Four Democratic senators demanded late last month that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency must go. Their call for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s resignation — after eight months of looking into his actions as agency chief — is largely due to Jason K. Burnett, Johnson’s former deputy in developing global warming policy.
Since resigning in [...]

When Mike, Chris and Mark Bell, were striving to become champion iron pumpers in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the brothers never dreamed that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hulk Hogan and their other idols were juiced. Steroids were for commies –like Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV. Rocky himself was clean and sober. He chopped wood to get buff.
But, as they [...]

It’s been nearly three months since the first of more than 900 people fell ill with salmonella poisoning in the outbreak that the Food and Drug Admin. has linked to tomatoes. Now, it seems likely that it wasn’t tomatoes that done it. But, it could be the jalapenos.

“Unfortunately, I’m becoming increasingly confident in saying this [...]

I spent a bright and lovely morning doing anthropology among the vaccine skeptics, an angry group who blame the government for their children’s medical and psychiatric conditions. The occasion was Wednesday’s “Green our Vaccines” rally, a march on Washington led by the the actor Jim Carrey and his photogenic girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, the TV personality [...]

The Bush administration has a pet word to describe its regulatory policy. The word is “transparent.” Last Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson used it to describe an ozone ruling in which the White House at the last minute reversed EPA recommendations for limiting smog. “It’s been a very transparent process,” Johnson told [...]

Update: The Department of Health and Human Services sent a response after this story was originally posted. The department’s comment has been inserted
Six-and-a-half years after someone mailed finely milled anthrax spores to the U.S. Capitol, the industry created to respond to that attack has received billions in cash but produced little protection. A little-noticed news [...]

Merck and Co., Inc. engaged in a series of deceitful actions that led to an underestimation of deaths caused by its blockbuster drug Vioxx during post-marketing research of the pain reliever, according to two articles in a medical journal that used documents released by Merck in lawsuits against the pharmaceutical giant. The articles in [...]

One autistic girl — a 9 year old from Atlanta whose illness is linked to an underlying medical condition — has suddenly shifted the debate on the possible link between vaccines and autism. It’s not that Hannah Poling’s case significantly alters the evidence. But it has introduced uncertainties that pose a logical stumbling block for [...]

Bad news for beer lovers and brewers. Climate change is likely to drive beer prices up even further over the next 30 years, according to New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. Climate scientist Jim Salinger said today that shifting climates will likely cause a decline in the production of malting barley, especially [...]

In the face of record fuel prices for consumers and record profits for oil companies, congressional Democrats admonished oil industry leaders Tuesday for doing far too little to ease prices at the pump. At a time of rising global warming concerns, the lawmakers also charged, the companies should dedicate far more of those revenues to [...]