This book is a simple, easy-to-read guide to debunking health scares and scams before you get hurt.

Our public health system is primarily concerned with the promotion of health and the prevention of disease. But while everyone may agree with these goals in principle, in practice public health is a highly contentious policy arena. that is inevitably entangled with sensitive issues ranging from occupational safety and environmental hazards to health education, immunization, and treatment of addiction and sexually transmitted disease. Today however, concern for protecting the population against bio-terrorism and new epidemics such as SARS is tipping the balance back toward increased support for public health. This book focuses on the politics, policies, and methodologies of public health and the twenty-first century challenges to the public health system of the United States. It explores the system's relatively weak position in the American political culture, medical establishment, and legal system; scientific and privacy issues in public health; and the challenges posed by ecological risk and the looming threat of bio-terrorist attack. Each chapter includes study questions. The volume also includes a chronology of major laws and events in public health policy along with an extensive bibliography.

What do we know about the possible poisons that industrial technologies leave in our air and water? How reliable is the science that federal regulators and legislators use to protect the public from dangerous products? As this disturbing book shows, ideological or economic attacks on research are part of an extensive pattern of abuse. Thomas O. McGarity and Wendy E. Wagner reveal the range of sophisticated legal and financial tactics political and corporate advocates use to discredit or suppress research on potential human health hazards. Scientists can find their research blocked, or find themselves threatened with financial ruin. Corporations, plaintiff attorneys, think tanks, even government agencies have been caught suppressing or distorting research on the safety of chemical products. With alarming stories drawn from the public record, McGarity and Wagner describe how advocates attempt to bend science or “spin” findings. They reveal an immense range of tools available to shrewd partisans determined to manipulate research. Bending Science exposes an astonishing pattern of corruption and makes a compelling case for reforms to safeguard both the integrity of science and the public health.

Some assumptions about biology are so deeply rooted in our thinking that they seem beyond question. These concepts - expressed in playful jargon - are our sacred bovines. With a light-hearted spirit, Douglas Allchin sets out to challenge many of these common beliefs about science and life. Allchin draws on fascinating insights from science to illustrate the ironies in many widespread beliefs. Be prepared to challenge the notion that male and female are fixed natural categories. Or that evolution implies cutthroat competition in human society. Or that we struggle against a fundamental immoral nature. Or that genes establish our identity. Or that science progresses through rare leaps of genius. Or that politics and emotions inevitably taint good science. Sacred Bovines revels in revelations about the nature of science. Reflecting on the many errors in commonly accepted, everyday ideas also fosters creative thinking. How do we challenge assumptions? How do we "think outside the box"? The many examples here provide inspiration and guidance, further elaborated in a retrospective epilogue. An additional "Afterword for Teachers" highlights how the essays can foster learning about the nature of science and describes some practical classroom strategies.

Over the past 30 years, as both forensic pathology and neuropathology have grown in sophistication, the two specialties have forged a heightened level of interaction. Reflecting the vast increase in knowledge and scientific progress in the past two decades, Forensic Neuropathology, Second Edition examines the new developments that have arisen since