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You know, I've been feeling awfully tired lately. I haven't been sleeping well, and when I do sleep, I grind my teeth. Also, I'm feeling slightly nervous, forgetting minor details, and eating more than usual but not gaining weight. Should I be worried? According to the November 2002 issue of Secrets of Robust Health promoted as a "health newsletter for the thinking person," I should. Divulging information "you will probably never hear from your family doctor"(with good reason, as we'll see), the newsletter claims that all of my symptoms point to the same culprit: a parasite.

Parasites are organisms that live inside or on the body of their hosts, receiving nourishment and propagating, while at the same time causing a variety of symptoms. According to Secrets...,...

Dietary supplements are a big business. The industry made almost US$39 billion in revenue in 2022, and with very little regulation and oversight, it stands to keep growing.

The marketing of dietary supplements has been quite effective, with 77% of Americans reporting feeling that the supplement industry is trustworthy. The idea of taking your health into your own hands is appealing, and supplements are popular with athletes, parents and people trying to recover more quickly from a cold or flu, just to name a few....

Because climate-change deniers are no longer able to say, with a straight face, that the climate isn’t changing, they resort to a host of irrelevancies. First, it was that the phenomenon was natural, the climate has always changed. This may be true, but it is also irrelevant since climate change has wreaked enormous environmental damage, and we need to worry about future trends. Claiming this is a natural phenomenon to justify their “do nothing” response is sheer lunacy. Imagine if a (natural) meteor was hurtling towards Earth - shortly to cause its oblivion. Can you just imagine these hide-your-head-in-the-sand birds saying, “Well, it’s a natural event, so why do anything?” The relevancy of the response, however, goes to what we should do about the situation, not to deny...

January 2, 2007: Less Smoke in France, Less Sperm Everywhere, More Fat in Memphis

- Quote to Note: "There's no stopping now. Soon they'll ban alcohol and you'll need to bring in your latest blood tests to eat in a restaurant," said Francis Attrazic, vice president of the hospitality industry association UMIH, about the new smoking ban in France.

- We hope everyone had a wonderful time ringing in 2008. Our main New Year's Resolution is, as always, to try and put an end to junk science. It's not an easy job, and we were reminded this weekend of how tough it can be. On Saturday, the New York Times published an op-art about 2007's "greatest" food scares....

As an economic development expert, I have written about and been an advisor on disaster relief. Now that there is a major disaster close to home and very much in the news, it might be a good idea to outline some basic principles of disaster intervention. Ironically, since the effects of Hurricane Katrina are so close at hand for us in Houston, many of the established rules of intervention -- which hinge on recognizing the distinction between local knowledge and the desire by distant donors to grant assisitance -- can be violated, but it is still important to know the general rules.

Once the first phase of a disaster passes, intervention is best left to the professionals, who establish the framework for relief efforts. If citizen help is needed, those involved in relief will call...

DISPATCH: Plastic, Longevity, Gender, and Vitamins

The Anti-Quote of the Day: The dangers of plastic bottles
"The truthful answer is that nobody knows" their full health impact yet, said David Ozonoff, a professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. "And because we don't know, it's prudent to avoid something that is avoidable." --_Boston Globe_, April 23, 2008.

ACSH on Fox News
ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss a new study about life expectancy in America. She emphasized that the study's primary conclusion was very good news: Overall, Americans are living longer than ever--with a seven-year increase in life expectancy between 1960 and the 1990s. But there are segments of the population in...

Food certification labels do not indicate better nutrition or quality. These labels cannot guarantee better human nutrition or health; they are marketing devices using a set of standards concerned with one or more of the following

  • social issues
  • environmental impacts
  • dietary restrictions
  • animal welfare
  • fair trade

Some promote ‘sustainability,’ a concept we still struggle to measure and define. And there are older labels, such as kosher and halal, based on religious practices and laws.

Are These Foods Safer?

These labels are not indicators of food safety. Food companies can choose from many food safety certifications promoted by international, non-governmental organizations such as...

The historical vaccination for smallpox, caused by variola, was inoculation with cowpox, vaccinia – two microbes that were similar but not the same. [1] 

Advances in science brought us Salk’s polio vaccine, where the poliovirus infectivity was inactivated, but its immunologic signature maintained – similar, but not the same. Through multiple passages through cells and animals, Sabin’s polio vaccine lost its ability to cause disease. It kept its immunologic signature, but its virulence was attenuated – similar but not the same. [2] 

Similar is an ambiguous term. How close does one need to be similar? 4.1 is similar to 4, 4.2 a little less so, 5 maybe not at all. The newest vaccines, the mRNA vaccines, are closer to the 4.1 than the 5. They provide only the immunologic...

With the cancellation of "The Dr. Oz Show", his alternative medicine audience should not think of it as a time to mourn. but instead should take a moment to celebrate the man who created all their worst fears; they should rejoice a guy who wore medical scrubs during a show in which he suggested apple juice was as dangerous for children as plutonium, who taught concerned viewers to fear chicken and to love juice cleanses. They should applaud that for a decade (or whatever) we had a place to learn The Secrets Of Plus Size Models, that we had someone on television not afraid to do an episode called "Charlie Sheen Heads to Mexico."

We are, of course, famous for taking him down. It was...

A few times per year we have a meeting of the Trustees of the American Council on Science and Health, to discuss issues like finances (1), to discuss nominees for our Board of Scientific Advisors, and our general direction.

Among our Trustees is Fred Smith, the founder of Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which promotes the benefits of free markets. I certainly agree with them on that (2). At our November meeting Fred asked for a spot on the agenda to talk about how we can better talk about science policy without getting into politics.

That is obviously tricky. Science is both corporate and political, when it comes to basic research the private sector and government fund about half each, so if you defend science you are implicitly defending corporations and engaging...