American Council on Science and Health
| Abbreviation | ACSH |
|---|---|
| Motto | Science. Not Hype. |
| Formation | 1978 |
| Founder | Elizabeth Whelan |
| Type | Non-profit |
| Purpose |
Science education, Health education, Consumer education, Debunker |
| Headquarters | New York City |
|
President
|
Hank Campbell |
| Website | acsh.org |
The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH or The Council) is a pro-industry science education nonprofit organization founded in 1978 by Elizabeth Whelan. Its stated mission is to "support evidence-based science and medicine." The current president is science writer Hank Campbell. Its core membership is a board of 350 physicians, scientists, and policy advisors who review the Council's reports and participate in science, health, and consumer education, as well as media outreach.
ACSH's primary focus is educating the public on issues related to food, nutrition, health, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, biology, biotechnology, infectious disease, and the environment.
In the 1970s, ACSH scientists, saying they were concerned with what they described as the lack of sound scientific basis, common sense, reason, and balance in public forums and public policy regarding such issues as health and the environment, began to produce their own policy statements. Over the years, their articles have included such topics as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), obesity, chemophobia, phthalates, DDT, fracking,e-cigarettes, GMOs, atrazine, and bisphenol-A.
Whelan says she was motivated to found the American Council on Science and Health after doing research for the pharmaceutical company Pfizer about a section of the 1958 Food Additive Amendment to ban certain chemicals from foods. With further research, she says she found that public discourse and public policy were chemophobic. Her first book, Panic in the Pantry (1976), challenged the notion, popular in the 1970s, that "natural" was better and that "chemicals" were dangerous.
In 1978, along with Frederick J. Stare, founder of the Harvard Nutrition Department, Whelan invited 50 other scientists to "bring the message of sound science to consumers, via the media" in a "consumer education consortium." Their first financial support came from the Scaife Foundation and the John M. Olin Foundation. By 2003, almost 400 scientists had joined ACSH.
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