In the run-up to the Summer Olympics, Chinese officials pressed mines and factories near Beijing to shutter or move elsewhere in an effort to assure the event would be held under blue skies.

Now, as China rushes to invest nearly $600 billion of stimulus money and shake off a rare economic slowdown caused by the Great Economic Crisis, its skies seem destined to turn smoggy once again. 

The Ministry of Environmental Protection has begun fast tracking hoards of industrial projects, almost completely trampling environmental reviews in the process.

In one 3-day period late last year for example, it green lighted 93 new projects worth $38 billion.

“This is the moment to decide whether we want to keep the old growth model or change it,” Ma Jun told the New York Times. “This new round of development might generate more pollution for the future,” understated the director of China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs.

China’s brief industrial slump actually helped the country close in on environmental targets it had set years ago. Data from the second half of last year showed that China was on target to increase energy efficiency by 20% and to cut water and air pollution by 10% compared with 2005 levels

Meanwhile, the central government’s environmental movement, such as it is, remains plagued by bureaucracy, conflicts of interest and worse.

Take the strange case of Pan Yue. Pan had been the number 2 guy in China’s environment ministry and was by far the most outspoken green supporter within the Communist Party. For years he had led a rare public campaign against polluters and supported rigorous environmental inspections.

This angered provincial officials, state-owned companies and his current boss who eventually sidelined him, shook down his top aides and harassed his wife, according to people who confided in secrecy with the Times.

For the record, Pan chalked up his lower profile to an illness, and records show he had indeed been hospitalized for a time.

It’s not the first time Chinese party officials have wound up in the hospital after falling out of favor.

Women who took valproate during pregnancy had children with lower IQ scores than those who used a different antiseizure medication, according to scientists at Emory University.

Valproate, available generically or under the brand name Depakote, is the second-most-popular drug for the treatment of epilepsy.

Earlier studies had shown it to cause developmental delays and malformations in the offspring of pregnant women.

To reach these conclusions, Kimford Meador and colleagues recruited 303 pregnant women that took drugs to control epilepsy from 25 medical centers in the US and the UK between 1999 and 2004.

They performed cognitive assessments on 258 2- and 3-year-olds born to these mothers, 53 of which had taken valproate.

They found that kids whose moms had taken valproate while pregnant had a mean IQ of 92. Kids that had been exposed to lamotrigine, phenytoin and carbamazepine in utero had mean IQs of 101, 99 and 98, respectively.

Overall, there was a strong correlation between the IQs of kids and their mothers, but this relation was not present in the offspring of mothers taking valproate.

The write-up appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Valproate is also widely prescribed for migraines, pain and psychiatric disorders although people taking the drug for these indications were not enrolled in the study.

The study authors warned against using valproate as first-line therapy for seizure control in women of childbearing age.

“If I (use another drug) and the patient has a breakthrough seizures, I can switch the patient to valproate,” said Meador reasoned for the New York Times. But “If I put the patient on valproate as a first choice and the baby has cognitive impairment or a malformation, I can’t repair that.”