Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog.
While many agencies and programmes in the US government are watching their backs as the budget cutters sharpen their knives, the once-beleaguered National Children’s Study is entering an era of plenty.
The ambitious and controversial study funded and led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that it is opening 30 new study locations that run the geographic and demographic gamut, from Benton County, Arkansas to Honolulu County, Hawaii. At these locations, pregnant women, and women likely to become pregnant, will be asked to make a 21-year-plus commitment: the long-term goal of the study, which will cost at least $3 billion over the next couple of decades, is to document environmental impacts on the health of more than 100,000 children beginning before birth and ending at age 21.
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