Maryn McKenna

Journalist and Author

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CDC Director: In the Shutdown, 'We Are Juggling Chainsaws'

October 16, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

The CDC’s Emergency Operations Center in Atlanta, from which it monitors disease outbreaks around the world.
Left: Currently. Right: Before the shutdown began.

We’re now on the sixteenth day of the federal shutdown. As I write, the Senate has announced a deal to avoid a debt default and open the government. It remains to be seen whether that will work, or how fast. Yesterday, on Day 15, I had a long conversation with Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about what this shutdown has meant for his agency, its employees, and the health of Americans, and the world. I have lightly edited the conversation for clarity.

Maryn McKenna, WIRED: You’re on Day 15 of sending home 68 percent of your 13,000-person staff, in Atlanta and around the world. How is the CDC coping?

Thomas R. Frieden, CDC: Every day this goes on, it gets harder to manage. We’re used to juggling things at CDC, but this is like juggling chain saws.

We’ve got two-thirds of our staff out. The exempt staff, the ones who are here, are here just because of a happenstance of how they’re paid: They are people who are on multi-year money, or grant money, or people in the Commissioned Corps, the uniformed Public Health Service. Of the people who are furloughable, 95 percent are furloughed.

I walk through the offices and talk to the remaining staff to thank them for being here. A woman who was the only person on her floor said to me, “We have no idea what we’re missing right now.” For years people have asked me, ‘Do you sleep well, knowing all these terrible threats we face?” And I’ve always said, “I sleep great because I know we have fantastic staff on watch.” And now I’m not sleeping.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, EIS, Science Blogs, Shutdown

Shutdown Salmonella Outbreak Continues. CDC Food Safety Chief: 'We Have a Blind Spot.'

October 10, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

Image: Ben Husmann, (CC), Flickr

We’re 11 days now into the federal shutdown and four days since the announcement of a major foodborne outbreak in chicken that is challenging the shutdown-limited abilities of the food-safety and disease-detective personnel at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture. Here’s an update.
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Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: agriculture, antibiotics, CDC, FDA, food policy, food safety, Resistance, salmonella, Science Blogs, Shutdown

There's a Major Foodborne Illness Outbreak and the Government's Shut Down

October 7, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

image: BokChoi-Snowpea (CC), Flickr

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.

“FSIS is unable to link the illnesses to a specific product and a specific production period,” the agency said in an emailed alert. “The outbreak is continuing.”

(Updates to this post are at the bottom.)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, chicken, FDA, foodborne, FSIS, salmonella, Science Blogs, Shutdown, USDA

A Few Ways the Government Shutdown Could Harm Your Health (And the World's)

October 1, 2013 By Maryn Leave a Comment

image: BMills (CC), Flickr

There’s going to be a lot — a lot — of coverage today on the federal shutdown, what it means and how long it might go on. I thought it might be worth quickly highlighting how it affects the parts of the government that readers here care most about: public health, global health, food safety and the spread of scary diseases.

Most of those government functions are contained within the Cabinet-level Department of Health and Human Services, where 52 percent of the employees have been sent home. So the news is not good.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Science, Science Blogs, Superbug Tagged With: CDC, FDA, FSIS, influenza, MERS, NCoV, Science Blogs, Shutdown, USDA

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