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The following letter to the editor appeared in the August 5, 2004 Wall Street Journal:

Farmed salmon is getting yet another grilling this summer. Reports in an environmental journal once again suggest that contamination with "chemicals" (this time including fire-retardant chemicals) makes salmon a less than healthy food.
There are many, however, who beg to differ.

A couple of days ago we noted that a new health scare is on the horizon, one linked to the discovery of a class of flame-retardant chemicals called PBDEs in salmon. An article in the August 12 Wall Street Journal confirms our interpretation.

The credibility of the peer review process has come under vehement attack.
Scientists who receive no-strings-attached financial support for their research from demonized industries -- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and food, among others -- are no longer deemed trustworthy.

The world received the news today of the death of Julia Child -- a master cook, author, television personality -- and a lady with a great deal of common sense.

Yesterday's warning from acting FDA director Lester Crawford about the possibility of terrorists using contaminated pharmaceuticals as a weapon against us should cause everyone to reflect on the real risks associated with our nation's latest obsession: importing less expensive prescription drugs from Canada.
Specifically, Dr. Crawford noted that "cues from chatter" gathered around the world are raising concerns that terrorists might use the drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs, to hurt and kill Americans.

A recent study comparing x-ray analyses of asbestos-related lung damage revealed some troublesome results.

I offer full disclosure right up front: I love FoxNews. It is my favorite channel. Other than a brief peek at NBC's Today show at 7am each day, FoxNews is the only channel I watch. I find them to be, as their logo brags, "fair and balanced." It seems that many other Americans agree with me: FoxNews is frequently cited as being #1 in national viewership of cable news channels.
But despite my great allegiance to Fox, I think there is room for improvement at that network. A lot of room.

I've been a Mets fan all my life (and that's something, considering I was born in 1947), so I reacted to the news about ace pitcher Tom Glavine's recent auto accident with alarm. Not that I expect great things from the team this year that dream faded away like a highway mirage in July. But even though Tom is at an advanced age for a pitcher, he may well have a few more good years in him, and there's no doubt the team will be better next year (I always say that!). So I was upset to hear of his injuries and then relieved to learn of their minor nature he lost his two front teeth.

August 9, 2004 marked the third anniversary of President Bush's decision to limit federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research to cell lines created before August 2001. On this anniversary, First Lady Laura Bush defended her husband's policy and suggested that his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and members of former President Reagan's family, have overstated the benefits of such research.

With every new bit of terrorist-related news, we hear that the color on the Department of Homeland Security's terror threat system is or isn't changing from yellow (elevated) to orange (high), for example (here in New York City it's been orange since 9/11). Not that that change actually gives the average person any real directive on how he or she should change behavior. Now I'm beginning to wonder if we're seeing a similar phenomenon with respect to food salmon in particular.

I should be receiving a massive salary from Greenpeace and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But let me explain.

Recently two items of interest to medical providers and consumers appeared in the press:

"This was worse than labor" read the opening line of an Associated Press piece yesterday. What caused this mother of two such pain was not the repeated slamming of her fingers in a car door or an accidental fall on her tailbone. She was recalling her recent experience with the foodborne bacterial pathogen, salmonella. The source of the outbreak, which has afflicted over 300 individuals in five states, is not one of the usual suspects.

Readers of ACSH's website know that we have been skeptical for years about the value of antioxidant supplements for the treatment or prevention of various diseases like cancer or heart disease (see pieces here, here, and here).

For Immediate Release
WASHINGTON, DC, August 2, 2004 -- Consumers Against Pharmaceutical Profits (CAPP) formerly known as the Committee Against New Drug Innovation (CANDI), calls on officials to end the dangerous practice of buying cheap drugs from foreign Internet pharmacies. States such as Minnesota and Wisconsin are encouraging their citizens to purchase drugs from foreign Internet pharmacies despite the fact that these pills, while less expensive than the ones monitored by the FDA, are sometimes known to be counterfeit.

While the attacks on the World Trade Center have had incalculable effects on Americans, a recently released and widely publicized study gives hope that at least one of the effects of the disaster the release into the air of a substance known, at high doses, to be a carcinogen is not a long-term health concern even for those who spent a lot of time near the site.1

Center for Science in the Public Interest, which does not disclose its political donors and let's any number of corporations launder money through foundations, ironically chose to criticize the American Council on Science and Health for being transparent about disclosing corporate donors.

CEI-affiliated Soso Whaley contrasted her weight loss with the weight gain of her fellow McDonald's customer/documentarian Morgan Spurlock (noting ACSH's role) in a July 24 letter to the Washington Times:

A July 26 Los Angeles Times article by Johanna Neuman about the Center for Science in the Public Interest notes ACSH's take on them:

In response to the the latest press release from the advocacy group called the Center for Science in the Public Interest, below are some facts about the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH):
· ACSH is a not for profit organization led by a voluntary board of more than 350 leading physicians and scientists from prominent hospitals and universities.

Those Americans who crave being taken care of by the government will be comforted by the latest from Medicare: Obesity is no longer banned from the list of illnesses covered by our national health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. The "disease-ification" of America continues its march...
Click here to read the rest of Dr. Gilbert Ross's counterpoint column from the Daily News.

For years now, scaremongers have been trying to frighten consumers with the specter of so-called "Frankenfoods," especially food plants altered by gene-splicing to include pesticide resistance or higher levels of particular nutrients. Several years ago, for example, alarmist groups raised the fear that a protein added to StarLink corn would cause fatal allergic reactions in consumers. It didn't happen. But that hasn't stopped such accusations from getting much media play and causing some consumers to mistrust the latest methodologies.

Today is my mother's 90th birthday. She has the dubious distinction of being born the very day World War I began -- July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia after it failed to meet the conditions of an ultimatum it sent on July 23 following the Sarajevo assassination. Wife, mother, "career woman" (she served as pioneer self-help book author Dale Carnegie's personal secretary in the early 1940s) , she has seen a lot of life and a substantial amount of societal change -- almost all for the better.

Irradiated foods dangerous? Here we go again. And this time, it isn't the media sounding the health (scare) alarm but members of the science community. Which just goes to show, having a medical degree does not guarantee a degree of rationality.