Bursting cans heighten botulism warnings
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:26:10 GMT
By ANDREW BRIDGES, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Cans of recalled food are bursting, swollen with the bacteria that causes botulism.
The bursting cans were among those being held by Castleberry's Food Co., which announced last week a massive recall that now includes more than 90 potentially contaminated products, including chili sauces and dog foods.
News about the bursting cans gives new urgency to warnings from federal health officials to get rid of the recalled cans from pantries and store shelves.
Four people have been sickened and hospitalized by the contaminated food, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The recall covers potentially tens of millions of cans of food; officials fear the tally will grow.
Food and Drug Administration investigators believe the company failed to properly cook some or all the products, allowing the Clostridium botulinum bacteria to survive the canning process.
The bacteria produce a toxin that causes botulism, a muscle-paralyzing disease.
"We're not talking here about a bug that lands you in the bathroom for a few days with diarrhea. We're talking about a toxin that puts you in the intensive care unit," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's lead food safety expert. "This is foodborne illness with an extra kick in it, big time."
The bacteria thrive in moist, oxygen-free environments; inside canned food is a perfect place.
As the bacteria grow and reproduce, they produce gases that can cause contaminated cans to swell and burst. Health officials warn the extremely potent toxin can infect people if it is inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through the eye or breaks in the skin.
"The longer this stuff stays in the can, the worse it gets," Acheson said.
Spot checks by the FDA and state officials continue to turn up recalled products in stores.
People who have any of the recalled products at home should double-bag and thrown them away, the FDA recommends.
Castleberry's is owned by Bumble Bee Seafoods LLC, based in San Diego.
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On the Net:
FDA botulism information: http://tinyurl.com/324exf
TB patient released from hospital
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:41:33 GMT
By COLLEEN SLEVIN, Associated Press Writer
DENVER - The tuberculosis patient who created an international health scare when he flew to Europe for his wedding was released from a hospital Thursday after successfully completing inpatient treatment, officials said.
Andrew Speaker, an Atlanta attorney who had a multidrug-resistant strain of TB, underwent surgery on July 17 to remove a diseased portion of his right lung.
The doctors who treated him at National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver don't consider him to be completely cured, but the lung operation and antibiotic treatments "have eliminated any detectable evidence of infection," the hospital said.
Speaker, who spent eight weeks in the hospital, will still need to continue antibiotic treatment for about two years.
Hospital spokesman William Allstetter said Thursday that Speaker had left Denver in an air ambulance and returned to Georgia to recuperate. He would not specify where except to say that Speaker was not in a hospital. Speaker, reached by telephone Thursday, declined to comment.
"He arrived there safely and he is happy to be home," Allstetter said.
Speaker is not contagious and could have flown by commercial airliner, but "everyone involved in the case" decided the air ambulance was a better choice because of the attention the case has attracted, the hospital said.
Allstetter said Speaker is no longer under an isolation order but was instructed to check in with county health officials in Georgia. As with other TB patients, a health worker must watch Speaker take his drugs to make sure he stays on the five-days-a-week, he said.
Federal health officials worked with the Denver hospital to develop a plan to monitor Speaker's treatment, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesman Tom Skinner.
Speaker became the focus of a federal investigation and prompted an international uproar in May when he went ahead with the wedding trip after health officials said they had advised him not to fly. CDC officials notified him while he was there that tests indicated he had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis; later tests found only the less dangerous multidrug-resistant TB.
Rather than check into a European hospital, Speaker flew to Canada, drove across the border and turned himself in at a U.S. hospital. For a few days, he held the designation as the first American quarantined by the federal government since 1963. He was transferred to National Jewish on May 31.
Almost all of the U.S. passengers who were with Speaker on a May 12 flight from Atlanta to Paris have been contacted, and preliminary tests found no sign they were infected. However, not all of those passengers have gone back for the necessary follow-up tests that would provide conclusive results, Skinner said. The Speakers were the only Americans on the May 24 flight.
Speaker was in good health, aside from the TB, so he has had a fairly quick recovery after surgery, hospital officials said.
"Although we believe there are still a few tuberculosis bacteria in his lungs, ongoing antibiotic therapy should kill those," said Dr. Gwen Huitt, director of the hospital's infectious disease unit. "We expect him to return to a full and active life."
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Associated Press Writer Mike Stobbe in Atlanta contributed to this report.
DEA raids LA medical marijuana clinics
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:41:26 GMT
By ANDREW GLAZER, Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES - Federal agents raided 10 marijuana clinics Wednesday, the same day city leaders introduced a measure calling for an end to the crackdown on the dispensaries allowed under state law.
The bust netted five arrests, large quantities of marijuana and cash, and was the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's second-largest since California voters approved medical marijuana sales in 1996. The drug remains illegal under federal law.
DEA spokeswoman Sarah Pullen said the timing of the bust and the city's action was "purely coincidental."
The agency has maintained the clinics are distribution points for illegal drugs and earn their owners big profits. Those arrested Wednesday included clinic owners and managers, though no patients, for investigation of marijuana distribution.
Councilman Dennis Zine, who earlier in the day wrote a letter to DEA Administrator Karen Tandy asking the agency to stop the raids, called the federal agents "bullies."
"Instead of using resources to go after drug dealers ruining neighborhoods and poisoning school kids, they're going after individuals dying of cancer and suffering from AIDS who need cannabis to have any type of appetite," Zine said.
The clinics are largely unregulated, which Zine and others said invites illegal pot use and sales.
He said he and the council support a congressional bill that would prohibit new clinics from opening until the city finds a way to better regulate its more than 100 dispensaries. It also calls for withholding funding for DEA raids on medical marijuana clinics.
The council proposed Wednesday requiring existing dispensaries to obtain a city tax registration certificate, a seller's permit, a property lease, business insurance, proof of dispensary membership and a county health permit within 60 days.
DEA agents raided 11 Los Angeles-area dispensaries in one day in January, the largest-ever such crackdown by the agency.
Earlier this month, the DEA sent letters to at least 30 landlords of marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles County warning their property and assets could be seized. Agency officials said at the time the letters were not a threat.
Study Obesity is socially contagious
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 03:10:20 GMT
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new study that suggests obesity is "socially contagious" and can spread easily from person to person.
The large, federally funded study found that to be true even if your loved ones lived far away. Social ties seemed to play a surprisingly strong role, even more than genes are known to do.
"We were stunned to find that friends who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person's weight status as friends who are right next door," said co-author James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego.
The study found a person's chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled.
Researchers think it's more than just people with similar eating and exercise habits hanging out together. Instead, it may be that having relatives and friends who become obese changes one's idea of what is an acceptable weight.
Despite their findings, the researchers said people should not sever their relationships.
"There is a ton of research that suggest that having more friends makes you healthier," Fowler said. "So the last thing that you want to do is get rid of any of your friends."
The study was published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the National Institute on Aging.
Researchers analyzed medical records of people in the Framingham Heart Study, which has been following the health of residents of that Boston suburb for more than a half century. They tracked records for relatives and friends using contact information that participants provided each time they were examined over a 32-year period.
In all, 12,067 people — all Framingham participants — were involved in the study.
After taking into account natural weight gain and other factors, researchers found the greatest influence occurred among friends and not in people sharing the same genes or living in the same household. Geography and smoking cessation had no effect on obesity risk.
On average, the researchers calculated, when an obese person gained 17 pounds, the corresponding friend put on an extra 5 pounds.
Gender also had a strong influence. In same-sex friendships, a person's obesity risk increased by 71 percent if a friend gained weight. Between brothers, the risk was up by 44 percent and 67 percent between sisters.
Indiana University statistician Stan Wasserman said while the study was clever, it had its limitations because it excluded relationships outside of the Framingham group.
Obesity is a global public health problem. About 1.5 billion adults worldwide are overweight, including more than 400 million who are obese. Two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese.
Much of the recent research focus has been on the intense hunt for obesity genes involved in appetite or calorie burning. Treatment has been mainly centered on helping individuals curb their weight through better diet and fitness.
The findings could open a new avenue for treating this worldwide epidemic. The researchers said it might be helpful to treat obese people in groups instead of just the individual.
"Because people are interconnected, their health is interconnected," said lead author Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard sociologist.
Obesity experts not involved in the research said the results back up what they have suspected all along — that people look toward one another for what is an acceptable weight.
"If you're just a little bit heavy and everyone around you is quite heavier, you will feel good when you look in a mirror," said Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center.
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On the Net:
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
Framingham Heart Study: http://www.framinghamheartstudy.org
Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu
University of California, San Diego: http://www.ucsd.edu
China seizes 18000 fake Viagra pills in raids
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:05:06 GMT
BEIJING -
Chinese police have seized more than a
ton of fake drugs for impotence, bird flu and malaria,
including at least 18,000 fake Viagra tablets, state media
reported on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Public Security, which launched the
national crackdown on counterfeit goods in 2005, announced 10
of its top cases ranging from fake drugs to fake toothpaste on
Tuesday, the Xinhua news agency said on its Web site.
More than 30 people were detained on suspicion of either
making or selling the drugs.
Police in the eastern province of Zhejiang raided a gang
making counterfeit Viagra and selling the tablets to 12
countries, including the United States and Holland, it said,
adding that a total of 18,000 pills were seized.
In Guangdong, police had arrested 12 people and seized 1
ton of fake drugs and two production lines and large quantities
of raw materials for making &;sildenafil citrate,&; the
scientific name of Viagra.
Police detained 19 suspects and shut down six factories in
May last year for making fake Tamiflu, a bird flu drug, and
selling it to the United States via the Internet, the agency
said.
In April last year, police cracked a ring making and
selling pirated toothpaste across the country and arrested five
suspects, it said.
Chinese media report on scandals involving substandard or
fake drug and food almost every day, and the issue burst into
the international spotlight when tainted additives exported
from China contaminated pet food in North America.
Public fears about food safety grew in China in 2004 when
at least 13 babies died of malnutrition after they were fed
fake milk power with no nutritional value.
Nursing home cat can sense death
Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:48:59 GMT
By Julie Steenhuysen
CHICAGO -
When Oscar the Cat visits residents of
the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in
Providence, Rhode Island, the staff jumps into action -- Oscar
can sense within hours when someone is about to die.
In his two years living in Steere's end-stage dementia
unit, Oscar has been at the bedside of more than 25 residents
shortly before they died, according to Dr. David Dosa of Brown
University in Providence.
He wrote about Oscar in the New England Journal of
Medicine.
&;It's not that the cat is consistently there first,&; Dr.
Joan Teno, a professor of community health at Brown University,
who sees patients in the unit. &;But the cat always does manage
to make an appearance, and it always seems to be in the last
two hours.&;
Raised at the nursing home since he was a kitten, Oscar
often checks in on residents, but when he curls up for a visit,
physicians and nursing home staff know it's time to call the
family.
&;I don't think this is a psychic cat,&; said Teno. &;I think
there's probably a biochemical explanation,&; she said in a
telephone interview.
While pets are often used to bring comfort to the elderly
in nursing home settings, Oscar's talent is special, though not
unexpected.
&;That is such a cat thing to do,&; said Thomas Graves, a
feline expert and chief of small animal medicine at the
University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine.
Graves said there is no evidence to suggest cats can sense
death, but he doesn't discount it for a minute.
&;Those things are hard to study. I think probably dogs and
cats can sense things we can't,&; he said.
On a particular day detailed by Dr. Dosa, Oscar settled
onto the bed of a patient in room 313.
His presence sent staff off to make calls and set up vigil.
When a grandson asked why the cat was there, his mother
explained: &;He is here to help Grandma get to heaven,&;
according to Dosa's account.
She died a half an hour later.
