Ever since President Clinton turned the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 into law, taking away federal authority over food and supplements unless bodies started dropping, the US Food and Drug Administration has been a little timid in doing the things it should do. Obviously it still approves products, but it has acted more like an agency buffeted by politics. When grassroots vaping caused smoking to drop, they responded to narrow political interests on the coasts, who were supported by both pharmaceutical and cigarette money, and basically declared all non-pharmaceutical smoking cessation products should be banned.(1)

Is it sacred land if it's two and a half miles in the air and only a few elites were allowed to visit on penalty of death for anyone else?

In synergy with the third season of the hit Netflix series "Stranger Things", Burger King is selling upside-down Whoppers starting today, retro 1980s packaging included.

If you are not familiar with the show, and without too many spoilers, "Stranger Things" is a science fiction-horror show revolving around teens in the 1980s. If you are not familiar with Burger King, I suppose it's simple enough to say they sell hamburgers. And want to catch up to rival McDonald's. 

RR Auction in Boston has a selection of pretty interesting Apollo program stuff, but you have to bid before 7PM.

This is the perfect time to sell, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing is a month away, so it may not be the perfect time to buy. I have made a decent amount of money selling key comics a month before the next Marvel movie release and buying identical or better copies a year later from people who made impulse buys.

Up for grabs is an American flag flown into orbit on Apollo 11, signed by Command Module pilot Michael Collins. There is also a burn chart page from the flight plan that went into orbit on the Columbia Command Module, signed by both Collins and Buzz.

In today's Wall Street Journal my article Science Saves an Old Chestnut discusses the potential benefit of President Trump's executive order requiring USDA, FDA, and EPA to modernize when it comes to biotechnology approval. They have to consider actual risk instead of treating every product like a new invention. They don't make flowers go through tens of millions of dollars and 20 years of regulatory stonewalling, why do it for anything else? 

Once upon a time, epidemiologists believed bacon caused cancer, as did hot tea, a weedkiller that acts on no human biology, bread, apples, lettuce, mustard, tomatoes, and more.

That faraway time was actually last year.

You name it, and it is possible for statisticians at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to find a chemical in it that links it to cancer. With most foods, it is also possible for other epidemiologists to link them to prevention of cancer.(1)

What did epidemiologists once deny causes cancer? The cancer history of your family - genetics.