Farmed fish fed contaminated material
Tue, 08 May 2007 18:49:38 GMT
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Farmed fish were fed meal spiked with an industrial chemical linked to the ongoing recall of pet foods, though the contamination level was probably too low to pose a danger to anyone who may have eaten the fish, federal health officials said Tuesday.
The Canadian-made meal included what was purported to be wheat gluten, a protein source, imported from China. The material was actually wheat flour spiked by the chemical melamine and related, nitrogen-rich compounds to make it appear more protein rich than it was, officials said.
After pigs and chickens, the farmed fish mark the third food animal given contaminated feed. The level of contamination is expected to be too low to pose any danger to human health, said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection.
It wasn't immediately clear if any of the farmed fish entered the food supply. However, Acheson said at least one firm's fish were still too young and small to be sold. Investigators were visiting other U.S. aquaculture farms that used the contaminated feed.
Melamine, a chemical found in plastics and pesticides and not approved for use in pet or human in the U.S., contaminated pet food that either sickened or killed an unknown number of dogs and cats. Since March 16, more than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled because they were contaminated with melamine.
Acheson said that fish samples would be screened for signs of melamine. "Depending upon what we find in that testing, that is going to drive the next steps," Acheson said.
Canadian officials are aware of the finding, Acheson said.
"We used it to make pet food. They used it to make fish meal," he told reporters.
Federal health and food officials have said some 20 million chickens and thousands of hogs also were fed feed contaminated by melamine. As with the fish, they said the risk to human health is very low.
U.S. investigators also have learned that the purported Chinese wheat gluten and a second ingredient, rice protein concentrate, were actually simple wheat flour. The flour was spiked with melamine and related, nitrogen-rich compounds to make it appear more protein rich than it was. In tests, nitrogen levels are measured to gauge the overall protein content of food ingredients.
"What we discovered is these are not wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate but in fact are wheat flour contaminated by melamine," Acheson said.
The FDA is considering enforcement options, he added. The ingredients came from two Chinese firms: Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. and Futian Biology Technology Co. Ltd.
Better vets stress syndrome tests urged
Tue, 08 May 2007 17:04:06 GMT
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The surge in the number of veterans suffering post-traumatic stress disorder requires development of better tests to evaluate affected personnel and determine how best to compensate them, a panel of medical experts said Tuesday.
"As the increasing number of claims to the VA shows, PTSD has become a very significant public health problem," said Nancy Andreasen, chair of the committee that prepared the report.
"Our review of the current methods for evaluating PTSD disability claims and determining compensation indicates that a comprehensive revision is needed," said Andreasen, head of the psychiatry department at Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa.
Claims increased from 120,265 in 1999 to 215,871 in 2004 and payments jumped from $1.72 billion to $4.28 billion in the same period, a combined committee from the Institute of Medicine and
http://www.nationalacademies.org
Report Iraq child mortality rate soars
Tue, 08 May 2007 06:34:13 GMT
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
LONDON - The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, according to a report released Tuesday, which placed the country last in its child survival rankings.
One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005, according to the report by Save the Children, which said
http://www.savethechildren.org/
WHO criticized for neglecting evidence
Tue, 08 May 2007 03:23:50 GMT
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
LONDON - When developing "evidence-based" guidelines, the
World Health Organization routinely forgets one key ingredient: evidence. That is the verdict from a study published in The Lancet online Tuesday.
The medical journal's criticism of WHO could shock many in the global health community, as one of WHO's main jobs is to produce guidelines on everything from fighting the spread of bird flu and malaria control to enacting anti-tobacco legislation.
"This is a pretty seismic event," Lancet editor Dr. Richard Horton, who was not involved in the research for the article. "It undermines the very purpose of WHO."
The study was conducted by Dr. Andrew Oxman and Dr. Atle Fretheim, of the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services, and Dr. John Lavis at McMaster University in Canada. They interviewed senior WHO officials and analyzed various guidelines to determine how they were produced. What they found was a distinctly non-transparent process.
"It's difficult to judge how much confidence you can have in WHO guidelines if you're not told how they were developed," Oxman said. "In that case, you're left with blind trust."
WHO issues about 200 sets of recommendations every year, acting as a public health arbiter to the global community by sifting through competing scientific theories and studies to put forth the best policies.
WHO's Director of Research Policy Dr. Tikki Pang said that some of his WHO colleagues were shocked by The Lancet's study, but he acknowledged the criticism had merit, and explained that time pressures and a lack of both information and money sometimes compromised WHO work.
"We know our credibility is at stake," Pang said, "and we are now going to get our act together."
WHO officials also noted that, in many cases, evidence simply did not exist. Data from developing countries are patchy at best, and in an outbreak, information changes as the crisis unfolds.
To address the problem, they said, WHO is trying to develop new ways to collect information in poor regions, and has proposed establishing a committee to oversee the issuance of all health guidelines.
The Lancet study — conducted in 2003-04 through analyzing WHO guidelines and questioning WHO officials — also found that the officials themselves were concerned about the agency's methods.
One unnamed WHO director was ed in the study as saying: "I would have liked to have had more evidence to base recommendations on." Another said: "We never had the evidence base well-documented."
Pang said that, while some guidelines might be suspect and based on just a few expert opinions, others were developed under rigorous study and so were more reliable.
For example, WHO's recent advice on treating bird flu patients was developed under tight scrutiny.
Oxman also noted that WHO had its own quality-control process. When its 1999 guidelines for treating high blood pressure were criticized for, among other things, recommending expensive drugs over cheaper options without proven benefit, the agency issued its "guidelines for writing guidelines," which led to a revision of its advice on hypertension.
"People are well-intended at WHO," Oxman said. "The problem is that good intentions and plausible theories aren't sufficient."
It remains to be seen how WHO's 193 member countries will react to The Lancet study, released just before WHO's governing body — the World Health Assembly — meets next week at U.N. headquarters in Geneva to decide future health strategies.
"If countries do not have confidence in the technical competence of WHO, then its very existence is called into question," said Horton, the journal's editor. "This study shows that there is a systemic problem within the organization, that it refuses to put science first."
WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan, who took over the position this year, will be under pressure to respond to the study's criticism.
"We need a strong WHO," which in recent years "has seen its independence eroded and its trust diminished," Horton said. "Now is a fabulous opportunity for WHO to reinvent itself as the technical agency it was always meant to be."