Too few minorities could hurt science. Women, African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields and that the result could hurt the nation as a whole, a Fortune 1000 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) survey found. The findings of the study should alarm the next president of the United States, researchers said. Minorities could be the saving grace of America if this country is going to keep its place as the leader in the science and technology industry, the report noted. “What is most dramatic about this survey is the extent to which the Fortune executives speak with one unequivocal voice on these issues,” said Dr. Attila Molnar, president and CEO of Bayer Corporation. “Almost without exception, they overwhelmingly recognize this country’s great need to tap the potential of the entire [science and technology] talent pool, and the importance of doing so at every point on the development continuum beginning in elementary school with high-quality, hands-on, inquiry-based science education, on through college where … talent is refined and recruited, and then into the workplace where it must be further nurtured and encouraged.” Molnar and other executives believe that African Americans are being exposed to science at an early enough age to pique student’s interests. Chicago native Dr. Mae Jemison, who was also the first African-American woman to travel into outer space, agrees and said more has to be done to find talent in the Black community. The report further stated that diversifying the STEM talent pool is one solution to the problem of understaffing. Nearly 55 percent of the Fortune executives say their companies are experiencing a shortage of science and technology talent. Almost nine in 10, 89 percent, agree that bringing more women and minorities into science fields will help solve this issue. Moreover, diversity has other benefits for science and tech companies, according to the executives, including increasing innovation and the ability to be more competitive in the global marketplace.Women’s birth size could be tied to cancer risk. Women who are heavier and longer at birth are at increased risk of developing breast cancer later in life, British researchers report. In fact, as birth weight and length increases, so does the risk for breast cancer, according to the results of a study published in the Sept. 30 online edition of PLoS Medicine. “These researchers have documented in unequivocal terms that larger birth size is associated with increased breast cancer risk several decades later,” said Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, the Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention at Harvard University School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology and author of an accompanying journal editorial. Birth size reflects, to a considerable extent, the effects of the environment within the womb on the fetus, Trichopoulos said. “To this day, they had not been sufficiently appreciated by the scientific community, because each individual study could not provide conclusive evidence. We are facing now a new reality: that breast cancer has its origins several decades before its clinical appearance,” he said. After gathering data from 32 studies on more than 600,000 women, 22,058 of whom had breast cancer, the researchers found that women who were heavier and longer at birth had increased risk for breast cancer as adults, HealthDay reported. An analysis of birth records, among these women, found that for every 17.6 ounces of birth weight, the risk for breast cancer increased 7 percent. After gathering data from 32 studies on more than 600,000 women, 22,058 of whom had breast cancer, the researchers found that women who were heavier and longer at birth had increased risk for breast cancer as adults, HealthDay reported. An analysis of birth records, among these women, found that for every 17.6 ounces of birth weight, the risk for breast cancer increased 7 percent. In addition, birth length and head circumference were also associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. The strongest association between size at birth and an increased risk for breast cancer was seen for birth length, the researchers reported. “Recognition of early life influences are critical in the etiology of breast cancer and helps to explain why several adult life primary prevention practices – as distinct to secondary prevention ones focusing on early detection – have been of limited effectiveness,” Trichopoulos said.” Prevention of breast cancer needs to take into account the very long natural history of the disease,” he added. Some good news for breast cancer survivors. Vital Signs: As we embark on another Breast Cancer Awareness month, there’s at least some good news to report. There can be life, apparently a high-quality life, after breast cancer treatment, a new survivors report says. Vital Signs has more.

Women of Color have become the new faces of abortion.

Fewer White childless teens are not opting to terminate their pregnancies as much as teenagers and mothers of color in their 20s and 30s, says a new report from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. In the first comprehensive study since 1974 of demographic characteristics of women who have abortions, researchers found that the overall drop in the abortion rate has been marked by a dramatic shift – a greater decline among White women and teenagers than among Black and Hispanic and older women. “There’s been a real change in the picture of women who get abortions,” Rachel Jones, a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a private nonprofit reproductive health research organization considered to be one of the most authoritative sources on abortion trends, told The Washington Post. Jones and her colleagues looked at yearly numbers collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and by periodic surveys that Guttmacher has conducted of abortion providers between 1974 and 2004. The analysis confirmed previous reports that the abortion rate fell to the lowest level since 1974, dropping 33 percent from a peak of 29 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 in 1980 to 20 per 1,000 in 2004. During that period, the proportion of abortions obtained by women younger than 20 dropped steadily, falling from 33 percent in 1974 to 17 percent in 2004. For those younger than 18, it fell from 15 percent of all abortions in 1974 to 6 percent in 2004. At the same time, the proportion of abortions obtained by women in their 20s increased from 50 percent to 57 percent, and the share done for women age 30 and older rose from 18 percent to 27 percent. Although abortion rates have declined among all racial and ethnic groups, large disparities persist, with Hispanic and Black women having the procedure at rates three to five times the rate of White women. In 2004, there were 10.5 abortions per 1,000 White women ages 15 to 44, compared with 28 per 1,000 Hispanic women of that age and 50 per 1,000 Black women. That translates into approximately 1 percent of White women having an abortion in 2004, compared with 3 percent of Hispanic women and 5 percent of Black women. Jones attributed that to the focus on reducing teenage pregnancy and on increasing contraceptive use. The proportion of all abortions performed for White women decreased from 45 percent in 1994 to 34 percent in 2004, while the proportion for Hispanics increased from 16 percent to 22 percent and the proportion for Black women rose from 35 percent to 37 percent.Low white blood may be tied to Black cancer survival rates. There’s a strong connection between women of African descent from the U.S. and Caribbean, who are otherwise healthy, and the prevalence of neutropenia, or low white blood count, say researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at the school’s Medical Center. Neutropenia’s may affect the poor outcomes of cancer or other illnesses, reports ScienceDaily. Among women of African descent who develop a malignancy, the presence of low white blood count may explain why treatments for some diseases don’t work as well as they should, the researchers say. “The goal of our study was to learn as much as we could about the association between a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), which creates a person’s unique DNA sequence, and low White blood cell counts,” said Victor, R. Grann, MD, professor of Epidemiology and Health Policy and Management at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and study lead author. In addition to prevalence in African and Afro-Caribbean populations, about 25 percent of all Blacks in the United States, including those from other origins, are neutropenic. Women from the Dominican Republic were found to have higher median white blood counts than all other groups. In an earlier study the Columbia researchers found that low white blood count may delay or prevent the completion of appropriate chemotherapy, especially among women receiving treatment after surgery for breast and colon cancer, and could affect cancer survival. “We found that women of African descent with early-stage breast cancer had lower baseline WBC (White blood count) and longer duration of adjuvant chemotherapy than non-Hispanic White women,” said Dawn Hershman, M.D., Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology, Columbia University Medical Center, co-director of the Breast Cancer program of the HICCC, and senior author of the study. “Black women were more likely to miss cycles of chemotherapy and had poorer survival than White women which could be related to lower WBC among other factors.”

Vital Signs: Vital signs New abortion numbers show an alarming trend. Vital signs looks at the “why” behind the new abortion numbers. Read and comment here.

In about a generation, the United States will be a little darker — skin color that is.

Minorites will become the majority by 2042, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042, with the nation projected to be 54 percent minority in 2050, the bureau said in a press release Wednesday. The bureau expects that minorities will make up 54 percent of the country’s population, the 65-and-older age group will more than double from 38.7 million to 88.5 million, making up more than 20 percent of the U.S. population, and Hispanics would account for 30 percent of the population’ the bureau said. The reason: The non-Hispanic single-race White population will lose its place as the majority by 2042 because of an expected rise in deaths in the 2030s. The Census Bureau defines minorities as everyone except for non-Hispanic, single-race Whites.