Culture

Autism’s Spread Brings a Mystery and a Lawsuit

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A new report finds that one in every 60 boys in New Jersey has autism — nearly twice the national rate. Youth in the study were affected regardless of race, and the trend is spread equally throughout the state. Efforts to find suspected clusters of autism there have failed, and calls for more research are matched by a growing demand for new funding and services for children with the disorder. In Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune reports that babies born via Caesarian sections or in breech position do appear to have a slightly higher rate of autism. But a chemical culprit has been harder to identify, leading to a class-action lawsuit by thousands of parents convinced that their children developed autism after receiving vaccinations containing a mercury-based preservative.

Democracy

Contraception & Abortion: A Morning After for Chile, North Dakota

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Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet has issued an executive order legalizing free “morning after” contraception to teens without parental consent. The issue has split the ruling party in a socially conservative nation where divorce was only legalized in 2004. Supporters say the new rules will provide equal access to contraception for low-income Chilean women, according to the Santiago Times. In North Dakota, the legislature overwhelmingly passed a “trigger ban” on abortion that would take effect the instant Roe v. Wade were overturned. A second bill, which was defeated, would have banned abortion immediately and prosecuted women for seeking the procedure, the Bismarck Tribune reports.

Democracy

For Gypsies, Eugenics is a Modern Problem / Czech Practice Dates to Soviet Era

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By Mindy Kay Bricker
PRAGUE (Newsdesk.org) — Gypsy women who say they were sterilized against their will by Czech doctors were heartened last December when a government investigator released a study that largely vindicated their claims.
Six months later, however, advocates for Gypsies — known more formally as Roma — say the practice is continuing, and are dismayed by what they consider only token steps by Czech officials to stop it. “There’s been basically dead silence at the level of elites,” said Claude Cahn, program director of the European Roma Rights Center, an advocacy group based in Budapest. Officials at the Health Ministry acknowledge the problem, but have not taken responsibility. “[Sterilization] was by no means a national policy, but errors [were] committed by individual medical facilities,” said Jaroslav Strof, the Health Ministry’s director of healthcare and pharmacy, in an e-mailed statement. Yet the Czech government’s independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, released a detailed report last year charging that “potentially problematic” sterilizations of Roma women have been public knowledge for more than 15 years.

Science

Plastics & Your Health

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By Martin Leatherman & Newsdesk.org staff
New studies of chemicals used in plastics reveal potential health problems, including miscarriages and abnormal fetus development. But regulation remains a tricky prospect. Legislators in California are developing bills targeting chemicals used in consumer products, including plastics, which may cause human health problems.
Cosmetics and chemical manufacturers say that such new legislation is unnecessary because a variety of state and federal laws already regulate the industry, according to the Christian Science Monitor. One chemical of concern, bisphenol-A, or BPA, is used in baby bottles, teething rings, packaging materials and wall and floor coverings. In a study published in the May 2005 edition of Endocrinology, mouse fetuses exposed to one percent of the amount of BPA deemed safe for humans developed significantly more tissue in their mammary glands.

Culture

FDA Critics Cite Biotech Food Safety

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[Sidebar: Biotech Food Safety Research]
By Robert Mullins, Newsdesk.org
Stymied by legal setbacks and a lack of public interest, critics of genetically engineered foods expressed impatience with the federal Food and Drug Administration for putting its regulatory foot down on pharmaceuticals such as Vioxx and Bextra, but keeping its hands off biotechnology. While the FDA must approve pharmaceuticals before they are sold, and regulates them once they hit the market, it requires only voluntary consultations with food and biotech corporations about the safety of any genetically engineered foods they want to sell. James Maryanski, biotechnology coordinator for the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Nutrition, said that this is consistent with the agency’s mandate. Medicines are newly created products combining different chemicals and other ingredients to treat diseases, and so must be pre-tested for possible side effects, he said, while genetically engineered food crops are still just plants, and therefore “generally recognized as safe.” “[T]he foods we eat today are all derived from crops we’ve had for centuries,” Mr. Maryanski said.

Science

FOCUS: Overfishing — Local to Global

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Jodi Wynn & Newsdesk.org staff
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, overfishing is leading to a humanitarian and ecological crisis. The report finds that over 70 percent of fish species are being caught at a rate faster than they reproduce, leading to the near-depletion of many commercial fish stocks. In the U.S., the National Marine Fisheries Service reported that 92 percent of domestic fish stocks are overexploited, but can recover if well managed. With more than 200 million people worldwide depending on fishing for a living, and 2.5 billion relying on fish for food, the U.N. said that declining fish stocks will affect “food security and economic development” as well as social welfare and underwater ecosystems.
The FAO also predicts that within ten years fish stocks will be further depleted by growing human populations. The New Zealand fisheries minister expressed fears that post-tsunami relief efforts could “create the conditions for overfishing and resource depletion, particularly where these problems were already occurring.”

Science

Focus: Agent Orange Aftermath

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Jodi Wynn, Newsdesk.org
Thirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, many seriously ill Vietnamese blame their conditions on exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange. The Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVA) filed suit in February 2004 against 37 U.S. companies that produced the substance during the conflict in Vietnam, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto Company. Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the case on March 10, ruling that there was no expressed rule against the use of herbicides or poisonous gases at the time. Plaintiffs in the suit told the Associated Press they planned to appeal. The drive to appeal was bolstered by a March 11 conference hosted in Paris by the France-Vietnam Friendship Association.

Culture

Budget Said to Shortchange Veterans / Mental Health Services May Fall Short

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By Michael Standaert
According to a recent Pentagon estimate, 30 percent, or about 100,000 troops, have or will develop mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, after coming home. And with the federal Veterans Affairs budget falling short of what both its staff and critics have called for, veterans’ advocates fear the government is unprepared for what might be a growing problem. Since the invasion of Iraq, the Veterans Affairs Department has been offering two years of free health care, including mental health, to combat veterans. And the Defense Department recently began giving a questionnaire on “post traumatic stress disorder [and] psychological and social readjustment” to veterans three to six months after returning, according to Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., the assistant defense secretary for health affairs. Michael O’Rourke, a health care expert with the Veterans for Foreign Wars in Washington, D.C., said six months is not long enough, because PTSD is “insidiously slow in coming on …

Culture

FOCUS: Regulating Chemicals

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The link between human health and our environment may be obvious, but the devil is in the details. In January, new or forthcoming reports about common industrial chemicals provoked the usual disputes between public health activists and the business community over the need for regulation. -The solvent trichloroethylene has been linked with lymphoma and other diseases. It was dumped “indiscriminately” in the past, and a doctor with Boston University called the EPA “cowardly” for not controlling the substance. If a cancer link is established, the environmental cleanup costs — including groundwater — could run to the billions of dollars.

Culture

Bhopal Anniversary

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By Allison Bloch, Newsdesk.org Intern 
Bhopal, a city in central India, still suffers from a horrific gas leak that occurred twenty years ago. December 3 marks the anniversary for those suffering from breathing troubles and other effects of the deadly methyl isocyanate that seeped out silently into the city late one night. Although the initial death toll was 3,500, more people have died since the leak, and the government and locals are in disagreement over the final amount. Official records state that 15,000 people were killed, while residents double that number. Amnesty International reports that 22,000 to 25,000 people were killed.