Journalist and Author
Huge news, and hat tip to excellent food-policy writer Monica Eng at the Chicago Tribune: In a piece published Tuesday, she details that 300 hospitals in the Chicago area and nationwide have begun preferentially buying and serving meat that is raised without the use of antibiotics. Using the ingredients is primarily a response to patient demand, said (Carolyn […]
(You leave the country for a few days — I spoke at a conference in Brussels, which was was lovely, thanks for asking — and all kinds of news breaks out. So, sorry to be late on this, but it’s an important issue.) Last week, the Food and Drug Adminstration took the first (baby, mincing, […]
In the winter of 1999, I stood in an outpatient clinic in a pediatric hospital in New Delhi and listened to a father sobbing over the paralysis of his only son. He was a farmer and lived in Uttar Pradesh; counting walks, minibuses and trains, it had taken him 24 hours to get to the […]
There’s a troubling item in this afternoon’s issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or MMWR: The first report in the United States of a novel resistance mechanism that renders gram-negative bacteria extremely drug-resistant and that has been linked to medical care carried out in India or Pakistan. The short item describes three […]
A set of papers published this month in two journals provide an unsettling glimpse into the rocketing incidence and complex epidemiology of one really scary pathogen, Acinetobacter baumanii. In the all-star annals of resistant bugs, A. baumanii is an underappreciated player. If people — other than, you know, disease geeks — recognize it, that is […]
Via the Journal of the American Medical Association, a report from Spain: the first recorded outbreak, in a Madrid hospital, of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to linezolid (Zyvox), one of only a few drugs still available to treat very serious infections of drug-resistant staph, MRSA. This is bad news. Background: The M in MRSA stands for […]
This is an addition for archival purposes of a post that originally appeared at Scienceblogs. The Center for Global Development, a DC think-tank, is releasing what looks like a thoughtful report aimed at refocusing policy debates over drug resistance toward the epidemic’s global impact, with particular attention to the the developing world. From the report’s […]
A couple of days ago, I talked about the link between a potentially massive hepatitis B outbreak in West Virginia and the lack of access to primary dental care. I was mushy qualitatively descriptive, ahem, about the number of people who lack access to dental insurance. Comes now the CDC to save the day. In […]
The Subcommittee on Health of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives has announced a hearing for Wednesday: “Promoting the Development of Antibiotics and Ensuring Judicious Use in Humans.” The witness line-up is: Janet Woodcock, M.D., Director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Food and Drug Administration Robin Robinson, Ph.D., Director, Biomedical […]
Via ProMED Mail comes a news report that about 2,000 people in 5 states are being sought by health departments so they can be checked for hepatitis B infection. The potential source: the Mission of Mercy Dental Clinic, a free dental-care fair held just about a year ago in Berkeley County in the far north-east […]
Some of you may have spotted an announcement last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about a release of data from the National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN), a repository of hospital infection data. You can guess the big news in the report from its title, “First State-Specific Healthcare-Associated Infections Summary Data Report”: […]
Let’s play a thought experiment. Imagine that you’re a major pharmaceutical company, a public company, with shareholders that you answer to, and market analysts looking over your shoulder to see whether this quarter’s earnings are up to projections. Imagine that you want to make a new drug. Let’s make it an antibiotic, because — as […]
I’m on the road today and have what feels like seconds between commitments, but there’s a brand new piece of research this morning that I think you folks should know about. It’s an early-online release from Pediatrics by researchers from 3 states. It uses a database called the Pediatric Health Information Systems analyze diagnosis codes […]
Constant readers: Well, the bug finally got me, or one of its close cousins did. I’ve been on the road almost nonstop, and after a book event at University of Wisconsin last week, was felled by a violent bout of foodborne illness that was almost certainly staph — not MRSA, but the related strain of […]
I happened to notice today that the WHO has posted an update to its campaign Save Lives: Clean Your Hands, which aims to get 10,000 hospitals around the world to sign on — by May 5, 2010, which is next week — to a global commitment to improved hand hygiene in hospitals. As of last […]
Folks, I told you Tuesday about a Congressional hearing on antibiotic resistance, featuring NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden. Not much new was said, but it’s encouraging that the hearing was held at all. (Fauci testimony here, Frieden here.) Coincidentally, constant reader Pat Gardiner of the UK alerted me to […]
I was thrilled to see a review of SUPERBUG on the incredibly important blog BoingBoing.net, written by (my friend and fellow Minneapolis author) Maggie Koerth-Baker. It’s so exciting to see people completely get the book, and twice that when it is people you know. Sample quote: Superbug is not about an entomological caped crusader. It’s […]
(…but I won’t, because it’s not fair use or good blogger behavior. But I want to!) Melissa Graham of Chicago had a great corporate life — and then she re-evaluated, became a chef and caterer, and began organizing in Chicago for sustainable local food, farmers’ markets, and a family-friendly food system. She blogs at the […]
Constant readers, I’m on the road again: Georgia Center for the Book tonight in Decatur, 7:15 p.m. But if you can’t make that, take a look at this: The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives has announced a hearing for Wednesday on “Antibiotic resistance and the threat to public health.” This […]
I haven’t been posting it all here — because, you know, that’s why the book has its own website — but SUPERBUG has been getting lots of positive press and reviews. (Yay us.) But a piece over the weekend was especially meaningful to me and I wanted to call it out: Flu blogger and DailyKos […]