The Hygiene Council, a "think tank" created and funded by the cleaning products company Reckitt Benckiser, touts the need for "good hygiene practice" in the "home and community." Ruth Pollard reports that the council "is pushing products that contain the expensive -- and potentially damaging -- antibacterial additive, triclosan." Aside from promoting commonsense measures to prevent infections such as the washing of hands and appropriate preparation and refrigeration of foods, the council is enthusiastic about the chemical treatment of household surfaces. "Commonly touched surfaces should be regularly disinfected with products such as LYSOL Disinfectant Spray," the council states on its website. Peter Collignon, the director of infectious diseases at Canberra Hospital, believes that promoting the use of products containing triclosan was "a marketing exercise with no real benefit" that would "do nothing to stop multi-resistant bacteria in hospitals. If anything it may actually contribute to it." Triclosan products are used in hospitals as a disinfectant, particularly against staphlycoccus.

"A nonprofit group backed by the seafood industry urged pregnant women and nursing mothers to eat more fish than recommended by U.S. officials concerned that mercury contamination can hurt babies," reports Avram Goldstein. "The group, the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition, said women who avoid seafood to limit exposure to mercury deprive their babies and themselves of essential nutrients. Women should eat at least the 12 ounces a week suggested as a maximum by the government, the coalition said today at a briefing in Washington." The report was funded with $74,000 from the National Fisheries Institute, a client of the Burson-Marsteller PR firm. Another food industry front group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, chimed in with a news release calling for environmental groups to apologize for creating "panic" about mercury in foods. Longstanding health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, responded to the report by re-emphasizing their advice to avoid excessive fish consumption.

The spin-driven restaurant and beverage industry front group, the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), has created a grass roots compilation of city, county and state efforts to ban added trans fats in restaurant food. From Boston's Health Commissioner to Cleveland's City Council to Washington State's Board of Health, various government agencies nationwide are sponsoring ordinances, regulations and laws to forbid partially hydrogenated oils. "We know that trans fat consumption leads to serious health problems and we believe that it's government's role...to do what we can to encourage people to consume healthy food," CCF's "Daily Headlines" quotes Boston Public Health Commission executive director John Auerbach. CCF also notes budding Chicago action and quotes Alderman Edward Burke--once famous for stalling progressive ordinance proposals under the late Mayor Harold Washington--calling trans fats "cruelty to human beings." CCF calls New York City's landmark December 2006 ban "outrageous" and derides all the anti-trans fat lawmakers as "having nothing better to do."

Cancer United, a cancer patient group created and launched by the PR firm Weber Shandwick with funding from the drug company Roche, has got off to a rocky start. On its website the group states that it aims to run an 18-month-long campaign for more uniform cancer treatments across the European Union. However, before the group was launched, it was revealed that the study it relies on was also funded by Roche. The study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm argues that survival rates increase the more a country spends on drugs. Michel Coleman from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the Guardian that the study was "woefully simplistic research." A Labor member of parliament, Ian Gibson, resigned from the group after discovering Roche's role. "I feel very silly and stupid," he said. The press conference convened in Brussels to announce the new group was "sparsely attended."