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To the Editor:
Re "Responding to Anthrax Attacks" (editorial, Oct. 16):
Given the public concern over the recent anthrax cases and scares, I am disconcerted by the lack of information coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which should be in the forefront of such communication. Sharing what it knows is a large part of preventing irrational responses, like unwise self-medicating.

To the Editor:
In regard to Dr. Scott Gottlieb's Oct. 19th editorial-page piece "Ammo for the War on Germs" some of his ideas are misleading:

To the Editor:
Vaccinations against influenza the "flu shot" should indeed be encouraged by our public health officials, but not merely to allay fears concerning confusion with anthrax symptoms ("Flu Shots Won't Alleviate Worries...", Nov. 1).
Influenza, a largely preventable disease, continues to kill over 20,000 Americans each year, despite the availability of an effective vaccine. Yet, between one-third and one-half of those who would most benefit, such as the elderly and those suffering from chronic diseases, remain unprotected.

Only half of Americans and few scientists believe in alternative medicine, but we're all paying to study it.

From a relatively small $2 million per year operation in 1992, called the Office of Alternative Medicine, a behemoth has grown now known as NCCAM, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Its funding has grown even more rapidly than the popularity of alternative medicine has and is now soaring over $100 million a year.

At least one type of stroke is more likely in the morning, according to a study done by neurologists and internists at Italy's University of Ferrara. They found that about 44% of the ischemic strokes (due to reduced blood flow to the brain, as with a blood clot) in the population they studied started in the quarter of the day between 6am and noon. The scientists suggest a "chronotherapeutic approach," including antihypertensive agents designed to lower morning blood pressure.

Executive Summary
Perchloroethylene (PCE, or perc) has been the subject of close government and public scrutiny for more than 20 years. But government agencies in the U.S. and around the world have not agreed about the potential of environmental exposure to PCE to cause adverse health effects, including cancer, in humans. This report summarizes and evaluates the evidence behind these disparate views, and provides a balanced assessment of the possible risks of PCE based on the best available science.

Executive Summary
Many women young and old devote a significant amount of time to reading women's magazines. Some turn to these publications for relaxation and/or to review the latest fashions, but others also seek reliable lifestyle and health information. Those seeking medical advice will often depend more on these magazine articles than on their doctors or other healthcare professionals.

Water is necessary to prevent overheating of the body; for fecal, urinary, and perspiratory excretion; and for bodily chemical reactions of numerous kinds. Environmental and physiologic conditions can greatly affect how much water the body loses. For example, in residents of hot climates, perspiratory water losses generally are much more than in residents of temperate regions. Exercising increases such water losses. So does fever.

Humankind has been consuming cows' milk as nourishment for thousands of years. Such use has contributed significantly to the development of civilization. Yet outcries to the effect that cows' milk as food is unhealthful, even poisonous, to humans have occasionally been getting play in the American media. The roots of this incongruity are complex. They lie in the culture of abundance that characterizes the present-day United States. Much of the negativism toward milk relates far less to health concerns than to antagonism toward animal agriculture.

"Canola oil," Rodney W. Flynn apparently said in a message that recently circulated on the Internet, "is a health hazard to use as a cooking oil or salad oil. It is not the healthy oil we thought it was. It is not fit for human consumption, do not eat canola oil, it can hurt you. Polyunsaturated or not, this is a bad oil." Yet in an email response to a question from me, Flynn said of this message: "I am no authority on the subject. As a matter of fact, I did no research.

Most of the recent press coverage of the Jenna and Barbara Bush under-age drinking incident has missed the main point: Making it a crime for a 19 year old to buy an alcoholic beverage is not only unrealistic and absurd but it may be an underlying cause of today's serious problem of alcohol abuse on college campuses.
Prohibiting the sale of liquor to responsible young adults creates an atmosphere where binge drinking and alcohol abuse have become a problem. American teens, unlike their European peers, don't learn how to drink gradually, safely and in moderation.

The 20th century was characterized by economic and technological change of unprecedented rapidity as shown by all economic indicators. The non-economic indicators are just as spectacular life expectancy, health and increases in per capita food supply, which more than accommodated population growth that virtually all "experts" believed could not be fed. Both the developed and developing worlds added a nearly 30 years in average life expectancy. Strange as it may seem, the longer that we live, the lower percentages of our lives do we spend with disabilities.

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) today announced the addition of nine distinguished scientists, physicians, and policy experts to its Board of Directors. Directors are responsible for the overall direction of ACSH, such as setting organizational policy and overseeing the executive staff.
The new directors are:
Terry L. Anderson, Ph.D., M.S. Executive Director Political Economy Research Center (PERC) Bozeman, MT
Dr. Anderson's career in law and environmental economics enables his providing insight to ACSH on such issues.

New York, NY Contrary to the claims of the activist group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), there is no scientific validity to fears that diesel exhaust emissions from school buses pose a cancer risk to schoolchildren.
This was the conclusion reached by scientists affiliated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), which today released a peer-reviewed analysis entitled School Buses and Diesel Fuel. The ACSH report criticized a recently promoted report on diesel exhaust, authored by the NRDC.

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) has found that, as a group, consumer-oriented and homemaking magazines outrank other types in the quality of their nutrition reporting. The eighth ACSH survey of nutrition reporting by popular magazines ranked 14 of 20 surveyed magazines as "excellent" or "good" sources of nutrition information.

Although AIDS remains a major health problem in New York City (NYC), previous estimates of the number of persons infected with the AIDS virus in NYC were overstated, according to a new report by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), AIDS in New York City: Update 2001

"Eat, drink and be wary of those who try to scare you about the safety of your food." That was the message issued today by food safety scientists at the American Council on Science and Health who noted that the scare about bioenginered foods was distorted and exaggerated--and completely without scientific merit.
The Center for Disease Control's (CDC) found this week that there was no evidence that biotech Starlink corn caused allergic reactions in those who consumed it.

Caveat Emptor. Consumers and Journalists beware-Biodevastation activists aim to target you over the next few days with false and misleading information about food safety, nutrition and the environment. The same people who brought you a long list of other false health and environmental scares-including the infamous Alar in apples scare, the Dow-Corning breast implant campaign-and dozens of other debunked fears are at it again. This time the scaremongers are targeting such safe foods as milk and other dairy products in your local supermarket and at food retail outlets such as Starbucks.

In July of 1988, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the estimated number of cases in New York City suddenly plummeted. The city health commissioner soon needed police protection.
Until that July, the city had estimated that 400,000 New Yorkers carried the AIDS virus. Then the commissioner, Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, reviewed the evidence and reduced the estimate to 200,000. He was promptly denounced by leaders of AIDS organizations and gay-rights groups, who accused him of lying to minimize the crisis.

YOUR ARTICLE REVEALS AN IMPORTANT danger of accepting at face value supplement manufacturers' claims that their products are all natural and must be safe because they have been used for years. While the Chinese (or Indians, or South Sea Islanders) may have used an herbal product for a thousand years, they were not simultaneously using immune suppressants, blood thinners, or any of a host of other modern, lifesaving pharmaceuticals.

As a public health professional, I was appalled by the intensity of the antagonism over the damages in a Californian's lawsuit against Philip Morris U.S.A., decided last June. Sure, the damages $3.5 billion may seem immense. But this record award will barely dent the tobacco giant's profits.

In regard to "Spending on Prescription Drugs Rose 19%" (Economy, May 8): I fear that many readers will view this significant increase on drug spending in 2000 as more bad news about health care in the U.S. Yet if we consider how many patients have been helped by the very drugs that are responsible for this rise in spending, we might instead see this as a step forward.

A World-Wide item May 16 referred to a report on dioxin by the EPA's Scientific Advisory Board concluding that "dioxin causes cancer." Perhaps true, if you were referring to rats. While agreeing that the evidence was sound to incriminate dioxin as a rodent carcinogen, there was "a lack of consensus . . . with regard to whether [dioxin] satisfies EPA's 1996 draft cancer Guidelines criteria for a human cancer hazard." The board members could not even agree that dioxin was a carcinogen in highly exposed workers.