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Why Won't HHS Approve Crucial Flu Vaccine?

November 27, 2013  •  Politix

The incompetence, dissembling and lack of transparency at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is already well-established. But the degree to which the mess at HHS jeopardizes our health is only beginning to come to light. And it has nothing to do with Obamacare.

As we approach a busy holiday travel season, as cold weather grips much of the nation and as flu season gets into high gear, HHS is failing to make clear their intentions about when they'll green-light the manufacture of a vaccine for the particularly deadly H7N9 strain of avian flu from China.

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City Hall legislating in the shadows
Mayor Bloomberg's nanny-state agenda seems to materialize under cover of darkness.

October 16, 2013  •  New York Post

Is Mayor Bloomberg so devoted to his public-health drive that he's willing to break the law?

"Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made," the German statesman Otto von Bismarck famously noted. Now Bloomberg stands accused of not letting the public see how his team made various nanny-state laws and regulations from his (failed) soda ban to his rules against donating food to city-run homeless shelters.

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With Its Soda Tax, Mexico Repeats The Mistakes Of Mayor Bloomberg
If obesity could be outlawed, it wouldn't be a problem.

October 10, 2013  •  Forbes

By the middle of October, if everything stays on schedule, Mexico's legislators may well prove that they haven't learned a thing from policies that have been tried and failed, from Denmark to New York City.

Mexico's government is deciding whether to levy a 1-peso-per-liter tax on manufactured sugary drinks, purportedly to address Mexico's obesity epidemic.  The tax would raise just over $900 million in annual revenue.  But experience shows: the extra revenue won't go to reduce the obesity rate in Mexico — or anywhere else.  And, even if it did, experience also shows that the extra revenues collected won't have the intended effects on consumer behavior – which is where the waist-line battle is won or lost.

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Mandatory Labeling Of Genetically Engineered Foods Deserves A Warning Label Of Its Own

October 9, 2013  •  Forbes

Washington State is about to become the latest battleground in a cynical, well-coordinated scare campaign against genetically engineered (GE) foods.

Initiative I-522, "The People's Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act," which would mandate the labeling of certain "genetically engineered" (GE) foods, will be on the November ballot.  Similar to California's Proposition 37, which was defeated in November 2012, the Washington measure would require conspicuous labeling on the front of packages of most foods that contain or may contain GE ingredients.  This would encompass at least three quarters of food currently on supermarket shelves.

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The EU, US approaches to endocrine disruptors have been appropriate until now

October 2, 2013  •  Euractiv

When it comes to food safety, the European Union and the United States have some of the most effective scientific and regulatory programs in the world.

So it came as a surprise when France flouted the studies and assurances of EU and US food safety regulators and sought to ban the use of Bisphenol A (BPA) in any food contact item starting in 2015.

Activists are trying to push the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in the same direction. The EU should hold firm to the science and policy-making that led it to find that BPA, at levels at which humans are exposed, does not present a danger.

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