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Celebrate. Celebrate. No, that's not the return of the Celebrex TV ad with its aerobic arthritics. That's the euphoria of physicians delighted with a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel's recommendation earlier this year that Vioxx and its cousins Bextra and Celebrex (all medicines known as Cox-2 inhibitors) should remain on the market, despite evidence they increase heart disease risk in some people. The panelists reached their decision after weighing all the data and concluding the benefits of these pain-relieving drugs outweighed the risks.

What if there was growing evidence that an already-existing drug, taken daily, might dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer?
Shouldn't that be more newsworthy than fund-raising walkathons done in the quixotic pursuit of a simple cure? More noteworthy than the latest lab test which classifies an environmental chemical as a rodent carcinogen?
U.S. and Canadian scientists, led by Harvard's Dr. Peter Goss, this week began recruiting thousands of women at high risk of breast cancer to participate in a study of what may well be just such a drug.

This article originally appeared on http://www.Spiked-Online.com.
The new US protocol that says scientists with corporate connections are unfit to judge drug safety smacks of modern-day McCarthyism.

Now that the FDA has pressured Pfizer to remove Bextra from pharmacy shelves, applause rains down from the usual locales: self-styled "consumer advocates," politicos looking for a quick score, and columnists, all patting themselves on the back for "getting" Bextra.
The losers here, also as usual, are those members of the public who benefited (or might have benefited later on) from using this pain-relieving Cox-2 inhibitor.

An April 3, 2005 article by Randy Dotinga described possible health benefits of garlic but included this skeptical note:
Ruth Kava, director of nutrition with the American Council on Science and Health, said eating two raw cloves of garlic a day could be both physically and socially challenging.

An April 9, 2005 article on the news-for-fathers site DadTalk by Brett Levy notes a defense by ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross of the controversial CHEERS study on the reaction of children to pesticides, for which EPA Administrator Stephen L.

HOUSTON (CNI)--Don't trust laboratory rats when it comes to chemical and food health safety.
That's one of the messages of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a group that combats what it perceives as unnecessary public hysteria over whether certain chemicals, food additives and other substances can cause cancer in humans.

An April 6 article by Associated Press writer Libby Quaid about labeling of foods quotes ACSH Advisor Fergus Clydesdale, Ph.D.:
The makers of the butter-like spread Take Control had clinical studies showing it lowers cholesterol. But until they got approval from the Food and Drug Administration, they couldn't put it on the label.
"They had to say something like, 'Maintains healthy levels of cholesterol,'" said Fergus Clydesdale, a food science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who headed the study.

A March 31, 2005 Dow Jones Newswire report on the Pope's health quoted ACSH Advisor Dr. Marc Siegel:
A urinary infection can produce fever and a drop in blood pressure as reported in the Pope, said Dr. Marc Siegel, a specialist in internal medicine at the New York University Medical Center.
The pope's risk of such an infection is heightened because he is elderly -- which suggests his prostate is probably enlarged -- debilitated and run down from the illness that recently sent him to the hospital, Siegel said.

Helen Palmer from Public Radio International's Marketplace show interviewed ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava about EPA rules regarding kids and cancer risks, and you can download the RealMedia file of the March 30, 2005 broadcast.

Editors Note:
Associate Director Jeff Stier presented the following message as a guest on Dayside with Linda Vester on the Fox News Channel.
Later in the day, Medical Director Dr. Gilbert Ross communicated this message in a separate appearance on Fox News.
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Recently The Lancet posted a correspondence titled, "Lupin flour anaphylaxis (http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol365/iss9467/abs/llan.365.9467.revie…)." It was followed the next day with a BBC posting titled, "Lupin flour 'poses allergy risk'" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4419709.stm). Since then, there has been a deathly media silence.

ACSH has not published a study on this topic, but it took Google 0.17 seconds to come up with this:
Results 1 - 30 of about 156 related articles. Search took 0.17 seconds.

No Link Between Cell Phone Use and Brain Tumors, StudyMedical News Today, UKA new study has found no link between use of cell phones and the risk of developing a brain tumor. The study is published in the ...

Pesticides have taken the blame for a variety of health scares over the years, and no matter how many scientists explain that there is no conclusive evidence to suggest the dangers of pesticides, these chemicals are continuously attacked.

Rock Hudson, Arthur Ashe, Ryan White, Liberace, Alvin Ailey, Freddie Mercury, Anthony Perkins, Rudolf Nureyev. Remember when you could hardly go a month without hearing about someone famous dying of AIDS? And the New York Times obituary page was filled with thirtyish men, often in the arts, who had died "after a short illness." When is the last time you heard this? Probably about eight years ago. So what happened?
The pharmaceutical industry is what happened.
"The Gay Plague"

There's a lot of media coverage of this carcinogen and that. Almost exclusively, however, the reports deal with synthetic chemicals that supposedly present intolerable risks to the most vulnerable populations -- infants and children. But in many cases, if not most, the evidence of risk is not substantiated by sound science. There are, however, naturally-occurring chemicals that are known to be carcinogenic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), rubella, a virus notorious for causing birth defects, stillbirths, and miscarriages, has been eliminated from the United States. During its last major U.S. outbreak in the mid-60s, there were 12.5 million cases of rubella, resulting in 20,000 cases of congenital rubella syndrome, 11,600 babies born deaf, 11,250 fetal deaths, 2,100 newborn deaths, 3,580 babies born blind, and 1,800 more mentally handicapped.

Virtually everyone "knows" that red wine is the best type of alcoholic beverage to consume if you're concerned about health. After all, the French eat lots of cheese and other high fat foods, yet their rate of heart disease is lower than ours. This observation, known as the "French paradox," has been widely attributed to the red wine the French consume liberally. What is it about red wine that supposedly makes it superior to other alcoholic beverages?

A March 14, 2005 Los Angeles Times column by ACSH Director Henry I. Miller, M.D. addresses the question of whether banning all industry-associated scientists from advisory panels makes sense.

A review by scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) has found no likely risk to human health associated with the levels of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) to which the general population is exposed. The review disputes the claims by some journalists, litigators, and environmentalists that people are at risk from PFOA in the environment.

While we at ACSH have been determined to remain on the sidelines of the raging national debate about the fate of Terri Schiavo (this is largely a legal and ethical issue, not a scientific one), we cannot remain silent about the outrageous misrepresentation of scientific facts about this case that has been occurring in the past ten days.

A March 23, 2005 Wall Street Journal article by Jim Carlton informs readers that a "study" by an environmental group provides "fresh evidence of a potential pathway by which certain chemicals end up in people."

A March 25, 2004 article by Denise Mann on WebMD.com about artificial sweeteners quotes ACSH's Dr. Ruth Kava:
"These products can be useful when used appropriately for people like diabetics who need to control their sugar intake and in overweight people," agrees Ruth Kava, PhD, RD, director of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) in New York City.

A March 21, 2005 Chemical News & Intelligence article by Brian Ford summarizes the new ACSH report on the Teflon-production chemical PFOA:
A review by scientists associated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) has found "no likely risk to human health associated with the levels of PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) to which the general public is exposed," the ACSH said Monday.

A March 26, 2005 piece by Reason contributing editor and Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young noted a TechCentralStation.com article by ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan while summarizing the controversy over removing the feeding tube of vegetative Terri Schiavo: