Environmentalists Want to Save the Planet by Killing Asthma Patients

By Daniel Greenfield, @ Sultan Knish Blog

After blaming the imminent destruction of the planet on cows, babies and supermarket shoppers, environmentalists have found a new villain to scapegoat and persecute.

Asthma patients.

Remember the ‘ozone hole’ crisis that was supposed to wipe out the planet when the atmosphere would disappear any day now and flood us with deadly radiation? That particular fake environmental crisis in a series of them (overpopulation, global food shortages, ice ages, global warming) led to a crackdown on hairsprays, fridges and air conditioners.

Asthma inhalers were exempted because environmentalists didn’t believe that even liberals were quite ready to kill a quarter of a billion people in the name of ‘saving the planet’.

Maybe that has changed.

Most people have forgotten about the ‘ozone layer’, but the war on asthma inhalers has been heating up. The latest shot was fired in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which is supposed to advocate for patients, rather than against them, claiming that asthma inhalers release as much carbon dioxide as 530,000 cars or an entire conference of the American Medical Association.

Emissions from asthma patients trying to breathe “drive global warming”, a JAMA editor’s note falsely claimed. A ‘researcher’ at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine huffed and puffed that “inhalers add to the growing carbon footprint of the US healthcare system.”

The “carbon footprint” being the health and lives of hundreds of millions of human beings.

The researcher neglected to apply the same number crunching being used to condemn the asthma inhalers that millions of patients depend on to the private jet of David Geffen, a Hollywood billionaire, which has been listed as emitting 158.7 metric tons of carbon dioxide, or as much as 28 asthma patients with inhalers could emit over a lifetime of trying to survive.

UCLA shamefully admitted to emitting 279,834 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the equivalent of 12 million asthma inhalers. If we had to choose between the existence of UCLA and millions of asthma patients, it’s no choice at all. But obviously David Geffen is not about to stop flying his private jet, most recently to the Super Bowl in New Orleans, and UCLA is not about to stop handing out degrees in transgender poetry that could just as easily be dispensed via Zoom to AI-driven bots programmed to be woke, but asthma patients have to sacrifice.

At a campaign rally in Virginia, President Trump had complained that post-Ozone hysteria hairsprays were less effective. That’s obviously true. But less effective hairspray doesn’t kill people. Less effective asthma inhalers do. The push to get asthma patients to switch to ‘dry powder’ inhalers and other ‘environmentally friendly’ inhalers has severe consequences.

Another study published in JAMA earlier this year found that veterans in the VA system who were switched from metered-dose inhalers to ‘dry powder’ inhalers suffered increases in hospitalizations and ER visits.

“We had hoped that the inhaler formulary change would have had a neutral effect on clinical outcomes because the dry-powder inhaler was both less expensive and better for the environment, but the analyses showed that patients taking fluticasone-salmeterol dry-powder inhaler experienced more adverse health outcomes — likely offsetting some of the health system’s cost and carbon savings,” one of the researchers said. Though if the veterans had died, some environmentalists would have viewed that as a net ‘carbon savings’.

Those concerned more about a fictional environmental crisis that was made up yesterday and will be forgotten tomorrow than about the suffering of asthma patients keep claiming that ‘patient education’ is the way to go. Except that some asthma patients are using their medication during moments of stress and breathing difficulties, others are elderly, and metered dose inhalers are simple and simply work, which can make all the difference between home and a hospital trip.

Asthma patients already struggling to breathe are trying to suck in powder because environmentalists would rather ration the precious ‘carbon’ so that it can instead be used to offset the next trip by environmentalists to a global conference on how the world will end unless we outlaw asthma inhalers, supermarket shopping bags and human reproduction.

The level of environmentalist cruelty knows no decency, no boundaries and no limits.

The war on asthma inhalers has had numerous side effects on patients, with some newer medications only being made available in the more challenging ‘environmentally friendly’ and patient unfriendly inhalers, and the rush to patent new ‘environmentally friendly’ and ‘patient friendly’ propellants is further raising the price of already expensive medications. And giving insurance companies another reason to reject them from their narrowing formularies.

Asthma patients are having their lives and health threatened by environmentalists over a claim that their inhalers emitted less than 25 million tons of carbon dioxide over ten years.

The current estimate of 2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year from asthma inhalers also happens to be roughly the annual carbon emissions from the United Nations. Which one should we save and which one should we sacrifice: asthma patients or the United Nations.

Environmentalists of course aren’t advocating a shutdown of the UN while its various delegates, terrorists and appeasers hold their sessions via Zoom. Instead they want to grow the UN and destroy the lives of asthma patients over nearly the same number of carbon emissions.

It was never about the fictional problem of carbon emissions, but about inflicting misery.

Environmentalists don’t really want to save the planet, they want to kill us. The various fake crises are a pretext for wrecking lives, causing pain, and taking away even basic necessities while they jet off to their various conferences that ‘emit’ ten times as much of whatever.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

 

Report: 33% of adults recently diagnosed with asthma do not have it

By Steve Milloy @ Junk Science.com

(Editor's Note: Please go to the site and read the comments.  RK)

Duh… I wrote about the phenomenon of asthma overdiagnosis 14 years ago… and what are the implications for EPA air pollution junk science?

The media release is below.  My 2002 FOXNews.com article is below that.  As to the implications, suffice it to say that this reality further debunks EPA’s junk science-powered weak statistical associations on asthma and air quality. Also read: Ozone Triggers Lying Not Asthma.

Study finds 33 percent of adults recently diagnosed with asthma do not have it

OTTAWA HOSPITAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 33 percent of adults recently diagnosed with asthma by their physicians did not have active asthma. Over 90 percent of these patients were able to stop their asthma medications and remain safely off medication for one year.

“It’s impossible to say how many of these patients were originally misdiagnosed with asthma, and how many have asthma that is no longer active,” said lead author of the study Dr. Shawn Aaron, senior scientist and respirologist at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa. “What we do know is that they were all able to stop taking medication that they didn’t need – medication that is expensive and can have side effects.” Eighty percent of the participants who did not have asthma had been taking asthma medication, and 35 percent took it daily.

The study also found that doctors often did not order the tests needed to confirm an asthma diagnosis. Instead they based their diagnosis solely on the patient’s symptoms and their own observations.
“Doctors wouldn’t diagnose diabetes without checking blood sugar levels, or a broken bone without ordering an x-ray,” said Dr. Aaron. “But for some reason many doctors are not ordering the spirometry tests that can definitely diagnose asthma.”

The study looked at 613 randomly selected patients from 10 Canadian cities diagnosed with asthma in the last five years. After a series of detailed breathing tests followed by consultation with a lung specialist, asthma was ruled out in a third of these patients.

The research team was able to access the medical records of 530 of the patients to see how they were originally diagnosed. They found that in 49 percent of these cases, physicians had not ordered the airflow tests required by medical guidelines.

When the patients that were found not to have asthma were re-diagnosed, most had minor conditions like allergies or heartburn, and 28 percent had nothing wrong with them at all. Two percent had serious conditions like pulmonary hypertension or heart disease that had been misdiagnosed as asthma, and went on to receive proper treatment.

“It wasn’t a surprise to most patients when we told them they didn’t have asthma,” said Dr. Aaron. “Some knew all along that their puffer wasn’t working, while others were concerned that they might have something more serious. Thankfully, the majority of the conditions were mild and easily treated.”

Retired nurse Becky Hollingsworth was diagnosed with asthma two years ago. While participating in this study she learned that her shortness of breath was actually a temporary breathing problem left over from a bout of pneumonia.

“I was delighted we could verify that I did not have asthma,” said the 72-year-old grandmother. “Even if it’s falsely diagnosed, you still have to deal with the consequences of having a chronic illness. You have to take medication and if you want to take a trip somewhere the insurance can be higher.”

This study confirms and expands on the findings of Dr. Aaron’s 2008 study which suggested that 30 percent of asthma patients had been misdiagnosed. According to a 2010 Statistics Canada survey, 8.5 percent of Canadians aged 12 and over have been diagnosed with asthma. In many cases asthma is a life-long condition, but sometimes it can become less active or go away entirely.

“We need to educate physicians and the public to get the diagnosis right in the first place,” said Dr. Aaron. “Patients who have difficulty breathing should ask their doctor to order a breathing test (spirometry) to determine if they might have asthma or even Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Similarly, if patients think they may have been misdiagnosed with asthma or that they no longer have asthma, they should ask their doctor for a spirometry test. Asthma can be deadly, so patients should never go off their medication without speaking to a doctor first.”
###

Dirt-Asthma Link Needs Scrubbing
By Steven Milloy

 September 20, 2002 FoxNews.com

Cleanliness may be causing children to become asthmatic, researchers suggested this week.
It’s a wacky idea that seems to be getting attention thanks to the oft-parroted factoid that childhood asthma has soared over the last 20 years.

A study in the Sept. 19 New England Journal of Medicine reports that exposure to bacterial substances in dust from mattresses was weakly correlated with reduced rates of asthma and wheezing among 812 children living in rural areas of Europe.

The editorial accompanying the study, “Eat Dirt — The Hygiene Hypothesis and Allergic Diseases,” set the tone for media headlines, such as the New York Times’ “Environment Rich in Germs May Reduce Risk of Asthma.”

The so-called “hygiene hypothesis” tries to explain supposedly higher rates of allergic responses — such as asthma — among “cleaner,” affluent nations as compared to rates in “less clean,” poorer nations. The idea is that greater childhood exposure to germs leads to fewer subsequent allergies.
Based on this notion, the editorial describes the “introductions of indoor plumbing in the 19th century, antibiotics in the middle of the 20th century, and the cleaner more energy-efficient homes at the end of the 20th century” as possible culprits of the supposed “epidemic” of allergies in developed societies.

But let’s look closer at the alleged “epidemic” of childhood asthma before reverting to outhouses, bloodletting and log cabins.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported the prevalence of childhood asthma increased 86 percent from 1980 to 1996 (from about 37 cases to 69 cases per 1,000 children).
At face value, the statistics seem to validate the existence of an epidemic. A more detailed examination, however, exposes the folly of such superficial analysis.

The CDC data were collected by researchers who conducted telephone surveys merely asking, “During the past 12 months, did your child have asthma?”

But asthma is a complex medical condition that survey respondents weren’t qualified to diagnose. There was no medical confirmation for the claimed cases of asthma. So the data can’t be viewed as reliable.

You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Even the CDC lost confidence in its line of questioning.

In 1997, the CDC altered the survey to ask, “Has a doctor or other health professional ever told you that your child had asthma?” and “During the past 12 months, has your child had an episode of asthma or an asthma attack?”

Since the new survey questions, the reported prevalence of asthma has leveled off.

An explanation for the reported rise in childhood asthma from 1980 to 1996 lies in the fine print of the CDC’s report.

The CDC says the asthma prevalence data are subject to the phenomenon of “diagnostic transfer” — essentially misdiagnosing bronchitis as asthma.

The CDC researchers said reports of asthma increases are mirrored by reports of decreases in bronchitis, bronchiolotis and pneumonia. “These patterns suggest that diagnostic transfer has contributed to the increasing trend in asthma health care utilization,” they acknowledged.
Since it’s not clear there’s been any epidemic of childhood asthma — or any other allergic condition for that matter — it’s not clear a “hygiene hypothesis” is needed to explain anything.

The origin of the hygiene hypothesis — i.e., apparent differences in disease rates between first-and third-world populations — reminds me of the myth about a high fiber diet reducing the risk of colon cancer.

A British medical missionary observed in the 1970s that African populations seemed to have less colon cancer than Western populations. He attributed this difference — casually, and not in any scientific way — to higher fiber African diets.

The intuitive appeal of the alleged dietary fiber-colon cancer connection helped institutionalize the unproven idea in our society. Now cereal companies are allowed to advertise that high fiber cereals “may reduce the risk of certain cancers.”

Thirty years after the birth of the hypothesis, however, research has yet to confirm that high fiber diets reduce colon cancer risk.

The hygiene hypothesis could very well belong in the same scrap heap. Its major underpinning — the reputed childhood asthma epidemic — almost certainly belongs there.

Steven Milloy is the publisher of JunkScience.com , an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

 

American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week 17

...

Editor's Note:  The presence of linked articles here are a way of showing what is going on, whether I agree or disagree with the positions presented or not.

I have highlighted what I think are "must read" articles with three asterisks. RK

***Still breathless: Asthma rates rising even as smoking and pollution decline Asthma rates in the U.S. have increased over the past ten years, according to the CDC.

***Does asthma crop up more on the farm? The results of a recent study of the epidemiology of asthma may come as a surprise to some of our readers.

***“Save the Frogs” campaign: Follow the money to an anti-pesticide ruse Two recent articles in The American Spectator and the Huffington Post, as well as a posting on JunkScience.com, have pulled back the veil of deception of the current "Save the Frogs" campaign; we'd like to praise Robert James Bidinotto, Jon Entine, and Steve Milloy, respectively, for these editorial contributions.

***Dr. Ross tells it like it is (and then some): people vs. pests — and “environmentalists” Remember all those environmental activist reports that cropped up around Earth Day, alleging that prenatal exposure to certain pesticides will decrease your child's IQ? Well, ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross was sufficiently disturbed by the hype that he quickly decided to compose an op-ed pointing out the overwhelming body of evidence attesting to the safety of these pesticides for agricultural use.

Flame-retarded media continue to fan fears of chemicals An article yesterday in USA Today - which has apparently decided to become the bête noir of chemicals - demonstrates that even so-called "science journalists" are ill-informed about the risks (or, rather, lack thereof) associated with flame retardants used in household products.

Danes propose restrictions on certain phthalates Denmark's Environmental Protection Agency is calling for the restriction of four phthalates under REACH (the European Union's precautionary chemical regulation protocol).

Phony pharmaceuticals profusely propagating In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, William Weir offers a thorough overview of the dangers of increasingly prevalent counterfeit drugs.

***Narcotic overdoses in infants a real problem Disturbing new research by Dr. William T. Basco, Jr., director of the division of general pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina, and colleagues finds that about 4 percent of kids up to the age of three were given an overdose of a narcotic-containing drug.

***More supplements bite the dust — this time for prostate cancerDespite hopes to the contrary, a new study demonstrates that neither Vitamin E, selenium, nor soy can prevent or even slow the development of prostate cancer.

Dr. Siegel hits two grand slams in doubleheader For the second time in as many days, we'd like to give a tip of the hat to ACSH advisor and Boston University School of Public Health Professor Dr. Michael Siegel for his essays on two different smoking-related policies.

NEJM lights up TPSAC’s menthol cigarette evaluation Two perspective pieces addressing the menthol cigarette problem appear in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

***Not always worth the wait: Prostatectomy for younger prostate cancer patients? today we learned that for younger men - those under the age of 65 - diagnosed with early prostate cancer, a prostatectomy may be better than watchful waiting (WW) when it comes to both prostate cancer-specific and all-cause (total) mortality.


Insurance coverage for exercise could work out for diabetics A new study published in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association lends credence to the idea of providing insurance coverage for exercise programs - at least for diabetes patients.

Take salt dogma with a grain or two Even though the American Heart Association is now advising that people ingest no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium daily, you don't have to throw away that saltshaker just yet.

Food stamp ban on soda purchases is flat-out paternalism In March, ACSH challenged the validity of a proposal by New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg to prohibit the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages with food stamps.

Activist Attack on Coke’s Use of BPA Fizzles ACSH staffers would like to take our hats off to Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, who announced in an annual company meeting Wednesday in Atlanta that he does not believe there exists sufficient scientific evidence to stop using BPA in the epoxy linings of the company's iconic cans.

Junk food ads for kids may fall under same restrictions as X-rated content
Four governmental agencies - the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) - yesterday proposed voluntary guidelines for the food industry that would limit "junk food" advertisements aimed at children up to the age of 17.

Study yields more perspective on what kind of fruit you should resemble Let's talk fruit - in terms of body shape, that is. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic published a new study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology suggesting that being "pear-shaped" (carrying more fat in the hips, buttocks and thighs) is associated with a lower risk of adverse cardiovascular events compared to those who are apple-shaped (having excess fat around the midsection).

The Times column nukes its own anti-nuclear fallout Perhaps the folks who write for The New York Times should read each other's work! We'd like to note that a very informative article in today's The Times, "Drumbeat of Nuclear Fallout Doesn't Resound with Experts," resoundingly refutes yesterday's op-ed by Helen Caldicott.

In the sun or in a bed, excessive UV exposure produces (un)healthy tan  As summer draws near, a new survey from the American Academy of Dermatology reports that a striking number of young women tan despite the established health risks.

Fewer Mammograms, and no consensus yet on when to begin  The use of mammograms has decreased ever since the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) made a controversial recommendation in 2009 advising women in their 40s to wait until age 50 to get routine mammography screenings, and then only every two years.

Minn. “anti-cloning” bills called anti-business: We call them monkey business  All the common misconceptions about stem cell research have reared their ugly heads in an ongoing dispute in Minnesota that pits businesses against a so-called anti-cloning proposal that we thought had died an ignominious demise when we last skewered it.

Federally-funded embryonic stem cell research may proceed In a victory for embryonic stem cell (ESC) researchers, a U.S. appeals court has ruled that the Obama administration may continue to federally fund ESC studies using embryos that would otherwise be discarded.

Hormone Replacement Therapy not deserving of bad rap — as we said  An article in today's Los Angeles Times reports that women who begin to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at the onset of menopause (often called peri-menopause), around age 50 or so, and take it for five years or less, run fewer risks than benefits, including relief from hot flashes and pain during sex, as well as reduced bone fractures.

Plan B is underused: maybe ‘behind the counter’ is one reason  A new study indicates that although the number of women who have used the "morning-after pill" - officially named Plan B - has more than doubled, relatively few women are actually using this emergency contraceptive (EC).

Some good news to stomach A 2009 report highlights the need to include a rotavirus vaccine in national immunization programs of the underdeveloped world.

Unusual dilemma for Genentech: Competing against itself  The results from a multicenter trial funded by the National Eye Institute (part of the National Institutes of Health) demonstrate that after one year of follow-up, both Lucentis (ranibizumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab) had equivalent effects on maintaining or improving visual acuity in the treatment of wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a common cause of irreversible blindness among the elderly.

If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more?  Please Donate Now!

###

Observations From the Back Row: 5-5-11

...
“De Omnibus Dubitandum”

We have all been lied to by a shameless confederation of scientists, their professional publications, their formal organizations, and politicians seeking to use this big scare to advance their careers and agendas. The problem for all of them is that the real science does not support global warming and never did. Real scientists, branded dissenters, skeptics, and deniers, held true to the principles of science, knowing that it would eventually end this vast and terrible hoax. - Alan Caruba

Top Green Admits: “We Are Lost!” George Monbiot of the left-leaning British newspaper The Guardian has a must-read column in which he admits that because of a whole series of intellectual mistakes, the global green movement’s policy prescriptions are hopelessly flawed.

My Take – Wow! When the Great Moonbat himself says this you have to know that the entire green movement is at odds with itself. Make no mistake about this though; they are still the arrogant, self-righteous, irrational misanthropes who look down on anyone who confronts them as mental and moral inferiors. That is why they have no solutions. They don’t even know the questions. And they will never understand either because the green movement hates humanity, hates capitalism, hates progress and hates technology. Emotionally and intellectually they are children who believe that they can create utopia with their schemes and ideas, when in reality they end up creating dystopia everywhere they hold sway. Why can’t we get that?

The writer says; ‘when the greens digest his analysis and go a bit further to ask how they got into this mess, they will be ready to join something that the world truly and urgently needs: a serious and grownup conversation about how to conserve the beauty and viability of our glorious home”

Nonsense! That will never happen. They would then become just like everyone else and that would be unbearable for them. For without their arrogant, self-righteous, irrational and misanthropic views they would no longer be able to look down on anyone who confronts them as mental and moral inferiors. And we who are normal don’t need the insane to have a conversation about how to preserve the planet.

CDC in a quandry: Asthma up, but air pollution, smoking down The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today that the prevalence and number of persons with asthma have increased since 2001 despite improvements in outdoor air quality, and decreases in cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke exposure.

“The prevalence and number of persons with asthma have increased since 2001, and demographic differences among population subgroups persist despite improvements in outdoor air quality and decreases in cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke exposure. Although probable causes for the increase in asthma are unclear.....”

It is of course entirely possible, if not likely, that asthma is not really up so much as it’s being more frequently reported, often erroneously. So buck up, CDC, maybe the politically incorrect can still be blamed.

My Take- The reality is that if you were to read all of the things that are supposed to be asthma triggers you have to come away with the conclusion that they don’t have a clue as to what really causes asthma. But we do know that it isn’t pesticides as the greenies claim.

Why Can't We Learn From Others' Failures? Alternative Energy: Like a man living out a fantasy, President Obama is still pressing his green energy agenda. But a glance at other experiences tells him it won't work. Why does he think he can do what can't be done? 'Instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy sources, we need to invest in tomorrow's,"….Obama said in his weekly radio address of April 23. "We need to invest in clean, renewable energy."…

Consider Germany. It began a renewable energy program that has neither paid off nor lived up to its green promise……That country's program "is often cited as a model to be replicated elsewhere," RWI notes, but it's a model "without merit."…. Solar power, for instance, cost 62 cents per kilowatt-hour while conventionally produced electricity cost 3 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Wind power costs were 300% higher than conventional power……..Spain also has had an unpleasant experience with renewable energy. The country tried to establish a green economy — and failed. Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, a professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, found that "the Spanish/EU-style 'green jobs' agenda being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs."……(Please read “On Green Energy: Plainly Not Helping Spain”)....Researchers from the Italian think tank Istituto Bruno Leoni have published similar findings about their country. There, "each green job cost 6.9 jobs in the industrial sector and 4.8 jobs across the entire economy."

"The time has come," the Walrus said,

"To talk of many things:

Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax -

Of cabbages and kings,

And why the sea is boiling hot,

And whether pigs have wings."

###

American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week 15

###

Taken to heart: Calcium supplements may lead to cardiac problems A new meta-analysis warns that when assessing whether to take calcium supplements, you may need to consider that the risks to heart health could outweigh the benefits.

Forty years later NEJM reflects on DES, an actual endocrine disruptor Forty years after publishing the groundbreaking study linking in utero diethylsilbestrol (DES) exposure to a rare vaginal cancer - clear-cell adenocarcinoma (CCA) - the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has come out with a historical perspective piece on this incredible story.

2010: Smallest increase in drug spending The seemingly immutable rise of prescription drug spending in America is slowing, according to a new report released Tuesday by the consulting firm IMS Health.

Controlling painkilling drug abuse: A double-edged sword The fact that generic vicodin has topped the list of most commonly prescribed drugs reflects a growing national drug abuse problem. To combat this worrisome public health trend, President Obama has proposed an "unprecedented" initiative, instituting a government-wide approach to counter prescription drug abuse.

Obama blames coal for kids’ asthma President Obama claimed Tuesday that air pollution from coal can cause asthma in children.

New Alzheimer’s guidelines focus on much earlier detection The National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association are issuing new medical guidelines today that divide Alzheimer's disease into three stages.

Good and bad plastic news In a comprehensive review of bisphenol A (BPA) published in the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology, the German Society of Toxicology (GST) analyzed about 5,000 studies and concluded that, "[BPA] exposure represents no noteworthy risk to the health of the human population, including newborns and babies."

Organ donors should not face insurance hurdles — yet they do! ACSH staffers were taken aback this morning when we read that certain insurance companies have been denying applications or offering coverage with steep premiums to healthy organ donors.

Smoking ill effects know no gender — and no boundaries for harm Two new studies should give you two more reasons to quit smoking or even better, never to start in the first place.

Chemophobia might fracture natural gas initiatives As an unscientific follow-up to last week's interminable "toxic sugar" story is another chemophobic rant from The New York Times. This time it's about chemicals involved in the hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) process used to release natural gas from shale deposits deep underground.

Overkill: Radioactive iodine for early, low-risk thyroid cancer According to a new study published in the journal Cancer, patients with early stage, low-risk thyroid cancers should think twice before allowing their doctors to prescribe standard radioactive iodine-131 (RAI) treatment.

“Get up and shake that thing!” Prolonged sitting poses health threat New studies supply some confirmation that whether you're overweight or in shape, a sedentary lifestyle can cut years off your life, even if you work out multiple times a week, and whether you're overweight or trim.

Vancouver clean needle program: Another plus for harm reduction In February, ACSH commended the efforts of North America's only "safe injection site" - Insite - for successfully reducing the number of new HIV infections in Vancouver, B.C. by 52 percent since 1996. Now a new study published in The Lancet shows that Insite is also contributing another form of harm reduction: decreasing the number of deaths from drug overdoses.

Big pharma backs flu data-sharing deal for developing countries Diplomats from the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Saturday that the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA) has officially committed to providing sufficient and affordable supplies of flu vaccine to developing countries in exchange for the global sharing of virus samples with WHO's laboratories in order to make the most effective, targeted vaccine possible.

There’s beef over new skewed study on staph bacteria in meat and poultry The results of a study released last week conducted by researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix found that 47 percent of beef, chicken, pork and turkey samples were contaminated withStaphylcoccus aureus (S. aureus), a bacteria linked to illnesses ranging from mild skin infections to life-threatening diseases.

More of the same: EWG and Sen. Lautenberg promote precautionary principle  Much to the delight of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) continues to trumpet scientifically senseless and burdensome regulation to "protect" children from so-called toxic chemicals.

TNF Blockers get an added warning The FDA is requiring drug makers of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers to include an additional warning to their product label, cautioning of an increased risk for Hepatosplenic T-Cell Lymphoma (HSTCL), a type of blood cancer primarily reported in adolescents and young adults on TNF blockers.

Drink up: Diet soda consumption not linked to diabetes In a classic example of mixing up cause and effect, Harvard University researchers exonerated diet sodas and other artificially-sweetened beverages from previous studies linking their consumption to diabetes.

Dr. Wolfe’s message: Stay fat America Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizens' Health Research Group, has never met a drug he didn't hate.


###