Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a strain of Staph that's resistant to methicillin - the drug most commonly used to treat Staph infections.
Using a detailed DNA mapping technique, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen in Arizona were able to trace one of these superbugs - MRSA CC398 - to its origins, discovering that the human strain of this bacteria developed its drug resistance in animals rather than in people.
Often referred to as "pig-MRSA" or "livestock-associated MRSA," the strain is known to affect humans who have been exposed to live animals, such as farmers or veterinarians. But this study found that CC398 was originally a human bacteria, susceptible to antibiotics, before it spread to animals and then back to people. By the time it returned to humans it had picked up two souvenirs: resistance to methicillin and resistance to tetracycline - a drug often used to treat Staph infections in patients allergic to the penicillin class of antibiotics, which includes methicillin.
Because both tetracycline and penicillins are commonly administered to food animals, the study finds that it is likely that the use of these drugs in livestock gave this Staph bacteria the exposure it needed to develop resistance to these drugs.
In 2010, Tetracycline - used to promote growth and prevent the spread of disease - comprised over 42 percent of all
antibiotics administered to food-producing animals in the United States. That year 12,328,520 pounds of the drug were given to animals, while just over 100,000 pounds of the drug are sold for human use. And while over 1.9 million pounds of penicillin were sold for animal use in 2010, approximately 1.5 million pounds are distributed for
human use.
Both of these drugs are crucial for treating human Staph infections, says Dr. Lance Price, lead author of the study and Director of TGen's Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health.
"Methacyline's a really good antibiotic for treating these kinds of infections," he told Food Safety News in an interview. "But a substantial portion of the population is allergic to penicillin and they need alternative drugs like tetracycline. But 69% of the staph we see is resistant to tetracycline."
Price says that animal feeding operation provide the perfect setting for the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. According to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA is easily transmitted in settings where factors it calls the "5 Cs" are present: crowding, frequent skin-to-skin contact, compromised skin (cuts or abrasions , contamination or lack of cleanliness.
"A CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation is the place where these 5 Cs are most prevalent," says Price. "And the single worst thing you could do is add antibiotics to that environment. It's the cocktail for creating superbugs."
Once these superbugs are created, there's no telling where they can go, Price says. While most cases of CC398 come from direct contact with livestock, some human cases cannot be traced to live animals, raising the question of where they came from. Other humans? Contaminated meat?
Several studies have shown MRSA to be prevalent on our meat and poultry. A study published in the
Journal of Food Protection in October of last year found Staph bacteria in 29 percent of grocery store ground meats. And a study led by Price released earlier that year discovered Staph on almost one half of grocery store meats and poultry after putting samples in a bacteria enrichment broth to make Staph more detectable. Half of these contaminated meats were carrying a multi-drug resistant strain of Staph.
Price says the transmission of MRSA from meat to humans is an area that needs more research.
"There is definitely drug-resistant Staph in our food supply and probably in high concentrations. We still don't know whether it's a good route of exposure for people," he explains. "I think that's something we've really got to dedicate some research to."
For now though, Price says the upshot of his research is that antibiotics should be saved for treatment, not growth or prevention.
"We should be using antibiotics prudently, both in human antibiotics and animal production," he notes. "We should only be using them to treat infections - and it should be a last resort - because we're heading towards a time when our antibiotics won't work anymore, and we have to do everything we can to preserve the ones we have."
And as if the old adage needed more proof that political movements always end up eating their own, Mr. Taylor's nemesis is MoveOn, the left-of-center group that got its start trying to retain President Clinton after his sexual liaison with Monica Lewinsky.
Taylor, currently deputy commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA , did not get on MoveOn's bad side for anything as nefarious as that.
He did however do a 15-month stint as vice president for public policy for Monsanto, leaving the corporation that has been called one of America's ten most innovative companies, in January 2000. If Taylor's obituary were written now, it's not his short time at Monsanto that would get much attention. It would be his two longer periods of public service. At USDA during the Clinton Administration, he was the top administrator for the Food Safety and Inspection Service that first banned E. coli O157:H7 from beef.
And at FDA, he put his skills with Congress to work to get the Food Safety Modernization Act passed by Congress and he now in charge of implementation.
Still, a loose coalition of genetic engineering (GE opponents, raw milk advocates, organic farmers and the like has voiced objections to Taylor since he joined the Obama Administration. They point to other stints in
Taylor's resume where they claim he had ties to Monsanto.
A petition went up months ago, but only after MoveOn adopted Taylor's removal as a pet cause has the effort "gone viral." It has so far collected about 420,000 signatures.
Now, however, some of the nation's best known food safety and consumer advocates are trying to see if they can get MoveOn to back down.
"We acknowledge that Monsanto symbolizes a lot of things that many people (including some of us don't like about modern, industrial agriculture. But Mr. Taylor's resume is not reducible to his work at that company," the signers wrote MoveOn.
"It is far more relevant that in the Clinton Administration he headed the Food Safety and Inspection Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he stood up to the meat industry and fought for strict controls that help keep E. coli and other pathogens out of meat and poultry. Since joining the Obama Administration, Taylor has been working extraordinarily hard to transform the FDA from a reactive agency that chases down foodborne?illness outbreaks after people fall ill, to a proactive public?health?based agency focused on preventing foods from becoming contaminated in the first place."
"We are confident that his leadership, formerly at USDA and now at FDA, has and will continue to reduce the number of Americans sickened, hospitalized, and killed by foodborne pathogens."
Signing on to the
public letter are:
-Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., Executive Director Center for Science in the Public Interest
-Shaun Kennedy, Director, National Center for Food Protection and Defense Director, Partnerships and Programs, College of Veterinary Medicine Assistant Professor, Veterinary Population Medicine University of Minnesota
-William D. Marler, Esq. Marler Clark, The Food Safety Law Firm
-J. Glenn Morris, M.D., Director, Emerging Pathogens Institute University of Florida
-Michael Rodemeyer, Lecturer, Department of Science, Technology and Society University of Virginia, Former Executive Director, Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology
-Donald W. Schaffner, Ph.D., Extension Specialist in Food Science and Professor Director of the Center for Advanced Food Technology Rutgers University
-Deirdre Schlunegger Chief Executive Officer STOP Foodborne Illness
-Carol L. Tucker?Foreman, Distinguished Fellow, The Food Policy Institute Consumer Federation of America, Former Assistant Secretary of Agriculture
On the other side, Atlanta' s Frederick Ravid is the author of the petition calling for Taylor's removal. He posted it on
SignOn.org in August. MoveOn sent it out on Feb. 6 to its five million members, spiking sign-ups.
Taylor's supporters have pointed out that Ravid 's claims that biotech foods contribute to various types of cancers are without scientific merit.
Taylor has removed himself from making any policies having to do with GE foods.
The US Food and Drug Administration has moved to address a US cancer treatment drug shortage. Not only will it permit one drug to be imported, it's also fast-tracking the approval process for another.
Both measures are intended to ensure US cancer patients have access to the drugs they need after data showed that supply issues hampered the distribution of a good 200 drugs last year.
According to doctors and other health officials, the situation has forced suppliers into putting off cancer treatment programmes or drawing on other, less-effective or more expensive drugs to plug the gap.
The imported cancer drug is Lipodox, which is used in ovarian cancer and multiple myeloma treatment when other medications have been ineffective. It shares an ingredient, doxorubicin, with Johnson & Johnson's Doxil, supplies of which are now scarce.
FDA Cancer Drug Approval
Meanwhile, the FDA has also acted against the US drug shortage by approving APP Pharmaceuticals' production of methotrexate - a cancer drug used alongside other treatments to fight childhood leukaemia.
"A drug shortage can be a frightening prospect for patients and President Obama made it clear that preventing these shortages from happening is a top priority of his administration", Doctor Margaret Hamburg - administration commissioner - confirmed in a statement. She added: "Through the collaborative work of FDA, industry and other stakeholders, patients and families waiting for these products or anxious about their availability should now be able to get the medication they need.
"We are making progress. There were 195 drug shortages prevented in 2011 and 114 drug shortages prevented since October 2011 when we made the call for early notification."
US Drug Shortages
The US drug shortages have been attributed to multiple causes including manufacturing plant closures.
Lipodox is produced by Sun Pharma Global FZE which, in a statement, described the unusual circumstances under which it had been contracted. ‘[The] temporary importation of unapproved foreign drugs is considered only in rare cases when there is a shortage of an approved drug that is critical to patients and the shortage cannot be resolved in a timely fashion with FDA-approved drugs', it wrote.
Slaughter specically asked the companies to breakdown what percentage of the food they sell is raised "without any antibiotics," raised with antibiotics only for "therapeutic reasons," or raised with "routine use of antibiotics" -- information that consumers often have no way of knowing. The list of companies that received the letter was varied, including: Burger King, Cargill, YUM! Brands, Costco, Bon Appetit Management Company, Kraft, McDonald's and Whole Foods.
"Very simply, consumers have a right to know what's in their food," said Slaughter. "It's like that old commercial, 'where's the beef?' We just want to know, 'what's in the beef?' The US is facing a growing public health crisis in the form of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and information about how these companies are contributing to its rise or resolution should be available to consumers."
Antibiotic-resistance is not just an issue that rallies sustainable agriculture advocates -- who have long argued against drug use in food animal production -- the issue is increasingly tied to foodborne illness outbreak headlines.
Last year, the United States had the most outbreaks ever of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella tied to meat and poultry, according to Slaughter's office. Last summer, the largest Class I meat recall on record was initiated after Cargill ground turkey was linked to a nationwide drug-resistant Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak tied to 136 illnesses and one death.
"Decades of research has shown that the practice of routinely feeding antibiotics to swine, cows, and chickens harms human health by contributing to diseases that fail drug treatment," the letter continued. "A National Academy of Sciences report stated that 'a decrease in the inappropriate use of antimicrobials in human medicine is not enough [to slow the increase in antibiotic resistance]. Substantial efforts must be made to decrease inappropriate misuse in animals and agriculture as well."
The most recent estimates show around 80 percent of all antibiotics sold annually are used in food animal production.
The only microbiologist serving in Congress, Slaughter challenged companies to tout examples of lessening antibiotic use.
"There are some who would have us believe that we must pump our food up with antibiotics to keep prices low and affordable," she said. "But the food industry has proven success stories and leaders who understand the benefits that come from raising and serving antibiotic-free meat. It is not incompatible for us to have healthy and affordable food."
The
letter asks companies to respond in detail to Congresswoman Slaughter's office by June 15.
That Friday recall and others raised questions about whether the timing of recall notices could potentially leave consumers uninformed about unsafe food over a weekend.
That
preliminary look did not show any significant differences in the daily publication of recall notices, but with the close of 2011, I decided to take a longer look.
This more comprehensive look included recalls going back to 2005 for USDA and Food and Drug Administration (FDA monitored foods. The USDA data also detailed whether there was a specific pathogen found in the foods (or epidemiologically linked to an outbreak , if any illnesses were associated with the recalled item, and the class of the recall as designated by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS . The FDA does not specify classes in its recall notices, so only the first two categories could be assessed.
The conclusions of this more detailed analysis show a different story from the earlier one.
USDA-FSIS Recalls
On the USDA front; from 2005-2011 there were more recalls announced on Fridays than would be expected by random chance (p
<.001 . Indeed, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 all had significantly higher numbers of recalls on Fridays (p<.05 .
The total number of Class I recalls on Fridays were also higher from 2005-2011 (p=.003 . Class I recalls, by definition, are for dangerous or defective products that could cause serious health problems or deaths.
While on a per year basis, only 2006 and 2011 have significantly higher number of Class I recalls on Fridays than expected, 2007 and 2009 are very nearly significantly higher (p=.055 and p=.062, respectively .
The red line indicates the expected number of recalls if equally distributed throughout the week. A proportion significantly higher than expected of p
<.01 indicated by *.
In addition, if weekend recall dates are excluded, the pattern holds for total recalls with a greater number on Fridays than other weekdays (p=.002 . For Class I recalls, there was no significant difference in the number of Friday recalls compared with the number expected for weekdays, but there were still more alerts published on that day than any other day of the week (p=.086 .
The red line indicates the expected number of recalls if equally distributed throughout the week. A proportion significantly higher than expected of p
<.01 indicated by *.
There was no trend in any day of the week having more pathogen or illness related recalls than any other day in the seven years analyzed. This was true when only weekdays were analyzed, as well. This indicates that recall notices related to outbreaks of foodborne illness and due to specific pathogens found in food have been evenly spaced throughout the week.
While this is the case, when taken as a whole there were more Class I and Class II recalls on Fridays than would be expected. The significance of this difference for Class I recalls was eliminated when analyzing only weekdays, but held true for Class II notices, perhaps showing a propensity for putting out more urgent recalls on Fridays.
One particularly interesting finding was an observable pattern in an increasing number of Class II and Class III recalls during the time period studied, while Class I recall numbers remained relatively static. There was a significant difference in the number of Class II recalls starting in 2008 the percentage that Class II recalls make of the total number of recalls has continued to increase (P
<.05 . Class III recalls remain rare and, as such, there is little statistical power in any observations made.
The increasing number of Class II and slightly Class III with the stagnant number of Class I led to an overall increase in the number of recalls per year by the USDA from 56 in 2005 to 108 in 2011.
FDA Recalls
The previous article on this topic did not evaluate FDA recalls. This oversight has been amended this time around, and the findings are similar to those for FSIS recalls.
A glance at the total recalls per day chart shows that between 2005 and 2011 a significantly higher number of recalls were issued on Fridays than would be expected (P
<.01 .
The red line indicates the expected number of recalls if equally distributed throughout the week. A proportion significantly higher than expected of p
<.01 indicated by *.
This holds when excluding the weekends that had so few recalls.
The red line indicates the expected number of recalls if equally distributed throughout the week. A proportion significantly higher than expected of p
<.01 indicated by *.
The FDA data again points to a bias toward publishing recall notices on Fridays over other days of the week and, if anything, the tendency is more pronounced with this agency than with the FSIS. Indeed, recall announcements related to foods testing positive for pathogens and those associated with illnesses were also more common on Fridays, compared to the whole week or just the work week, a trend not seen in FSIS recalls.
Fridays have consistently seen significantly more than an expected number of recall notices for both the whole week and weekdays only for the entire seven years examined. However, due to the low number of recalls related to illnesses in all the years, statistical tests cannot be performed on a per year basis. This is also true of pathogen-related recalls prior to 2009.
There was again a pattern of certain types of recalls increasing over the years, as well as the overall number of FDA recalls increasing. The total number of recalls in 2005 was 145 and this reached a max of more than 800 because of multiple peanut butter-related recalls in 2009. Excluding that outlier, there was still a steady increase in the number of FDA recalls from 2005 to the end of 2011.
Why Fridays?
This tendency toward releasing recall statements on Fridays, more than on other days of the week, is likely not intentional but could be problematic, because people who do not consume media over the weekend might be less likely to be informed in a timely manner and, as a result, could eat recalled food. On the other hand, Friday recall notices may be the result of a sense of urgency to get make the information public before the work week ends.
Indeed, processes within the regulatory agencies may be causing an inordinate number of recall notices to be issued on Fridays. Such factors could include laboratory procedures to find contamination in samples, communication delays between the lab, regulators and the companies voluntarily recalling their products, and the general timeline of work in the offices. These, along with other processes, including political pressures, could lead to significantly more recalls on Fridays.
Importantly, recalls are initiated by private companies once the potential for hazard is found. The company distributing or producing the food recalls the products in coordination with the regulatory agency, but the company is ultimately responsible for when the recall is initiated.
It could take days before information regarding potential hazards makes it from a lab or other area of initial discovery, through the regulatory agency to the producer, and then for a recall alert to be issued. Thus, the high number of Friday recalls could be seen as an attempt to get the information out before the weekend, while people are still likely to be tuned into the news.
While the causes leading to the high number of Friday recalls cannot be determined with this small look into the past few years, what can be seen is a potential for lack of communication between the consumer and the food regulators. Easy access to information regarding potentially dangerous foods should be an issue of primary importance for both the USDA and FDA, and these agencies can work to ensure that the information is not going out when people are less likely to get it.
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KWAME HOLMAN: The U.S. Supreme Court will revisit the issue of affirmative action in college admissions in arguments this fall. The court agreed today to hear a case filed by a white student who was denied entry at the University of Texas in 2008.
She contends the school's race-conscious policy is unconstitutional. The high court last ruled on the issue in 2003, when it upheld the use of race in admissions at the University of Michigan Law School.
Federal regulators moved today to ease critical shortages of two cancer drugs. The Food and Drug Administration announced it's allowing temporary imports of a replacement drug for Doxil, used to treat ovarian cancer. The agency also approved new suppliers of methotrexate, a drug to treat children with leukemia.
An official at the American Cancer Society said patients need the relief.
DR. LEONARD LICHTENFELD, American Cancer Society: The current drug shortage has become a daily nightmare for cancer patients, their families, and those who treat them, with no clear understanding of when drugs currently in shortage will become available and an uncertainty of when additional drugs may go into shortage.
KWAME HOLMAN: FDA officials said there currently are 283 prescription drugs in scarce supply or simply unavailable in the U.S.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average broke 13000 for the first time since May of 2008, but it could not hold. Instead, the Dow ended with a gain of just 15 points to close at 12,965. The Nasdaq fell three points to close at 2,948.
A team from the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency held new talks in Iran today on the country's nuclear program. The group is supposed to gauge whether Iran is getting closer to developing a nuclear weapon, but the Foreign Ministry said the U.N. team will not be visiting any nuclear facilities.
RAMIN MEHMANPARAST, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman (through translator : The titles of the members of the visiting delegation are not inspectors. This is an expert delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency, led by the vice president of the director general of IAEA. The purpose of the visit is not inspection. The goal is negotiation and talks on cooperation between Iran and IAEA to create a framework for further talks and cooperation.
KWAME HOLMAN: Also today, the head -- the deputy head of Iran's armed forces warned the regime could launch a preemptive strike if it feels threatened. He did not name a target.
In Syria, opposition groups claimed up to 100 people were killed in fighting across the country. Many of the deaths, they said, were in the opposition stronghold of Homs. There, the neighborhood of Baba Amr came under a heavy new artillery barrage by the Syrian military. Rebel sources said shells rained down at a rate of 10 per minute, but activists said President Bashar Assad's troops had been stymied in efforts to launch a ground attack.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland appeared to open the door slightly to arming the opposition.
VICTORIA NULAND, State Department spokeswoman: We don't believe that it makes sense to contribute now to the further militarization of Syria. What we don't want to see is the spiral of violence increase. That said, if we can't get Assad to yield to the pressure that we are all bringing to bear, we may have to consider additional measures.
KWAME HOLMAN: U.S. officials also supported a call by the International Red Cross for a daily cease-fire to allow deliveries of humanitarian aid.
Protests erupted in Afghanistan today after Korans inadvertently were burned last night at a U.S. military base. More than 2,000 Afghans demonstrated outside the facility. Some in the crowd shouted "Die, foreigners" as they set tires ablaze and threw stones at the main gate.
A Western military official said the Muslim holy books were removed from a nearby jail because detainees wrote extremist messages in them.
The NATO commander in Afghanistan said emphatically they shouldn't have been added to trash meant for incineration.
LT. GEN. JOHN ALLEN, International Security Assistance Forces: We are thoroughly investigating the incident. We are taking steps to ensure this doesn't ever happen again. I assure you, I promise you, this wasn't intentional in any way. And I offer my sincere apologies for any offense this may have caused.
KWAME HOLMAN: Afghan President Hamid Karzai denounced the burning, and he ordered a separate inquiry into the incident.
Separately, three NATO soldiers were killed today in a roadside bombing in Southern Afghanistan; 47 NATO service members have died in Afghanistan so far this year.
Those are some of the day's major stories.
The CDC study,
published online in Emerging Infectious Diseases, reviewed dairy-related outbreaks between 1993 and 2006 in all 50 states, during which time the authors counted 121 dairy-related illness outbreaks resulting in 4,413 illnesses, 239 hospitalizations and three deaths.
Despite raw milk products accounting for approximately one percent of dairy production in the U.S., raw milk dairies were linked to 60 percent of those dairy-related outbreaks. In addition, 202 of the 239 hospitalizations (85 percent resulted from raw milk outbreaks. Thirteen percent of patients from raw milk outbreaks were hospitalized, versus one percent of patients from pasteurized milk outbreaks.
Seventy-five percent of the raw milk outbreaks occurred in the 21 states where the sale of raw milk was legal at the study's onset in 1993. Today, 30 states permit the sale of raw milk, while another seven are considering raw milk legislation changes this year.
The study found that individuals under the age of 20 accounted for 60 percent of those affected by raw milk outbreaks, compared with 23 percent associated with pasteurized products. Children were also more likely than adults to become seriously ill from pathogenic bacteria in raw milk.
The differences in illness severity between raw and pasteurized milk are largely due to the pathogens present in each: People sickened from raw milk typically ingest injurious bacteria -- most commonly Salmonella or Campylobacter -- whereas pasteurized milk outbreaks more often result from "relatively mild" pathogens such as norovirus, according to the CDC.
This is the first comprehensive federal-level update to raw milk statistics of this kind since 1998, when the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition released
a similar review of raw milk outbreaks spanning from 1973 to 1992. That study found that 46 raw milk outbreaks occurred during the review window, with 40 of them in states with legal raw milk sales.
At the time, the 1998 study concluded that "consumption of raw milk remains a preventable cause of foodborne illness." Similarly, Tuesday's CDC study suggested that "stronger restrictions and enforcement should be considered."
"It's really helpful to have these numbers updated as interest in raw milk increases through activist groups," said Michele Jay-Russell, Ph.D., program manager of the Western Center for Food Safety at University of California Davis.
"I wouldn't say the statistics are surprising, but it's helpful to know that, unfortunately, things have not really changed since the last report," she added. "Despite being in the 21st century, raw milk continues to make people sick."
The study comes on the heels of one of the largest raw milk outbreaks in U.S. history. As of Tuesday, 77 people in four states been sickened in a Campylobacter outbreak linked to raw milk from Your Family Cow dairy in Pennsylvania that began in late January. At least nine of the victims from that outbreak have been hospitalized.
Many of those who are ill in that outbreak are children. "Parents who have lived through the experience of watching their child fight for their life after drinking raw milk now say that it's just not worth the risk," said Dr. Barbara Mahon, co-author of the CDC study, in a news release.
Since January 2007, the end of the study's review window, there have been
at least 56 additional foodborne illness outbreaks associated with raw milk. Between 2010 and 2011, raw dairy products
were linked to 21 outbreaks and 201 illnesses, while pasteurized dairy products caused two outbreaks and 39 illnesses.
According to Jay-Russell, nearly all instances of outbreaks from pasteurized dairy occur because of contamination after the pasteurization process.
This year, Indiana, New Jersey, Iowa, Idaho, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Wisconsin have all considered changes to their raw milk sales laws. The majority of the bills under review would either permit the sale of raw milk where currently illegal, or remove certain restrictions on its sale in states where it's already permitted.
Federal law restricts the transport of raw milk across state lines for sale, though consumers are free to travel across state lines to purchase milk and take it home, and there is no law against consuming unpasteurized milk.
The push for loosened raw milk sales rules across many states runs counter to the best scientific recommendations the CDC and Food and Drug Administration can make based on the available data, Jay-Russell said. Many raw milk proponents argue that raw milk provides nutrients and numerous health benefits negated by the pasteurization process, while many food scientists say there's no credible scientific evidence for any of those claims.
"It's [the CDC and FDA's] charge to look at the health statistics and inform the public and help policy makers create policy that makes sense," Jay-Russell said. "But there's a push-back. Some groups don't want government influence over food, so it makes it a much more political debate than a scientific one."
the Denver Post reported.
Hauser's death brings the number of adult fatalities to 34 in the outbreak traced to Listeria-tainted cantaloupes grown and packed by Jensen Farms and distributed by Frontera Produce. The outbreak, which sickened at least 146 people in 28 states, was the deadliest involving foodborne infection in nearly 100 years.
Four more outbreak victims have died since the
final investigation update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which attributed 30 deaths and one miscarriage to listeriosis infections caused by the Colorado cantaloupes.
In addition to Mike Hauser,
fatalities not included in the CDC's count are Paul Schwarz of Missouri, Sharon Jones of Colorado, and Dale Braddock of Nebraska.
Hauser was a retired podiatrist.
Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration and Colorado public health officials have said hard-to-clean equipment and pooled water in the packing plant, in addition to condensation on cantaloupes moved to cold storage, were among the factors contributing to the lethal outbreak.
As we've pointed out here several times in the past nine months, the anti-choice forces
made major strides in making legal abortions harder to get in 2011. They did their work at the state level where they have achieved steady, damaging victories for a number of years, but were especially emboldened by the Republican success at the polls in 2010.
To condense, 135 provisions were enacted in 36 states during 2011 relating to reproductive health or rights. Eighty-nine of those provisions restricted abortion, 50 more than in 2005, the previous record year for such legislation. Dry statistics. But as Carole Joffe
reports, they are causing personal pain. Both for women seeking abortions and for providers.
First consider Jennie McCormick. She ordered abortion medication over the internet and now faces criminal charges that could put her away for five years. Joffe writes: "She has also been stigmatized in her own community to a degree to which the fictional Hester Prynne of
The Scarlet Letter
fame could relate." From the
Independent:
When Jennie Linn McCormack walks the streets of Pocatello, the town in southern Idaho where she was born, raised, and still lives, she attempts to disguise her face by covering it with a thick woollen scarf.Unmarried, impoverished and pregnant with her fourth child, McCormack faced the problem so many American women do because nearly 90 percent of the nation's counties have no clinics or hospitals that will perform abortions. That is an outcome of nearly four decades of attacks by anti-choice forces. For her, the closest clinic was in Salt Lake City, a 150-mile drive. Because Utah requires a waiting period, she would have had to make the five-hour round-trip twice. The expense of the trip, the procedure and follow-up medical care also worried her.
It doesn't really work. In the supermarket, people stop and point. At fast-food outlets, they hiss "it's her!" In the local church, that supposed bastion of forgiveness, fire-and-brimstone preachers devote entire sermons to accusing her of mortal sin. [...]
Then she found out from her sister about RU-486, the abortion-inducing drug. Her sister ordered it, and McCormack took the pill as soon as it arrived. It worked. But there were complications that brought the fact of her abortion to the notice of authorities. In Idaho, self-induced abortions are outlawed. Although the original charges against McCormack were dismissed last summer, they could be reinstated. The whole affair has put the issue of the constitutionality of the ban in Idaho, and by extrapolation similar bans in six other states, into the hands of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Then there is the provider. Joffe relates the example of Amy Hagstrom Miller, who oversees abortion clinics in Texas under the name Whole Women's Health. She and her clients now have to contend with new obstacles from a state law that requires a woman seeking an abortion to obtain an ultrasound from a physician who must describe to her in detail the development of the fetus. The same physician must perform the abortion, which presents a huge scheduling problem.
But, more importantly, the vast majority of abortions are performed at 12 weeks of pregnancy or less. The fetus is quite small at this phase. That means that physicians who want to avoid running afoul of a law that is intended by its sponsors to reduce abortions must use a transvaginal probe. That requires penetrating a woman's vagina, "state rape," as opponents have so rightly called it. If she refuses, no abortion.
From Idaho to Texas and other states across the nation, it's all part of the long-running effort to end legal abortions. There is nothing the anti-choice forces will not stoop to in their relentless war on reproductive freedom.
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The idea of cholesterol creating cardiac problems has caused obsessive cholesterol count blood testing for decades. Another outcome of this scare was obsessively avoiding fat, especially saturated fats. The food industry responded with low and no fat foods from milk... |
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