American Council on Science and Health
Growing criticism over stratospheric cost of spinal muscular atrophy-fighting drug Zolgensma ignores trade-off value
Novartis recently won FDA approval for Zolgensma, a new medicine that can potentially cure infants suffering from the otherwise fatal ...
Viewpoint: Welcome to California, where coffee causes—and prevents—cancer
California's Proposition 65, which began its miserable life as The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, now has ...
‘Excessive’ regulations fuel unjustified consumer fear of CRISPR-edited crops, biologists warn
A Washington Post article, “The Future of Food,” discussed the methods we use to breed food crops but suffered from ...
Headache or brain tumor: How can we tell the difference?
A news report out [April 1] highlights an unfortunate situation of a young woman in the United Kingdom who claims repeated doctor ...
‘Better safe than sorry’? Precautionary thinking stokes unjustified fear of GMOs, chemicals, biologist says
“Better safe than sorry.” That’s a great lesson for a child when a parent explains why she should wear a ...
Your blood type may influence your vulnerability to stomach flu
Not only is a case of norovirus gastroenteritis the personification of misery, but the virus that causes it is also one ...
Viewpoint: Elective, unproven IV therapies create ‘perfect storm of risks’
We don’t have to look very far these days to find wellness facilities touting this or that intravenous (IV) infusion for “detoxification” and ...
Viewpoint: We can’t ignore scientific evidence about male, female brain differences
It's obvious to just about anyone who is paying attention — and to most biologists, in particular — that there ...
Viewpoint: Anti-GMO Organic Consumers Association helps Russia spread dangerous myths raising fake concerns about vaccines and biotechnology
Russian trolls are meddling wherever and whenever they can to cause societal strife. Radio Free Europe reports that Russian trolls may have ...
AAAS fiasco just got messier—After member revolt, data-less news release linking glyphosate to kidney disease pulled, Freedom and Responsibility award will not be presented, for now
Editor's note: After this blog was posted, on February 6, the American Association for the Advancement of Science tweeted that ...
Viewpoint: New York Times’ mixed record on science literacy—botched reporting on GMOs and chemicals while challenging anti-vaxxers
The New York Times has done something that it very rarely does: It wrote an editorial in support of biotechnology. The piece, ...
Viewpoint: No, Whole Foods Magazine, there’s no plot to sneak GMOs into our food
....Last week, Whole Foods Magazine (yes, that's a thing) published an article written by a lawyer, Scott C. Tips, about an evil plan to ...
New study hyping health benefits of organic food is more marketing than science, biologist argues
How do you know when a "study" isn't really a study? When the people who performed it wrote up a ...
Scientists can identify organic and conventional milk with a simple chemistry test
Food fraud is a substantial problem....because it is nearly impossible for consumers to tell the difference between, say, conventional and ...
Viewpoint: We aren’t doing enough to protect people against ‘false promises’ of unproven stem cell treatments
In an announcement of no surprise, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) again officially warned a company it previously warned in ...
Video: Glyphosate and other health ‘boogeymen’ aren’t causing all diseases
Should John Oliver decide that he’s had enough, perhaps because generating sarcasm is exhausting, there is someone who can slip ...
Artificial vs natural? Ocean Spray sued for using synthetic flavor in its cranberry juice
Ocean Spray, the company that makes several popular cranberry juice drinks, is battling a class-action lawsuit brought by two plaintiffs ...
Using molecular trickery to cross the blood-brain barrier
[There are a] number of methods that are being used to break down the [blood-brain] barrier that keeps drugs for ...
Change, resilience and the mysterious human microbiome
Our microbiome is an inner ecology of Planet Us. And thought of in that context, two new small, exploratory studies, may ...
America’s risk paradox: Flu killed 80,000 people this year, but we’re more worried about GMOs
We had a really bad flu season this year. The CDC just announced that about 80,000 Americans were killed .... H3N2 ...
Eating organic food prevents cancer? New study offers more confusion than clarity
The JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] Internal Medicine journal has a report .... on the relationship between organic food ...
Viewpoint: 7-year food fraud scheme exposes flawed oversight of organic farming
Three farmers in Nebraska just plead guilty to a food fraud scheme in which they were selling conventionally grown corn and soybeans ...
Simple urine test for anxiety, depression around the corner
Depression and anxiety are not always easy to detect. … Besides being time consuming and inconvenient, diagnostic criteria are rather ...
Viewpoint: New glyphosate study suggesting danger to honeybee microbiota is detailed, sophisticated—and wrong
Erick Motta and colleagues at the University of Hawaii just published a paper in PNAS entitled "Glyphosate perturbs the gut microbiota of honey bees." ...
Record-high yields suggest climate change no threat to coffee production
For roughly the last two years, the media has been warning us that climate change is threatening the world's supply ...
Famous chemist Bruce Ames a chemical ‘industry apologist,’ anti-GMO group claims
[The] Ames test .... is literally textbook science that is taught to students all over the world. .... It was ...
Viewpoint: Catering to anti-GMO activists is a losing business strategy
A few years ago .... Brent Smart, CEO of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi's, headquartered in New York, who had managed their ...
Viewpoint: There’s no such thing as an organic ‘superfood’
If you do a Google search of "Oz superfoods" you will get more than 40,000 hits. The good doctor really likes superfoods ...