With the EPA's deadline only days away, a war of words has erupted over whether the agency should go ahead with a dioxin study decades in the making.

Vietnam veterans, environmental advocates and women’s groups were among the more than 2,000 individuals and organizations signing a letter Thursday urging EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to publish the dioxin risk assessment.

“We are writing to strongly urge you to finalize the EPA’s study on dioxin, which has been delayed for over 25 years,” the one-page letter says.

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Kayt Sukel is a passionate science writer and the author of "Dirty Minds: How our brains influence love, sex and relationships" - an edgy, irreverent book that examines all the ways our neurons can wreak havoc with our hearts.

Let me just get this out of the way upfront: I had an orgasm in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

That is, as background research for my book, "Dirty Minds: How our brains influence love, sex and relationships," I participated in a study at Rutgers University where scientists measured the activity in my brain as I self-stimulated to an orgasm.

I wasn’t the first woman to participate in one of these studies - and I won’t be the last.
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Between 1990 and 2004, the number of women who were choosing to give birth at home steadily declined. But in 2005 the trend turned, according to a new report released by the National Center for Health Statistics on Thursday.

The number of home births in the U.S. jumped by 29% from 2004 to 2009. Although home births are still rare - they account for less than 1% of all births - this is a pretty rapid increase, said Marian MacDorman, statistician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Forty, 50 years ago, there was this idea that hospital birth was more modern. Now it's the opposite."
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Denise Castelli is one of seven people chosen to be a part of Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Fit Nation Triathlon Challenge. As a recent amputee, Denise is searching for a way to reclaim the feeling of being a competitive athlete that she cherished before her accident.

Getting in the pool has forced me to face a number of fears. The first being the obvious fear - ditching the doggie paddle and actually learning how to swim. The other fear is not so obvious and much more personal.

The swim is the only leg of the race that I’ll be doing, well, legless. Prosthetics aren’t made to be submerged in water and I can imagine it would be quite difficult to swim with a heavy piece of carbon fiber attached to my body.

My prosthetic has been my safety net ever since I learned to walk again. It has essentially become my super hero cape. When I wear it, I know I can do anything. I have the world in the palm of my hand. Without it, am I handicapped?
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Watch "Dr. Sanjay Gupta Reports: Big Hits, Broken Dreams" Sunday, January 29 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET.

One day late in the summer of 2010, I was sitting in my backyard with my oldest daughter. We had just finished cutting the lawn when my neighbor and his oldest son stopped by.

His son, a football player at one of the powerhouse local high schools, had grown nearly an inch over the summer and weighed more than 200 pounds. He was already in practice for the upcoming season. He asked if I had time to speak to a friend of his who also played football and had suffered a concussion the previous season.

They were asking me in my capacity as a neurosurgeon, but also in desperation, as this young man was still having tremendous difficulty nearly a year after his injury.
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Ian Kerner, a sexuality counselor and New York Times best-selling author, blogs about sex on Thursdays on The Chart. Read more from him on his website, GoodInBed.

If online dating hasn’t led you to your perfect match, perhaps the issue isn’t that you’re too choosy, but rather that there’s too much choice.

There’s no doubt that dating in the 21st century offers a lot of opportunities. Think about your parents’ generation: They grew up with no Internet, they likely stayed in the same town for most of their lives, and they automatically had more in common with the people in that town as a result. Today, women and men are increasingly marrying someone outside of their religion, their ethnicity and their geographic area.

Never in history have we had so many potential partners to choose from - and never have we had so much difficulty choosing. In fact, several recent studies suggest that this explosion of options has made men and women feel more confused and uncertain about finding a partner than ever before.
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It’s well documented that certain factors increase your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. Most people know the big ones - high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes.  But age, gender and ethnicity also have been thought to play a role. 

Now a report published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine shows that these risk factors alone are responsible for your cardiovascular destiny, and that having just one can up your risk considerably.

Study authors analyzed the data from 18 studies involving more than 250,000 men and women from different ethnic backgrounds whose risk factors were measured at age 45, 55, 65 and 75.  This allowed the authors to determine the risk of dying from heart attack or stroke over the course of a lifetime, rather than just 5 to 10 years in the future as has been previously studied.

What the researchers found can be boiled down to this:
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Certain chemicals in the environment may reduce the effectiveness of childhood vaccines according to research in a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Scientists looked specifically at PFCs, perfluorinated compounds, widely used in products that repel water, grease and stains. Children with higher levels of PFCs in their bodies did not get optimal protection from their vaccines, according to the study.

"Routine childhood immunizations are a mainstay of modern disease prevention. The negative impact on childhood vaccinations from PFCs should be viewed as a potential threat to public health," says study author Dr. Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
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Editor's note: Dr. Charles Raison, CNNhealth's mental health expert, is an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The American Psychiatric Association is in the midst of redesigning a document often called the Bible of Psychiatry. It's known more officially as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM for short.

For practical purposes, including insurance reimbursement, the DSM determines what does and does not qualify as a psychiatric illness in the United States.  Because of this, changes to the document can lead to profound effects on patients’ lives.  Changing criteria can dictate who and who cannot be considered to have a mental illness worthy of treatment... and insurance coverage.

Nowhere have proposed changes to the upcoming edition of the DSM generated more angst, or media coverage, than in the area of autistic disorders.
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In the Human Factor, we profile survivors who have overcome the odds. Confronting a life obstacle - injury, illness or other hardship - they tapped their inner strength and found resilience they didn't know they possessed. This week, former NFL player Lamar Campbell explains why he's dedicated his life to helping educate high school football players about the dangers of the game.

In 2005, I was given an opportunity to work in the scouting department for the Detroit Lions, the only team that I had played for professionally.

I was still fairly young and energetic, a little heavier but seemingly healthy, and ready to attack this opportunity head on with the tenacity that I played the game. What I didn’t expect was a chance to spend a training camp with my childhood football idol Andre Waters.

Andre “Dirty” Waters, as he was dubbed by the local Philadelphia media, was considered one of the most feared hitters ever to play in the NFL.  To stand in his presence made me feel like a little kid again; craving his war stories, advice on life, coaching and how to evaluate talent.

After one of the first practices, I told him: “You made me want to play safety in the NFL. I modeled my game after you every time that I stepped on the field.”

His response haunts me today [Waters committed suicide in November 2006], but pushes me forward in our fight to understanding the importance of player safety and concussions. With a smile he answered, "But how do you feel?” At that time I enthusiastically replied, “I feel good.”
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