Health Headlines - April 23

Researcher's Mixture May Make Meat Safer

Consumers soon should be able to buy beef and poultry products that have an added level of safety against two sometimes fatal sources of food poisoning.

A researcher at Texas Tech University applied a mixture of four different lactic acid bacterium to ground beef and found the combination reduced the presence of salmonella and a harmful E. coli strain by as much as 99.99 percent.

The Food and Drug Administration in December said the mixture was safe for beef and poultry products. It isn't known when the treated meat carrying special labels will hit the market, and basic food safety practices won't change.

The university released news of the treatment earlier this week, months after Tech researcher Mindy Brashears' study on the combined bacteria was published in the Journal of Food Safety.

The mixture will be marketed by Indianapolis-based Nutrition Physiology Corp. Company president Doug Ware declined to name the companies that will use it.

Salmonella is a bacteria that causes diarrhea, fever and abdominal cramps and in some cases requires hospitalization. It can be deadly unless those infected get antibiotics right away. Of the estimated 1.4 million cases of salmonella each year in the United States, about 400 people die, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

E. coli O157:H7 can cause severe abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms include vomiting and low-grade fever. An estimated 73,000 cases and 61 deaths occur annually in the U.S., according to the CDC.

Texas A&M University food microbiologist Alejandro Castillo said Brashears' results look "very promising."

"However, until the mechanism of bacterial reduction is understood, the food industry and the scientific community must be cautious and refrain from taking this study as a final solution for the control of E. coli O157:H7 in beef," he said.

Brashears said the mixture is the first post-production treatment that continues to work. It was effective for up to 60 days in frozen ground beef and about a week in refrigerated beef, Brashears said.

"It has that residual effect," she said.

Lactic acid bacteria also has been used in recent years to control E. coli in live cattle and dairy cows.

The study also showed the mixture doesn't affect how meat tastes.

Stan Gilliland, a food microbiologist at Oklahoma State University, said the technology has potential.

"This is just another hurdle to reducing the incidence," he said. "But it may be an extremely important one. The thing is you're not spraying a chemical on it."

Groups question US plan to detain sick travelers

Infectious disease experts and the American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns on Friday about an agreement that would allow U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and customs agents to detain anyone who looked sick with bird flu.

The memorandum of understanding, a copy of which was provided to Reuters, also provides for Customs and Border Protection agents to give personal details of airline passengers to the CDC.

It was signed in October by Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. HHS spokeswoman Christina Pearson denied it was secret or sinister.

"We have had this agreement in place and it's to help CDC when there is a report of communicable diseases on an airplane," Pearson said.

"It helps them quickly and efficiently to be able to locate passengers and to inform them that they may have been exposed to some kind of communicable disease, to reassure them and tell them how to get right channels to treatment."

The memorandum mentions H5N1 avian influenza, which experts fear could cause a worldwide pandemic at any time, and also makes provision for other diseases.

There have been no outbreaks of disease that would be covered by the agreement since it was signed.

"CDC is authorized to isolate and/or quarantine arriving persons reasonably believed to be infected with or exposed to specified quarantinable diseases and to detain carriers and cargo infected with a communicable disease," it reads.

It also provides for Customs or Border Patrol agents to forcibly detain, if necessary, anyone coming in who appears to be sick while the CDC is contacted.

The CDC says this is necessary in case of a pandemic. Viruses such as flu can easily be carried by airline passengers. But Dr. Donald Henderson, an expert on influenza, smallpox and other infectious diseases who has advised the administration of President George W. Bush on such issues, calls it "silly."

ASTONISHED BY THE PROPOSAL

"I was absolutely astonished when I saw that proposed federal regulation," Henderson said in an interview.

"It's so silly," added Henderson, who now works at the Baltimore-based Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Henderson noted that people can be infectious with influenza and other diseases long before they begin to feel sick or show any symptoms.

"You are spending huge amounts of money and have we got any evidence that this is going to do anything? Is it worth all the energy we are going to be putting into it?" he said.

The ACLU believes that protecting the public is not the motivation.

"The tracking of data on airline passengers, which can amount to building lifetime dossiers on Americans, has been a hotly debated issue for many years -- and now we find out that two government agencies may have agreed, behind the public's back, to share data," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project.

ACLU legislative counsel Tim Sparapani said: "Once again, we are seeing that DHS cannot be trusted to exhibit restraint in the handling of personal information.

"They collect information, say they'll use it for one purpose, and then they turn around and use it for another."

The Center for Biosecurity's Penny Hitchcock, a former National Institutes of Health infectious disease specialist, said the CDC risks losing the public's trust.

"The information that will be collected by CDC/HHS is part of this quarantine effort -- sharing information collected for disease prevention could be harmful," she said.

"The harm being that it will create suspicion and encourage people to regard the public health service as 'disease cops.' Why would people want to cooperate under those circumstances?"

Calif. judge OKs state's $3 bln stem-cell effort

California's stem-cell research institute is a constitutional state agency, a state judge ruled on Friday in a decision that may allow it to begin to issue up to $3 billion in general obligation debt.

Alameda County Judge Bonnie Sabraw held that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, approved by state voters in November 2004, is a legitimate state agency. Groups opposed to the research the institute would fund, which may include the use of human stem-cells from human embryos, had challenged its constitutionality, which put its efforts to issue up to $300 million in debt annually on hold.

"The court decision upheld Proposition 71 in its entirety," Robert Klein, the institute's chairman, said on a conference call, referring to the measure enacting the institute. "We have a victory across the board on every issue presented."

The stem cell institute earlier this month issued $12.1 million to researchers, marking its first grants, backed by bond anticipation notes while its debt authority faced the court challenge.

The grants would be drawn from $14 million in notes sold to six philanthropic groups by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to jump-start its research grants until a court challenge to its authority to sell state general obligation debt is resolved.

California voters approved the institute's formation by passing a November 2004 ballot measure. It allows the institute to sell up to $3 billion in state debt to fund stem-cell research that many scientists believe will lead to breakthroughs for treating various illnesses and ailments.