AMERICAN COUNCIL ON SCIENCE AND HEALTH

Our primary goal is to help American consumers, journalists, and policymakers recognize the difference between significant health hazards and hypothetical, trivial, and intentionally exaggerated health scares We further ensure that individual health decisions and public health policies are based on sound scientific evidence rather than lobbying, ideology, or outright quackery.

The Council accomplishes its goals by producing a wide range of publications, including peer-reviewed white papers and books on health and environmental topics: we write news articles on this site, which are also sent out in a daily Dispatch newsletter, and we frequently write for international media and America's top newspapers; we appear regularly on television and radio; we advise policymakers in legislative and regulatory hearings; and we engage in public debates. Additionally, The Council hosts press conferences and provides an in-house internship program for students in the health sciences.

We employ a full-time staff of Ph.D.s and M.D.s. Supporting our work is a nucleus of 300 physicians, scientists, and policy experts in areas from toxicology to fruit fly research to conservation who make up our Board of Scientific Advisors. They peer review the Council’s reports and participate in our seminars, media communications, and other educational activities.

The Council has a long and successful track record. We warned the public of the dangers of smoking, and we were the driving force behind seatbelt laws and bike helmets that save children. Famously, when NRDC manufactured the “alar on apples” pesticide scare, we showed it to be exaggerated hype manufactured with the help of a public relations firm. Our warnings about “chemophobia” were portrayed in the ground-breaking documentary Big Fears, Little Risks, narrated by Walter Cronkite. Our science publications have informed key policymakers for decades. When media physician Dr. Oz continued to foist off "miracle" foods and supplements on the public, Council friends and members spearheaded the letter to Columbia University demanding he be removed from their faculty, which got nationwide attention. Our testimony before FDA about missteps in the war on pain addiction made "fentanyl" part of the national lexicon.