Posts by Arthur Allen

If you were unlucky enough to have to call upon Radovan Karadzic in the 1992-1994 period, as I was on one occasion while a reporter for the Associated Press, the expression "physician, heal thyself" will have a special meaning. Karadzic was a nutty psychiatrist who spent the war spouting lies, fantasies and racist horrors from the [...]

Move over, Jenny McCarthy. The former Playboy playmate-turned vaccine basher has competition from a Hollywood newcomer, Amanda Peet. In a profile featured on the cover of this month’s Cookie magazine, Peet discloses that Dr. Paul Offit, inventor of an important rotavirus vaccine and public enemy-number one of the anti-vaccination crowd, assuaged her anxieties over vaccination [...]

It’s been nearly three months since the first of more than 900 people fell ill with salmonella poisoning in the outbreak that the Food and Drug Admin. has linked to tomatoes. Now, it seems likely that it wasn’t tomatoes that done it. But, it could be the jalapenos.

“Unfortunately, I’m becoming increasingly confident in saying this [...]

I spent a bright and lovely morning doing anthropology among the vaccine skeptics, an angry group who blame the government for their children’s medical and psychiatric conditions. The occasion was Wednesday’s “Green our Vaccines” rally, a march on Washington led by the the actor Jim Carrey and his photogenic girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, the TV personality [...]

The Bush administration has a pet word to describe its regulatory policy. The word is “transparent.” Last Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson used it to describe an ozone ruling in which the White House at the last minute reversed EPA recommendations for limiting smog. “It’s been a very transparent process,” Johnson told [...]

After its executives spied on immigrant farmworkers and slandered them on-line to fight a grass-roots campaign for better pay and working conditions, Burger King Corp. abruptly reversed course Friday. The company caved into the workers’ demands, agreeing to pay them an extra penny a pound for tomatoes that go on Whoppers and other BK products, according to a [...]

In a response I received after my anthrax vaccine story had been posted, Health and Human Services spokesman Bill Hall denied that his agency had erred in withdrawing the Vaxgen contract. Vaxgen missed its deadlines and failed to fix its problems, he said, and HHS was still pursuing a recombinant anthrax vaccine (as I noted [...]

Update: The Department of Health and Human Services sent a response after this story was originally posted. The department’s comment has been inserted
Six-and-a-half years after someone mailed finely milled anthrax spores to the U.S. Capitol, the industry created to respond to that attack has received billions in cash but produced little protection. A little-noticed news [...]

The United States is suffering its worst measles outbreak in at least seven years, health officials announced Thursday, because parents who fear the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot aren’t vaccinating their kids–in Israel, Switzerland, and here in the U.S. So far this year at least 70 cases have been reported, more than any year since the 116 [...]

 Here’s more on Burger King from yesterday. The company didn’t receive the farm worker petitions calling for a penny more in pay per pound of tomatoes picked, which were left outside its Miami headquarters. But eventually the company distanced itself from the comments attributed to Grover: "We have a robust vendor code of conduct which [...]