U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Dozens of people in the St. Louis region became sick after eating at catered events late last year. Lawsuits seek to tie the poisoning to a national vegetable company.

The growing trend of family-funded research concerns some medical ethicists, who say that suggestions to parents that treatments may be imminent can raise thorny ethical issues.

Farmers have been using the weed killer glyphosate – a key ingredient of the product Roundup – at soaring levels even as glyphosate has become...