The biggest unfounded health scares of 2010

5.) Sugar-sweetened soda is now taking the rap as the major cause of obesity in the U.S. The New York City Health Department this year launched a campaign called “Pouring on the Pounds” detailing what they see as the adverse health effects of drinking sugar-sweetened soda.

But the reality is that soda is not the culprit in our obesity crisis. Too many calories from any source (and too little exercise) are to blame. Blaming sugar-sweetened soda for causing obesity is a simple solution to a complex problem — and it is simply wrong. By the way, if the concern is calories, why hasn’t the Health Department recommended that people watching their calories consume diet soda instead?

6.) Cosmetics — specifically parabens found in many types of beauty aids — are being blamed for having “estrogen-like” properties which can lead to a risk of breast and other forms of cancer.

Activists have long complained that cosmetics are largely under-regulated and require more federal oversight. The charges against cosmetics come mainly from the anti-chemical activists group Environmental Working Group. But they have no science to back them up. The trace levels of “carcinogens” (from research based on animal studies only) in cosmetics have never been associated with actual adverse health effects in humans.

7.) High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been linked to obesity for many years — primarily by extrapolating from studies on rodents. Its presence in soda thus has become another target of the New York City anti-obesity campaign. But even NYU professor Marion Nestle, a notorious food industry critic, writes: “I do not think that the study produces convincing evidence of a difference between the effects of HFCS and sucrose on the body weight of rats.”

Unfortunately, the media has touted HFCS as an evil product forced upon us by the corn industry, when in reality HFCS is no more or less healthy than any other type of sugar.

8.) Genetically-modified crops have long been dubbed “Frankenfoods” by those who have vilified them. The gene technologies used to yield GM crops stand accused of being a detriment to the environment and a possible cause of increased rates of cancer and other health catastrophes.

Why? GM farming is an innovation that has allowed millions of people to gain access to food — instead of dying from starvation — without ever harming one person or animal.

9.) Vaccines and autism have been very much on the minds of parents in recent years. Many parents now prevent their children from getting vaccinated against a slew of illnesses fearing that the inoculations may lead to autism.

The hysteria took off after Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet in 1998 linking the MMR vaccine to autism. Dr. Wakefield’s study has since been retracted by the publication and repudiated by numerous scientific studies, yet celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Bill Maher continue to use their fame to advance these inaccuracies in the media and scare parents into avoiding vaccines. Much of the anti-vaccine attacks have focused on the mercury-containing preservative thiomersal — which was removed from most vaccines years ago.

Vaccines have had a profound beneficial effect on public health by drastically reducing the amount of death and disability from infectious diseases. As Dr. Wakefield’s research has demonstrated, the vast majority of reports that link vaccines to serious health maladies do not meet the scientific criteria necessary to attribute causality. In order to protect yourself, your family and your community from the devastating effects that a preventable infection may have, get immunized as soon as possible.

NEXT: Why you shouldn't be afraid of tuna