Maryn McKenna

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CDC Lab Errors and Their Implications: Congressional Hearing Today

July 16, 2014 By Maryn Leave a Comment

TEM image of influenza A H7N9, CDC

TEM image of influenza A H7N9, CDC

Leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will appear today before the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives, to answer questions about the lab accidents with flu and anthrax that the CDC disclosed in its press conference last week.

On deck: CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden; Dr. Joseph Henderson, Deputy Director of the CDC’s Office of Security and Emergency Preparedness; staff from the Government Accountability Office and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services of USDA; and academic experts.

Tuesday night, the witnesses’ written testimony was placed on the Committee’s webpage. Frieden’s says in part:

First, these incidents should never have happened, and the lack of adequate procedures and oversight that allowed them to happen was totally unacceptable. Although it does not appear that these incidents resulted in any illness, and there was no release of pathogens as a result of either event, this does not excuse what happened.

Second, we will take every step possible to prevent any future incident that could put our laboratory scientists, others in the CDC workforce and the broader community, or the public at risk… I am personally overseeing a series of reforms designed to address these specific incidents – but more broadly, recognizing that our challenge is larger than addressing these two specific incidents, I will oversee the careful and deliberate review of existing, and development of new safety practices at all levels of our Agency…

Third, we will explore the broader implications of these incidents and incorporate the lessons learned from them to proactively prevent future incidents at laboratories across the Nation that work with pathogens.

The two accidents, and especially the flu accident — in which a serious strain of avian flu was mistakenly sent to a poultry-research lab, instead of a mild one — have revived concerns about research currently being pursued, not at the CDC, that soups up flu strains to artificial combinations of transmissibility and virulence. The fear, which I’ve written about here and here, is that a lab accident could allow such manmade flu strains to escape.

In advance of the hearing, a group of scientists who have been critical of the lab-enhanced flu work (generally called “gain of function” or “dual use” research) have banded together as the Cambridge Working Group to put their concerns on the record. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: anthrax, CDC, congress, influenza

Getting More Farm Antibiotics Data: What Will It Take?

March 5, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Sorry for the radio silence, constant readers: I’m preparing for the big annual conference of the Association of Health Care Journalists, where I am on the board, and the tasks are piling up. Here’s one of the things that happened last week, while I was off getting ready: The Senate committee charged with oversight of agricultural antibiotic use took up re-authorization of the regulation that delivers data on ag drugs, without allowing any testimony about the negative, unintended consequences of misusing and overusing those drugs.

Fortunately, the House of Representatives provided a partial corrective: Members there introduced a bill that would require better data collection. Unfortunately, that bill is a long way from law — and the re-approval of the FDA regulation is close.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: animals, antibiotics, congress, FDA, food, food policy, Science Blogs

Mothers, Farmers and Chefs Against Antibiotic Misuse

May 15, 2012 By Maryn Leave a Comment

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you may remember Everly Macario and her son Simon Sparrow: I told their story in my 2010 book Superbug and blogged about them in 2011. Everly is a public health researcher in Chicago and the sister and daughter of physicians. Yet despite all her own knowledge, and all the knowledge resident in her family, she was unable to protect 17-month-old Simon from the MRSA infection that killed him in 24 hours in 2004.

Simon, as I wrote about him last year, was:

[A] big, sturdy child with no health problems except a touch of asthma. The day before he died, he woke up feverish and disoriented, startling his parents with a cry unlike anything they had heard from him before. It was a busy morning — his older sister had a stomach virus — but they got him to the pediatric ER, got him checked, and brought him home when doctors found nothing unusual going on.

A few hours later, Everly was working at home, watching both kids, and Simon’s breathing changed. Her husband James, a history professor, had driven a few hours away to give a speech. She called a friend who is a pediatrician, held the phone up to Simon’s nose and mouth so she could hear, and then got back on the line.

“Hang up,” her friend said. “Call 911.”

She did, and then she called her husband, who reversed course and began tearing back to the city. At the hospital, Simon failed rapidly: His heart raced, his blood pressure crashed, his lungs filled with fluid. His skin darkened with pinpoint hemorrhages. He died the following morning.

Simon Sparrow. Photo: Courtesy Everly Macario

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, antibiotics, congress, food, food policy, MRSA, Resistance, Science Blogs

Quick alert: Congressional hearing Wednesday

April 27, 2010 By Maryn Leave a Comment

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 is not a hearing on PAMTA, but apparently a broader hearing on the whole issue, featuring two VIPs: Dr. Anthony Fauci of NIH and Dr. Tom Frieden of the CDC. To my eye, this indicates that official, policy interest in this issue is (finally, at last) ramping up.

The hearing page is here and the preliminary memo on it is here.

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, congress, legislation, NIH, Science Blogs

Bad news in the President's budget request

February 5, 2010 By Maryn Leave a Comment

It’s been a few days since the rollout of the White House’s proposed 2011 budget request, time enough for people to dig deep into the minutiae and figure out what that massive document really says. The Infectious Diseases Society of America has done the drilling for the health and infectious disease line items, and I’m sorry to say the news is not good.

Worst first: The proposed budget would cut funding for the CDC’s antimicrobial resistance programs by 50%, $8.6 million. That means that only 20 state or local health departments, or health care institutions, will get money from CDC for surveillance and control of resistant bugs. That’s only 40% of what was funded this year, when 48 health departments and health systems were funded. Which is very disturbing: If there’s one thing almost everyone agrees on with regard to MRSA, it’s that we need more surveillance, not less.

In addition, all state grants in the Get Smart About Antibiotics program, which runs campaigns to reduce inappropriate use, get zeroed out.

There are other cuts as well to infectious-disease program at CDC and elsewhere in HHS, including to to a major childhood immunization program and to pandemic defenses. And funding for HIV/AIDS, TB and other NIH research programs barely tiptoe upward.But these frank cuts in programs to combat antimicrobial resistance, at a time when MRSA is burgeoning, Gram negative organisms such as Acinetobacter are gaining ground, and drug development is stalling, surely cannot be smart.

The IDSA analyis is here.

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: Acinetobacter, budget, congress, MRSA, Science Blogs

MRSA legislation in Congress

June 25, 2009 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Readers, on Monday, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA, 12th District) introduced a bill: HR 2937, the MRSA Infection Prevention and Patient Protection Act.

It requires:

  • hospitals to screen all patients entering high-risk units for MRSA infection
  • adoption of best practices including contact precautions among health care professionals to prevent MRSA’s spread within hospitals.
  • patients testing positive for MRSA be informed of the result and given instructions on how to prevent the spread of their infection when discharged.
  • hospitals to report the number of cases of hospital-acquired MRSA that occur within their facilities.

In other words, it seeks to enact nationally what advocates such as Jeanine Thomas, Carole Moss, Michael Bennett and others have done in individual states. (Find their organizations in the right-hand column.)

Speier’s announcement is here and the text of the bill is here.

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: congress, legislation, MRSA, Science Blogs

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