Melamine movin' on up the food chain

Byoliveridley

The FDA mentioned recently that the melamine suspected of poisoning many cats had gotten into pig feed in California, well, it gets worse…

Tuesday: Uh-Oh — North Carolina Public Radio WUNC

The FDA announced this afternoon that thousands of hogs in NC and four or five other states are now under quarantine because they were fed tainted rice gluten. Hogs here and in CA have tested positive for melamine. No one knows yet whether it poses any dangers to humans who ate the hogs, but the feds say they’re trying to find out.

At this point in time, I would consider any animal feed from China suspect. Way out of control, because we have no procedure for being proactive about these things…

It won’t amount to much because melamine apparently does not affect humans as much as it seems to affect cats, but it is the utter lack of control of ingredients and raw materials that scares me. What else can sneak through? What if the next one is actually deadly to humans?

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Chemical Warfare

Byoliveridley

This story from a local Chicago TV station does an excellent job of documenting the chemical weapons dropped on Vietnam by the United States in the 1960s, the effects they still have on Vietnam, and the Americans who handled these so called “defoliants”.

cbs2chicago.com – Agent Orange: A View From Vietnam

During the eight years of the Vietnam War that the U.S. Military dusted the Vietnamese landscape with Agent Orange, it was only intended to kill vegetation. It was a combination of two herbicides 2,4D and 2,4,5T mixed together into the most potent plant killer ever made. It was spread over 3 1/2 million acres of forests and crops to kill the trees and vegetation so the United States troops could see the enemy. The Armed Forces were told it was harmless. But in March 1978, Bill Kurtis broke the story on CBS 2 that American veterans of Vietnam who had been exposed to Agent Orange were complaining of illnesses, birth defects among their children, skin rashes, cancer, nervous problems and respiratory problems.

orange3_small.jpgPeople tend to blame dioxins for all the health effects. But 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, constituents of Agent Orange, are no spring chickens. Exposure during spraying, especially of the grossly excessive amounts that rained down upon Vietnam, can cause various health effects as well, not to mention long-term devastation of entire ecosystems.

Side note: New Zealand, in 2004, apologized to New Zealand’s “veterans” for their exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Not a word to the Vietnamese, of course.

Side note 2: A US Federal court, in 2005, dismissed the first claims brought by Vietnamese plaintiffs against Dow Chemicals and Monsanto, here was the government’s  reasoning:

In a brief filed in January, it said opening the courts to cases brought by former enemies would be a dangerous threat to presidential powers to wage war.

Translation: We reserve the right to drop chemical weapons on our “enemies”, and doing anything to abrogate this right is “dangerous”.

Image courtesy of Reuters shows a Vietnamese child, one of many with birth defects associated with Agent Orange exposure.

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Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors

Byoliveridley

Thinking about implanting an RFID microchip under your skin? Don’t do it! Why would the FDA approve something that was linked to cancers in rats?

Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors – washingtonpost.com:

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients’ medical records almost instantly. The FDA found ‘reasonable assurance’ the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005’s top ‘innovative technologies.’

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had ‘induced’ malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

‘The transponders were the cause of the tumors,’ said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in people.

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

How Safe Is The US Food Supply?

Byoliveridley

A good summary of the state of food safety regulation in the United States.

How Safe Is The Food Supply?

These known cases make up a tiny fraction of the overall problem–an estimated 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths in the U.S. from food poisoning each year. Meanwhile, imports of food, some from countries without strict controls, soared to more than 9 million shipments last year doubling since 2002. The cash-strapped FDA is able to inspect less than 1% of imports. It’s a recipe for disaster. “Our food-safety system in this country is broken,” warned former FDA Commissioner Dr. David A. Kessler at a recent congressional hearing.

Few incidents ever have a body count high enough to shock the country into making fundamental changes. Overall, “we do have a very safe food supply,” says Sanford A. Miller, former director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition. But the alarms over pet food and vitamin A have lit a fire under lawmakers and executives. On May 2 the Senate rushed to pass a bill by a vote of 94-0 giving the FDA more responsibilities, such as creating databases of adulterated food. Meanwhile, food producers have been holding emergency meetings with suppliers, looking for problems in their factories or supply chains. Companies are “feverishly examining their own purchasing policies and trying to ensure they are followed,” says Kovacs.

Note that it is always tempting to blame the bureaucrats here. Bureaucracy is a dirty word in this country, associated with “red tape”, “corruption”, “standing in the way of business”, “pencil pushers”, “big government”, you name it, they get called it. But, agencies like the EPA and the FDA have competent scientists who know what they are doing. But, without the money and the authority, which is given to them by the political arm of the government, they cannot do much. They have also, in recent years, been headed by political appointees who come from the industry they are supposed to regulate and show a distaste for regulation which is in complete opposition of the mandate they are supposed to fulfill as the head of a regulatory agency.

It’s easy to take potshots at the FDA, but remember who gives them the money, makes the rules and tells them what not to oversee.

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Snake Oil Comes a Full Circle

Byoliveridley

Ah, back to the good old days of snake oil..

ScienceDaily: Snake Venom As Therapeutic Treatment Of Cancer?

This certainly sounds unusual, but Dr. Son and colleagues report on the effectiveness of the snake venom toxin (SVT) Vipera lebetina turanica in the inhibition of androgen-independent prostate cancer (AICAP) in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

These novel findings suggest that SVT can inhibit the growth of AICAP through the induction of cell death.

I am glad they put the question mark at the end, lest people extrapolate from a few cells in a petri dish (or a small animal study) to a cancer cure, as happened recently with dichloroacetate! Health reporting is very tricky because the average reader cannot understand much more than the headline. It almost seems like every health article should have the following things clearly labeled:

  1. Human, animal or cell?
  2. Clinically tested, or anecdotal?
  3. Double blinded, controlled, etc, or not?
  4. Any chance that this result applies to people?
  5. How far away are we from a real cure?
  6. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

At least viper venom is hard to find! The Madras crocodile bank helped start a venom extraction cooperative run by the Irula Tribe, so I’ve seen viper venom being extracted, pretty cool. India is home to two vipers, the Russell’s and the Saw Scaled vipers.

Russell's
Russell’s viper

saw scaled
Saw scaled viper.

The Russell’s is 3-5 feet long, and slow, but a big hisser! The saw scaled viper is tiny, a feet or two, but aggressive and very venomous. One of my favorite wild snake sightings was a saw scaled viper, looked very innocuous curled up in a parking lot in Pondicherry.

Cool, snake oil and venom for all…

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Genes Make Indians Fat

Byoliveridley

Scientists have pinpointed a reason why people with Indian ancestry may be more prone to weight problems.They have found this group is more likely to carry a gene sequence linked to an expanding waist line, weight gain and type 2 diabetes.The sequence, discovered by a team led by Imperial College London, is carried by 50% of the population – but is a third more common in Indian Asians.

BBC NEWS | Health | Genes ‘up Indians’ obesity risk’

Relax, all desis, it’s not your fault, it’s genetics.

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North Carolina Smoking ban update

Byoliveridley

Via Laura Leslie…

Monday: Smoking Ban Update — North Carolina Public Radio WUNC

Late-breaking news: According to Greensboro’s Mark Binker, all systems are NOT go for a vote tomorrow. It turns out proponents of the ban may have miscounted a nose or two. The bill is conspicuously absent from Tuesday’s House calendar. Too close to call? Yep. Read Mark’s update here.

Oh well, let’s see what happens…

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