells to malfunction.
Reuters, March 10
A New York City ban on smoking in bars goes into effect this coming Sunday, and a statewide ban goes into effect four months later. Some see it as reasonable regulation. Others condemn smoking but question the rationale for the regulations. And some see it as a direct blow against liberty. The differing opinions were nicely summed up by the article "Pataki Inks Strict Smoking Law" in today's New York Sun, which quoted, among others, ACSH's own Jeff Stier:
Bullies would call people sissies for being afraid of swing sets, but some of those same bullies probably grow up to complain about chemicals in their environment, which are far less dangerous than swing sets. Take the case of pressure-treated wood.
As a good lawyer, Joe Califano has bravely attempted to put the best face possible on the besieged report recently released by his Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), "Alcohol Consumption and Expenditures for Underage Drinking and Adult Excessive Drinking." However, he can't change the ugly fact that it is seriously flawed, with errors and misuse of statistics. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) criticized the study for making "inappropriate" assumptions, using CDC data to make an inflated claim about the extent of underage drinking.
Judge Robert Sweet of the U.S. District Court in New York dismissed a lawsuit against the McDonald's Corporation that accused the fast food giant of causing the obesity of two New York teens. Perhaps the plaintiff's supporters are outraged that McDonald's doesn't query customers about their caloric needs before selling them burgers and fries.
The current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) carries a lead article and accompanying editorial that are long on advocacy, short on data. The topic: alcohol consumption in America, who is drinking how much and how much is too much.
Our recent report on the role of beef in the American diet noted some beef benefits, but that didn't please everyone. Below is a prime example of how some of beef's detractors react to such news but we will not be cowed.
Responses:
February 11, 2003
Physicians and scientists at the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) called a second filing of a lawsuit against McDonald's Corporation "without scientific merit." Lawyers for two overweight and obese New York teenagers today filed a revised suit to replace the one which had been dismissed last month by Judge Robert Sweet in the U.S. District Court of New York.
