Michael Fumento is a journalist, author, and attorney known for his contrarian reporting on science, health, and environmental policy. He contributed to The Weekly Standard from 1997 to 2008, writing on topics ranging from pharmaceutical controversies and EPA regulation to embedded combat reporting from Iraq, including dispatches from Falluja and Ramadi. His work frequently challenged conventional wisdom on public health scares and military coverage.
Spring 2006: The Mullab section of Ramadi, Iraq. Graffiti boast that this is "the graveyard of the Americans." Leaving your base camp virtually guarantees a fight, and I'm in one the first day of my embed. When shots ring out, I jump into the street to start snapping pictures. I look back and see a…
That the new World Health Organization-Iraqi government study of war-related Iraq deaths reached wildly different conclusions from two much-hyped reports in the British medical journal the Lancet is no surprise to anyone who has followed the issue. But the new study highlights the fanaticism of the…
In the film Home of the Brave, a soldier who lost her hand in Iraq is asked if she underwent physical rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Yeah, Walter Reed," she says. "Talk about tough Americans." Tough Americans, indeed. When I visited that same ward, the first soldier I met was…
Zabul Province, Afghanistan
Legislators in some 20 states are considering making mandatory Merck & Co.'s Gardasil vaccination for the human papillomavirus. In Texas, Republican governor Rick Perry bypassed the legislature and ordered it on his own. The requirement there applies to 11- and 12-year-old girls entering 6th grade.
It was one bullet point in the plan for the Pelosi Congress's "first 100 hours," two sentences in the Democrats' 31-page "New Direction for America" document released last June: In order to "Defeat terrorists and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, we will . . . . Double the size of our…
MOST PEOPLE WOULD rather undergo several root canals than go to Iraq. Most reporters would, as well. But there are a tiny number who actually feel the need to do so--even to the extent that they're willing to pay all their own expenses in the hope, but nothing more--of recovering part or all of…
WHILE THE DEMOCRATIC-CONTROLLED House voted 253-174 to expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, it fell far short of the 290 votes needed to override a virtually guaranteed presidential veto. A tragedy for victims of everything from Alzheimer's to warts? Not at all. Each year there…
It's that time of year again--avian flu panic season. As the weather turns colder in the northern hemisphere and the flu starts making its annual rounds, the media and their anointed health experts are chirping and squawking once again about how we could be blindsided by a pandemic that some have…
Ramadi
NINE YEARS AGO IN THESE pages, in an article on new EPA air pollution standards ("The EPA's Hot Air," July 7, 1997), I predicted that lawn mowers would one day fall victim to these onerous and unnecessary regulations. This was not really going out on a limb. In 1994, the Clinton EPA administrator…
IN ANNOUNCING The War Tapes winner of the "best documentary feature" at the Tribeca film festival in New York in May, judge and documentary filmmaker Ken Burns labeled the film a "remarkably clear-eyed view of what's going on there." I've been over there doing my own war taping and he's right. The…
Ramadi, Iraq
Al Anbar Province, Iraq
"THE INDICATION IS THAT we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of flu," warns America's top health official. "In 1918, half a million people died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans . . . "
NEWS ITEM: A Hispanic civil rights group wants Taco Bell to quit running commercials that feature a pointy-eared, pint-sized, Spanish-speaking Chihuahua named Dinky. The fast-food chain uses the dog to hype its products with the signature phrase "Yo quiero Taco Bell," which means "I want Taco…
Okay, let's be fair. Punctilious honesty has not been the Clinton administration's strong suit. But every bell curve has its extremes -- its outliers, as it were. The word "outlier" brings to mind Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner and her new air-pollution standards.