Health, Science, Environment

A Ferguson midwife and founder of a maternal health center that focuses on black women is accusing Mercy hospital of stealing her business and reneging on an agreement that would direct midwifery care in Ferguson to her clinic.

Tru Kellman, founder of Ferguson’s Jamaa Birth Village, said Jamaa agreed to train Mercy staff to administer culturally sensitive care. That agreement, reached in March, allowed for some Jamaa clients to use Mercy’s Birthing Center in Creve Coeur. 

Bring up Adam and Eve in contemporary conversation, and you’ll likely be met with either total skepticism or deep confidence, depending on the audience. Diametrically opposed views of the biblical origin story come with the territory of ongoing cultural battles between creationists and evolutionists and the typical right and left.

But Washington University’s Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass, who describes himself as “a scientist in the Church and a Christian in science,” is hoping to shift the conversation. In his new book “The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry,” he hopes to reach secular and religious readers alike.

“What if the traditional account is somehow true, with the origins of Adam and Eve taking place alongside evolution?” he asks.

ROLLA — Hunters interested in taking any of the feral hogs that are doing significant damage in the Ozarks will have to do so in very limited windows.

The U.S. Forest Service announced on Saturday that hunting of feral hogs in Mark Twain National Forest will be limited to deer and turkey season and restricted to hunters holding permits.

People in rural areas have more unnecessary hospital visits and are more likely to die from chronic conditions than people in cities because they have little access to specialists, according to a study by St. Louis researchers.

Researchers from St. Louis University, Washington University and Harvard studied nationwide survey and claims data from thousands of Medicare patients with chronic conditions.

People treated for drug-resistant MRSA often develop infections again and again — even multiple times in a single year.

Part of the problem is the hardiness of the bacteria responsible, which can live on household surfaces for months.

Washington University researchers report family members who share specific items, including towels and bedsheets, are more likely to pass the bacteria to each other. The team, which spent a year collecting bacteria samples from St. Louis families, also found that children who attend day care were often the ones who brought MRSA bacteria home. 

The deadline to enroll in a health care plan via the Affordable Care Act marketplace is Dec. 15. Are plans more or less affordable than in previous years? What should people be aware of while searching for plans outside of the ACA marketplace?

Thursday on St. Louis on the Air, host Sarah Fenske put these questions to Timothy McBride of Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to talking about the health and future of the ACA marketplace, McBride, the co-director of the Center for Health Economics and Policy, discussed what Medicaid expansion could look like in Missouri. Just last week, Gov. Mike Parson said he would expand the program if voters say that’s what they want. 

Nearly three people a day died of opioid overdoses in St. Louis last year, according to data released by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.

There were 1,080 people who died of opioids in St. Louis and eight surrounding counties, up 30% from the year before. 

The 2018 count, released this week, marks the 12th consecutive year of rising drug-related fatalities in the region.

The Earth’s moon contains ice, but scientists don’t know much about where the water came from. As the moon formed, water could have come from Earth’s volcanoes in the form of gas. It could have been brought there by comets and meteorites. Or, it may have traveled to the lunar surface via solar wind that interacted with minerals on the moon to create water. 

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are teaming up to find some answers. The team has been chosen as one of NASA’s eight new Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institutes. They are part of a five-year cooperative agreement valued at more than $7 million.

Updated at 1:09 p.m. with comments from environmentalists — A Missouri environmental advocacy group is suing the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that it has failed to prevent farm runoff from polluting Missouri’s lakes. 

The EPA last December approved a plan the Missouri Department of Natural Resources developed to monitor nutrient pollution in the state’s lakes. Excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus that largely come from farm runoff can threaten aquatic wildlife and public health. 

Space explorers could someday use the moon to mine for elements needed to make rocket fuel on the moon, making it a launchpad to other worlds. 

But first, scientists need to study the moon’s ice deposits. A team of astrophysicists at Washington University has received a $7 million agreement with NASA to study the origins of lunar ice, ammonia and methane over the next five years.

Missourians shopping for health insurance on the federal government’s online marketplace are likely to see slightly lower premium prices, but health economists warn residents could still pay more for their health care next year.

Deductibles, the prices customers pay out-of-pocket before insurance startas to cover bills, are increasing by $100-$200 a year on average, according to an analysis by the Missouri Foundation for Health. Some consumers have deductibles of more than $6,000.

More people in Missouri are consulting doctors via telephone or video services — and mental health care is most in demand.

Patient visits using telephones or video conferencing systems have increased tenfold since 2010 among Missouri Medicaid users, according to the Missouri Telehealth Network at the University of Missouri. 

The vast majority of those visits were for behavioral or mental health services, said Rachel Mutrux, senior program director at the network. 

Seniors with disabilities who live alone show faster declines in brain function than those who live with others, according to Washington University research.

But there’s an encouraging finding: Seniors who live in homes with handicap-accessible features stay mentally sharp longer. 

More than 12 million seniors in the U.S. live alone. Many are opting to age in their homes, rather than move into nursing facilities. But most homes in the U.S. lack features that make them accessible for disabled people.

Red-light cameras might be returning to St. Louis intersections, but research questions whether they make streets any safer.

ROLLA — The spring floods in Missouri and Illinois caused more than $1 billion in damage and may have left behind chemicals that could hurt the environment and end up in drinking water.

“A lot of times we don’t take measurements right after a flood. So we don’t have a really good idea of how long it takes for these things to get flushed out,” said Ryan Smith, a geologist at Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. 

The Maryland Heights Tax Increment Financing Commission could soon approve a plan to use tax money to build pumps and levees in a frequently flooded area near the Missouri River. 

City officials and the urban planning group PGAV Planners propose to redevelop the Maryland Park Lake District. That’s a 2,215-acre agricultural area near Creve Coeur Lake Memorial Park that is protected by the Howard Bend levees. 

A Missouri appeals court has ordered the natural gas company Spire to pay customers at least $4 million in reimbursements after it improperly charged them for pipe repairs.

In a trio of decisions, judges from the Missouri Western District Court of Appeals ruled the utility improperly used surcharges to fund infrastructure improvements that were not eligible for those fees.

Predominantly black neighborhoods in the St. Louis region where poor people live have a much higher exposure to carcinogenic air pollution than white middle-class neighborhoods, according to a study from Washington University. 

Researchers analyzed the Environmental Protection Agency’s data on risk of cancer from air pollutants, like ozone, among census tracts in the St. Louis metropolitan area. In the journal Environmental Research, scientists reported that the risk was five times higher for census tracts that had mostly black residents and high levels of poverty than for areas with white middle-class residents.

St. Louis officials released a plan late Monday to generate 100% of the city’s energy from wind and solar power by 2035. 

Environmental lawyers and advocates who worked on the report recommended making buildings more energy efficient, increasing solar panel installation and purchasing wind energy. 

Board of Aldermen President Lewis Reed, who sponsored the board’s 2017 clean energy resolution, said achieving the resolution’s goal would benefit the economy.

In the new Netflix documentary "The Game Changers," a former team physician for the St. Louis Rams and Cardinals challenges what he refers to as a “locker-room mythology about meat, protein and strength.”

“The attitude of most athletes for many years was that you had to eat meat to get protein, [that] we need that protein to get big and strong, and again, that meat was the best source. But that’s clearly just not true,” Dr. James Loomis said Friday on St. Louis on the Air.

“There are many, many highly successful athletes, both in the strength world … but also endurance athletes, who really thrive on a plant-based diet.”

Floodwaters carved a path of devastation through the Midwest this year — and carried hundreds of storage tanks downstream to Missouri.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is collecting these orphaned containers, which range in size from small buckets to 500,000-gallon tanks. Many contain hazardous materials, including diesel fuel, pesticides and ammonia gas.

Most of the containers have washed up along the banks of the Missouri River in the northwest corner of the state, said DNR environmental scientist Stephen McLane.

Franklin County is considering zoning changes that would allow large livestock operations to be built in areas where they haven’t been permitted before. 

The proposed revisions to the county’s zoning map have many residents worried that the changes could make it easier for corporations to build concentrated animal feeding operations. Such industrial livestock farms produce large amounts of animal waste, which can pollute the air and water for nearby residents.

In 2012, Rita Csapo-Sweet and her husband, the late Frederick Sweet, jointly published a paper on the ghastly but little-known legacy of Carl Clauberg, a German physician who conducted mass sterilization experiments at Auschwitz during World War II. Clauberg would use his work in the concentration camp to develop a pioneering fertility test. 

“Clauberg’s name needs to be placed next to [Josef] Mengele’s in its rightful place in infamy,” the two scholars concluded, emphasizing that Clauberg’s medical crimes against humanity “must be disclosed whenever the test bearing his name appears” in modern biomedical texts.

As Csapo-Sweet and Sweet dug into their research, filmmakers Sylvia Nagel and Sonya Winterberg also began a documentary about Clauberg — and the St. Louis-based couple’s academic article filled in key gaps in the filmmakers’ story. Nagel and Winterberg reached out to Csapo-Sweet in 2015, and she joined the documentary as its American producer.