Tainted milk sickens 6,200 Chinese babies, kills 3

From the AP:

"The government was dispatching thousands of inspectors to monitor producers as officials reported Wednesday that the number of babies sick from tainted milk formula had climbed dramatically to nearly 6,200 from 1,200 a day earlier.

At least three children have died and more than 1,300 others, mostly newborns, remain hospitalized with dozens suffering from acute kidney failure.

Health Minister Chen Zhu said he expected the numbers of affected babies to increase as "more and more parents take kids to the hospital."

The head of China's quality control watchdog agency, Li Changjiang, said 5,000 inspectors will be sent out nationwide to monitor companies after government testing showed that 20 percent of the companies producing milk powder had dairy products with melamine.

The chemical additive was at the center of a pet food scandal in the United States in 2007. An estimated 1,500 dogs and cats died after ingesting a pet food ingredient manufactured in China that was laced with melamine."

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This is extremely sad, but also infuriating. Hello, China!! Melamine kills dogs and cats, why the fuck are you putting it in baby formula?! You would think that these rat-bastard Chinese companies would have been shut down and their owners shot in the head and the bill sent to their family. I guess nowadays there's no hard justice in China, just authoritarianism and corruption.

Corruption that is killing babies. Are you happy that your failure to have a real food inspection program is now killing your children, oh government of China? The party of the "people" - that you are killing with your failure to regulate food, drugs, or even air quality.

I'm just so disgusted.

Seven Hospitalized in C. Diff Outbreak

The Queen Margaret Hospital of Dunfermline now has a seventh patient added to the list of those infected by the C. Diff scourge. Here's more on story from BBC News:

"The outbreak was discovered after patients at ward six of Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline, fell ill.

They tested positive for C.diff after developing diarrhoea on Friday and have all since been nursed in isolation.

Labour MSP Helen Eadie has called for an inquiry into infection control methods in hospitals after a fatal outbreak in West Dunbartonshire.

Nine people died as a result of C.diff, which was a contributory factory in the deaths of a further nine. A total of 55 others were affected by the outbreak at the Vale of Leven hospital.

In the latest outbreak, NHS Fife said relatives of the ill patients had been urged not to visit to help control the spread.

Ms Eadie, the Dunfermline East MSP, said she was "very concerned" at the latest outbreak."

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The article does not mention the type of ward the spread of the disease actually began in... its just mentioned vaguely as "ward six." Like I'm supposed to know what that means!

Legionnaires outbreak claims life

From WETM, out of the Twin Tiers in NY/PA:

"ELMIRA -- One of four residents of an Elmira apartment complex who were infected with Legionnaires Disease this week has died, her family said.

Anna Marie Tongate, 75, died Thursday afternoon, three days after she was diagnosed with the bacterial disease. Her family took her to the hospital on Sunday because they felt she was very ill, said Christina Bruner Sonsire, an attorney for the family.

Tongate and three other residents at Flannery Towers displayed flu-like symptoms last week, but the staff did nothing to address the illnesses, Sonsire said in a statement.

Sonsire added her law firm -- Ziff, Weiermiller, Hayden & Mustico -- will investigate how Tongate and three other residents were infected with Legionnaires Disease, and why nobody recognized the problem.

A message was left with the Chemung County Health Department Thursday evening seeking comment on the outbreak."

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Sad, the death could probably have been prevented with prompt attention to the situation.

US bioweapons labs threaten Americans

Here's a repost from the LA Times Editorial Blog of a great expose of the US bioweapons program:


"'Whatever you can say about the Soviet bioweapons scientists," a Bush administration official once told me, "they never killed anyone."

We can't say the same about our bioweapons scientists. Someone, most likely Bruce Ivins, at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, Md., turned powdered anthrax spores into a deadly weapon. It's ironic that the Soviet scientists were making offensive weapons. Our people, since 1969, have worked strictly to defend us.

One of those defenders killed five people, sickened 17 others and plunged the nation into hysteria for weeks in the fall of 2001. After a seven-year investigation by the FBI, the source of the deadly anthrax strain has been identified -- our own biodefense program at Ft. Detrick. That is the real legacy of the FBI investigation.

Since the anthrax-laced letters were mailed in September and October of 2001, U.S. biodefense has blown up out of all proportion to any rational assessment of the bioweapons threat. Earlier this year, an article in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, analyzing government biodefense spending from 2001 to 2008, stated that $49.66 billion has been allocated for civilian biodefense. According to microbiologist and longtime biodefense critic Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, actual spending is even higher, amounting to $57 billion.

In 2005, he and 757 other microbiologists sent a stinging open letter to Elias Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health, protesting the government's preoccupation with "priority pathogens" -- germs such as anthrax that could be used in a bioweapons attack. But Zerhouni and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, would have none of it. In a letter published in the journal Science, they disagreed: "The United States has experienced an anthrax attack, and security experts repeatedly express concern that future attacks with biological weapons are likely, if not inevitable."

But we didn't actually experience an anthrax attack. The whole incident amounted to a snake eating its own tail. No ingenious biowarrior from Al Qaeda sent the lethal envelopes through the U.S. postal system. An American scientist did. The FBI and its genetic analyses leave no doubt: Though 16 laboratories had access to the "Ames strain" of anthrax used in the letters, only the samples that came from Ivins' laboratory at Ft. Detrick matched the genetic fingerprint of the attack strain.

In the sorry aftermath of the anthrax investigation, it's clear that the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have to rethink the priority-pathogens list, which includes anthrax, smallpox, plague, tularemia, Ebola and other germs that rarely, if ever, threaten American lives. It's the "non-defense-related" germs that are killing us. Randall Wolcott of the Southwest Regional Wound Care Center points out that 500,000 Americans a year die of biofilm infections -- such as diabetic ulcers -- that are almost impossible to treat by conventional means. That's almost twice as many as die of cancer. "

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Total article is longer... check it out.

Of course, it tows the party line in going along with the idea that some "lone nut" stole anthrax and mailed it. The Capitol Hill Anthrax Attacks were, I believe, perpetrated by the CIA on the directive of the executive branch.

What are ESBLs?

Well, it's some kind of thing I guess that infects newborn babies. There was a recent attack in a UK hospital, here's the BBC with a quip:

A potentially life-threatening superbug has been found in the intensive care unit used for newborn babies at the Royal Blackburn Hospital.

Some babies have been identified as carrying the bug, called extended-spectrum beta-lactamase, or ESBL.


Fortunately, the CDC is a bit more illuminating with what this "superbug" is:

ESBLs are enzymes that mediate resistance to extended-spectrum (third generation) cephalosporins (e.g., ceftazidime, cefotaxime, and ceftriaxone) and monobactams (e.g., aztreonam) but do not affect cephamycins (e.g., cefoxitin and cefotetan) or carbapenems (e.g., meropenem or imipenem).

Which means they are weird enzymes that attach to bacteria and cause them to become resistant against many types of antibiotics.

So where do these enzymes come from?? They come from certain other unicellular organisms such as E. Coli and the bacteria themselves.

One question no one answers, when did these superbugs start producing this enzyme? It seems pretty specific to me... This reeks of deliberate genetic manipulation of enzyme production that went awry or was possibly purposefully created to cause a rise in infant mortality.

And now it is killing babies.

Hepatitis E Outbreak Kills Nine Ugandans

Found this from Bloomberg:

"Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- An outbreak of Hepatitis E in Uganda killed at least nine people in four districts over the last week, bringing the death toll since July 17 to 25, the Daily Monitor reported, citing the Health Ministry.

The disease has killed 106 of 6,563 people infected in the northern districts of Kitgum, Gulu, Pader and Yumbe since October 2007, when cases of the illness were first detected, the Kampala-based newspaper said, citing Kenya Mugisha, director of clinical health services at the ministry.

Hepatitis is transmitted through water contaminated with feces. The virus, common in neighboring South Sudan, causes jaundice and fever. The first reports of the outbreak came from refugee camps in Kitgum housing people displaced by a two-decade insurgency by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army."

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Fortunately, Hepatitis E is very very rare in the USA and most Western nations.

C. Diff Outbreak 'Worst Ever' in UK

Apparently eight are dead in Northern Trust area of Ireland and cases have doubled double in Belfast hospitals.

From The Belfast Telegraph:

"Fears over the spread of the deadly superbug Clostridium Difficile were growing last night after a second health trust declared an outbreak of the killer infection as the worst ever in the UK.

Just hours after the Northern Trust confirmed that a further eight deaths last month in the area were linked to C.Difficile, the Belfast Trust also announced an official outbreak after the number of cases doubled in a month.

The latest deaths in the Northern area, which occurred at Antrim Area Hospital, bring to 61 the provisional number linked to the bug since the outbreak first took hold last summer — with 40 of those patients having died since the beginning of this year.

But a Northern Trust spokesman insisted there was a reduction in the number of new infection cases.

“The Trust has identified a total of 19 new cases of Clostridium Difficile in July 2008,” he said."

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Watch this hospital get a class action lawsuit put against it... They have those in Ireland, right?

The fact is, the UK's national health care system is not immune to lost or squandered money that should have gone into maintenance and staff training. Not that I'm supporting the US healthcare "sysem" -- but let's not get into single payer insurance plans or universal health care...

Anyway, watch out all of you who live in Northern Belfast - the hospitals are sick!

1 2 3 4 KINGDOM!

Any one know what I'm talking about? Riget? It is a must see!!

Inquiry into MRSA Death

The law is getting involved in the alleged MRSA death of a Southampton woman who had just undergone heart surgery at a local hospital.


Video is here at the BBC News site!