Civil Liberties, Health Care, Food Policies

Deadly Bacteria Defy Drugs, Alarming Doctors

February 20, 2009

LA Times - ...But the drugs once used to treat gram-negative bacteria are becoming ineffective, and finding effective new ones is especially challenging. “We’re literally running out of drugs to treat gram-negatives,” said Dr. Brad Spellberg, an infectious disease specialist at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. “And there is nothing in the pipeline right now.”

Exact numbers are hard to come by, because infections by these three bacteria are not reportable by law. But using 2002 data voluntarily reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from about 300 large, mostly urban hospitals, the Infectious Diseases Society of America identified about 104,000 gram-negative infections that were resistant to at least some antibiotics, roughly the same as the 102,000 MRSA infections found that year...

British Scientists Condemn Using Children in GM Food Trials

February 19, 2009

Daily Mail - Children in China and America were fed GM rice in a controversial trial... Critics are furious that the GM rice was not put through animal feeding trials to ensure it was safe before being given to children. The decision to use the children has been condemned as ‘completely unacceptable’ by a group of 22 scientists - all GM critics - from Britain and around the world. They claim it is indicative of moves by the biotech lobby, led by the USA and biotech firms, to force GM food into the mouths of the world without proper assessment.

The scientists have written an open letter to the team behind the experiments, condemning the way they were conducted... The scientists argue there is a large body of evidence showing GM food production can trigger gene mutations which ‘can result in health damaging effects when GM food products are fed to animals’. The letter adds: ‘Our greatest concern is that this rice, which is engineered to overproduce beta carotene, has never been tested in animals’. It says there is evidence that certain chemicals derived from beta carotene ‘are both toxic and cause birth defects’...

Among the leading bodies behind the GM Golden rice project are the biotech company Syngenta, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the charitable foundation set up by Microsoft boss Bill Gates... The project was financed and run through the U.S. National Institutes of Health and involved children in China and America.