Studies have linked the kinds of volatile organic compounds found at Lejeune to such birth defects and cancers as spina bifida, cleft lip and palate, anencephaly, childhood leukemia and childhood lymphoma. Blakely decided to make copies of every child and fetal death certificate she could find between the years 1950 and 1990 with a connection to the Marine base.
"What I was going to do with them, I didn't know," she says.
How many thousands of Camp Lejeune babies died because of the base's toxic water?
Mild traumatic brain injuries increase military suicide risk
U.S. researchers say those in the military who suffer more than one mild traumatic brain injury face a significantly higher risk of suicide.
Lead author Craig J. Bryan of the University of Utah and associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies and colleagues surveyed 161 military personnel stationed in Iraq and evaluated for a possible traumatic brain injury.
Climate research nearly unanimous on human causes, survey finds
A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.
Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.
Exposed: Lung Cancer Risks from Fracked Natural Gas in NYC Kitchens
At a public forum last night, leading voices in politics, public health, the environment and workers’ rights analyzed the threat to New York City residents from increased radon levels that would be found in natural gas from new regional sources being promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. Radon, a dangerous substance found in natural gas that most New Yorkers cook with, is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.
At the forum, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal presented legislation sponsored by she and State Senator Diane Savino that would protect the public from the risks of radon in natural gas.
How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach
For almost a decade, the United States has been standing in the way of an idea that could lead to cures for some of the world's most devastating illnesses. The class of maladies is known as neglected diseases, and they almost exclusively affect those in the developing world.
The same idea, if realized, might also be used in more affluent nations to goad the pharmaceutical industry into producing critical innovations that the free market has yet to produce - things like new antibiotics, which are likely to be used judiciously, and are unlikely to be wildly profitable.
World’s fish have been moving to cooler waters for decades, study finds
Fish and other sea life have been moving toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters, part of a worldwide, decades-long migration documented for the first time by a study released Wednesday.
The research, published in the journal Nature, provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has broad repercussions for fish harvests around the globe.
US tax agency chief resigns over targeting of conservative political groups
US President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service has resigned in the wake of news that the government financial agency targeted conservative political groups seeking tax relief for extra scrutiny.
Steven Miller, who was not in charge of the IRS at the time of the wrongdoing, will step aside in light of the bureau’s “inexcusable” misconduct. A visibly angry Obama said that the extra screening for Tea Party groups before the presidential election last year was “an outrage.”
Scientists successfully create human stem cells through cloning
After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been removed.
The result is a harvest of human embryonic stem cells, the seemingly magic cells capable of morphing into any of the 200-plus kinds that make up a person.
Why the military hasn't stopped sexual abuse
USA Today interviewed lawmakers, social scientists and people who have worked on the sexual assault issue inside the military to determine why the Pentagon hasn't been able to stem this predatory tide. All pointed to two factors — one a new plague, the other as old as the military itself — standing in the way:
•A military culture more coarse toward women in the ranks, the result of stress from a decade of war and the status of females as second-class warriors barred from combat roles. Male recruits are drawn from a society where violence and objectification of women are staple elements of films and video games.
Page 350 of 1154