Journalist and Author
This is a follow-up to my post over the weekend on the #StandingwithDNLee situation that enveloped Danielle N. Lee, Ph.D., her blog at Scientific American, SciAm’s partner organizations, and — by extension — the many thousands of people who expressed support for her. While the situation is sure to have a long tail, some significant […]
A couple of unpleasant and deeply dismaying things have happened in the science blogosphere in the past 36 hours or so. I’m posting on it, along with a growing number of other science bloggers, in order to stand in solidarity with a fellow blogger and to ensure her voice is not silenced. (If you’d like […]
The Salmonella outbreak affecting 17 states involves multiple bacterial strains, some of which are drug-resistant. And the CDC is still shut down.
Late-breaking news, and I’ll update as I find out more: While the government is shut down, with food-safety personnel and disease detectives sent home and forbidden to work, a major foodborne-illness outbreak has begun. This evening, the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the US Department of Agriculture announced that “an estimated 278 illnesses … reported in 18 states” have been caused by chicken contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg and possibly produced by the firm Foster Farms.
Much of the U.S. government is shut down today. What are the potential health consequences of the Centers for Disease Control being offline? The FDA? The USDA? Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna describes some possible implications.
The CDC has weighed in on the role that agricultural antibiotics might play in the rise of drug-resistant superbugs — and the news isn’t good.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just published a first-of-its-kind assessment of the threat the country faces from antibiotic-resistant organisms. The news isn’t good.
For the second time, the marketing crews at Chipotle have produced an ad that combines off-beat animation, an alternative-ish singer, and aspirations for a better food system into an educational, emotional message piece (which, to be fair, also sells burritos). The short film (at 3:23, it’s too long to be called an ad) was released […]
Catching up to this news, which dropped quietly just before the holiday weekend: In a first, the US Department of Agriculture has given permission for chicken products processed in the People’s Republic of China to be sold in the United States without labeling that would indicate where the chicken products came from. The news was […]
This is an ICYMI (“in case you missed it”) post, twice over. Last week, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Donald Kennedy, Ph.D., wrote a piece for the Washington Post in which he urged that the FDA change how it regulates antibiotics that are used in agriculture as part of meat production. His prescription is […]
Lyme disease isn’t the only thing carried by ticks. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna introduces you to other illnesses you’d be better off staying away from.
The CDC says the number of cases of Lyme disease diagnosed in the United States each year may be 10 times what was previously thought — it’s 300,000, not 30,000.
If antibiotic-resistant bacteria do arise on farms, do they leave the farm and circulate in the wider world? If so, how much damage do they do? Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna reports on a study that answers both questions.
Drug-resistant bacteria are spreading more rapidly than anyone expected. Now, these “nightmare” microbes have turned up in France and Florida.
In my last post I talked about the under-appreciated emergence of “nightmare bacteria” (those are the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s words, not mine) that are widely distributed in hospitals and nursing homes around the world and do not respond to a last-ditch small family of antibiotics called carbapenems. That seemed dire enough, but […]
Cast your minds back a few months ago, to when the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced, “We have a very serious problem” with “nightmare bacteria,” and the chief medical officer of the United Kingdom backed him up a few days later, describing a “ticking time bomb” that threatens national […]
As antibiotic-resistant microbes spread through U.S. farms, scientists debate the link between agricultural antibiotic use and drug-resistant microbes. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna has the latest.
I saved this post until today to allow everyone to get their holiday hot dogs guilt-free. Now that’s over: An important study has just been published which makes a close connection between the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the use of antibiotics on large-scale conventional hog farms. Bonus: It involves the resistant bacterium MRSA ST398 […]
Starting to catch up after, yup, another set of trips — but with really interesting stuff to talk about very shortly. To start: I spent part of this past week at the biannual World Conference of Science Journalists, which was in Helsinki this time. (Yes, way up north. Yes, midnight sun, almost — disorienting and […]
Quick post today as I’m getting ready for some travel. Just to note: The G8 summit is beginning in Ireland, and there is a push on to put intensive agriculture and its antibiotic use on the agenda for discussion by the major Western economies.