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Sally Squires' Washington Post article "The Cost of Compliance" (February 22) dished a healthy dose of reality to those who suggest that the obesity crisis in this country is the fault of big business trying to dump cheap, unhealthy foods on an all-too-susceptible public.

A quick search on Google or any Internet search machine for the topic "alcohol, pregnancy" will reveal that the precautionary principle is alive and well.

On February 13, 2005, ACSH received a letter from the mother of an autistic child asking what our response was to the February 8th release of a 1991 Merck & Co. memo. The memo in question, written eight years before the FDA noted this fact in 1999, cited knowledge of the possibility that additions to the pediatric vaccine schedule resulted in overexposure of children to the ethylmercury based vaccine preservative, thimerosal.

Next week, the American Legacy Foundation (Legacy), the national tobacco control organization formed as a result of the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in 1998, will be giving Time, Inc. an award at its dinner for helping the American Legacy Foundation reach a national audience in support of the foundation s educational and awareness campaigns.(1) Corporations that advance tobacco control should be recognized and applauded for their work. However, as Time, Inc.

I saw the posters everywhere this weekend "Celebrating Fifty Years of Flavor": Celebrating Marlboro Cigarettes!
Celebrating? Under what possible circumstance should we be celebrating the anniversary of the introduction of a product that is the leading cause of preventable death in America? It is bad enough that we tolerate it--and turn our heads away from the billions of dollars spent annually to advertise and promote it.
But we have to celebrate it, too?

Yesterday, the Smokefree Movies Action Network launched a campaign to obtain signatures on a global petition to encourage the Motion Picture Association of America to keep smoking out of youth-rated movies.

Your humble editor is taking next week off, but before I do so, I must quickly note a few milestones:

Despite nearly two million injury-causing car crashes each year, Congress and environmentalists apparently have made safety a lower priority than their (largely futile) efforts to reduce auto gas prices and carbon dioxide emissions. Despite years of government dictates, based largely on guesswork, the attempts of bureaucrats and politicians to raise auto fuel-economy standards have been a proven failure -- and a dangerous one for the public's safety.

This article first appeared in the Austin Statesman on February 7, 2005:

This article originally appeared on http://TechCentralStation.com.
The government is not doing a good job in telling us what causes cancer.

New York, NY -- February 2005. The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) is pleased to announce the release of an updated version of its publication The Prevention and Treatment of Osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis is a progressive bone disorder that weakens bones and can result in multiple debilitating fractures. It is a major health threat in the United States; ten million Americans, most of them women, already have the disease, and millions more are at risk.

For immediate release
New York, New York -- February 2, 2005. The American Council on Science and Health today warned of the serious and negative health implications of our nation's current fixation with removing "carcinogens" -- trace levels of chemicals that at high dose cause cancer in laboratory rodents -- from the food, water and general environment.

Superstitions -- closely held beliefs lacking any scientific support -- have been around for ages. They promise empowerment: if you take some pre-emptive action (avoid broken mirrors, black cats, or ladders) you can dodge dire consequences. True, there is no evidence that such actions protect you, but just in case, you take a few extra steps to avoid the ladder. After all, you never know.
Superstitions prevail in our high-tech era. Take for example the common practice of using the results of high-dose rodent cancer tests to predict which substances might cause human cancer.

The Washington Times was among those picking up the UPI review by ACSH president, Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, of Michael Crichton's State of Fear.

A February 14, 2005 Journal News article by David Schepp, about the company Weyco firing workers who smoke, included comments from ACSH president Dr. Elizabeth Whelan:
"If I had a choice I would not hire a smoker," says Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, a public-health advocacy organization...
As a practical matter, Whelan says, it makes less sense in the face of rising health-care costs to hire someone who voluntarily participates in a habit known to further disease.

A February 11, 2005 "Q & A" feature in the Atlanta Journal Constitution mentioned ACSH's take on The Facts about Bisphenol A:
Q: I remember reading about potential problems, such as toxic danger, in reusing plastic water bottles. Can you discuss that?
--Howard Schell, Roswell

A February 06, 2005 article by Jennifer C. Smith in The Monitor about a report on barbecue-induced cancer quotes ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan counseling calm:
The vague nature of the report upsets Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer advocacy and education group in New York.

A review of ACSH's book America's War on "Carcinogens" appeared in the February 8, 2005 Risk Policy Report:

Hard-nosed reporter and man-about-town Gary Shapiro wrote an article for the New York Sun the week of February 8, 2005 that included a description of the New York release party for ACSH's book America's War on "Carcinogens" and a mention of Johnny Carson's smoking-induced death:

A February 2, 2005 review of Michael Crichton's anti-eco-radical thriller State of Fear, by Read Schuchardt, editor of http://Metaphilm.com , mentions ACSH's Todd Seavey:

A commentary by Linda Gasparello in White House Weekly on February 2, 2005, described ACSH's release of our book America's War on "Carcinogens": Reassessing The Use of Animal Tests to Predict Human Cancer Risk:

A January 31, 2005 Associated Press story describes the government's new list of "carcinogens," produced by the National Toxicology Program, but quotes ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan in a section about objections to the sweeping and poorly-prioritized structure of the list:
But the American College of Radiology faulted the addition of X-rays and gamma rays, saying it was misleading and could prompt patients to avoid getting needed care.

A recent article in London's Evening Standard claimed that research completed by the Irish Doctors Environmental Association (IDEA) found the first proof that cell phones cause health problems, but is this research we can rely on? The doctors ignore the lessons learned from previous research along these lines. In September of 2004, researchers in Sweden found links between cell phone usage and acoustic neuroma. The studies were flawed but created a scare nonetheless.

Back when Jaws was scaring us on the big screen in the 1970s, Americans were being warned of a more subtle danger. On television and in the papers, we were told that saturated fats, the type found in some meat and dairy products and in some processed foods, were on the verge of causing an epidemic of heart disease.

Whether gold or grain, humans don't give it away.
Globally, a thousand people die of hunger every hour. Over 800 million of us are chronically malnourished. Yet studies consistently conclude that the world actually produces enough food for everyone; if only it were more evenly distributed we could eradicate hunger.
This is a major plank in the argument against using modern farming methods to increase food production: there's already enough food, so we don't need modern technology.