Ronald Bailey: The Top 5 Bogus Health Scares
Health activists, nutrition nannies, medical paternalists, and just plain old quacks regularly conjure up a variety of menaces that are supposedly damaging the health of Americans. Their scares ranging from the decades-long campaign against fluoridation to worries that saccharin causes cancer to the ongoing hysteria over biotech crops to fears of lead in lipstick. The campaigners' usual "solution" is to demand that regulators ban the offending substance or practice. Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey parses five especially egregious examples.