Electing Mr. Reverend President

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:52:21 -0500

In a recent essay, Bryan Fischer makes the controversial claim that the president of the United States should be seen as a “minister of God.” [1] Citing Romans 13:6, which reads that “the authorities are God’s servants” (NIV), or that “the authorities are ministers of God” (ESV), Fischer, a radio host for the American Family Association, concludes that “if we allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, we are in fact choosing a minister when we select a president.”
Opposition to Fischer’s contention comes from both ends of the American political spectrum. Candace Chellew-Hodge speaks for progressive Christians [2] when she criticizes Fischer for his lack of regard for context: “Romans 13 cannot properly be understood without reading Romans 12—and the rest of the book, for that matter.” Curiously devoid of contextual support, however, Chellew-Hodge concludes that the identification of the authorities in Romans 13 as “ministers” is more about the Roman rulers’ self-understanding as having been divinely-ordained, and was “most likely put in there to ingratiate Paul to those same-said authorities.”
Daryl G. Hart, currently a visiting professor of history at Hillsdale College, represents a more conservative strain of opposition to Fischer’s view, as he contends that ministry [3] “invariably goes with ‘the word’ as in minister the word of God.” Hart points to “the neo-Calvinist/evangelical clutter of ‘every member ministry’” as a misunderstanding of the scriptural conception of ministry.
Now it is true that we can find Fischer’s assertion that public officials serve the common good of society, and are “ministers” in this sense, to be valid without following him in arguing that the qualifications for ordained ministries elsewhere in the New Testament must apply to such public ministers. On this point, Hart’s criticism certainly rings true: There is a critical difference between the ordained ministries of “special grace,” or ministries of the Word and Sacrament, and what might be called “common grace ministries,” including political service.
But the understanding of political power as a form of God-ordained ministry or service is longstanding within the Reformed tradition. As the Italian reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli writes of Romans 13:6, the Greek terms translated as ministers “pertain not (as some think) to holy services only,” but indeed, “those words properly signify public offices and functions.” Likewise in a prefatory letter to the king of France to his Institutes in 1536 [4], John Calvin contends, “The characteristic of a true sovereign is to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God.”
Although these reformers would include some element of responsibility for religious expression as legitimately within the scope of the ruler’s mandate, it is also clear from Paul’s original context that even in times and places where the ruling authorities are not Christian (as in Rome) or there is a structural division between church and state (as in America), such magistrates still act as means of God’s common grace, preserving and maintaining civil order. And as Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, has written eloquently [5], the implications for such common grace ministries are manifold. Indeed, writes Mouw, “common grace ministries are not restricted to the political realm.”
The ministries of common grace are in fact as numerous as the forms that grace takes in human life, and the implication for the Christian life is clear. “We should also think about the ways in which we ourselves, in performing righteous acts that affect the lives of unbelievers, can promote the gifts of common grace,” says Mouw. Another scriptural term, that of stewardship, can helpfully describe the pluriformity of God’s grace, both special and common: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10 NIV).
Better attention to the overlap and varieties of these biblical terms would help us avoid a couple of errors. On the one hand, recognizing that ministry can have both a narrower and a broader meaning would help us avoid conflating or equating the kinds of service performed by ordained pastors and elected politicians. On the other hand, recognizing the validity of callings to all areas of life, including politics and business, would help us see how service in such realms can be truly other-directed and God glorifying.
Source: http://catholicexchange.com/2012/01/23/141339/print/

I, Frankly, Am Glad American Civil Religion is Dying

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:27:03 -0500

Shaun Casey, the religious affairs adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008, said at a discussion on Tuesday about “God and Politics” that the demise of religious society in the United States is a good thing.

“I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” said Casey, who is an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C.
Casey made the remarks at an event focusing on religion and the 2012 presidential election at the liberal Center for American Progress where he was a panelist along with Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Hispanic Evangelical Coalition.
Casey was responding to Salguero’s claim that civil religion is employed by politicians as an “iconic use of faith.”
“There is also a negative underside to that history with respect to slavery, manifest destiny, to war, you know, to empires, so I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” Casey said. “But it does raise the practical question, what does bind us together in some way as a country?
“We need some substitute for that and I don’t think we’ve found it yet,” Casey said.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a Swiss-French philosopher, is credited with coining the term “civil religion” in his 1762 book in his series “The Social Contract.” He described civil religion as the moral and spiritual foundation of modern society.
Panelist Robert Jones, founding CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, said that while two-thirds of Americans say it is important to them that the president has “strong religious beliefs,” that finding reflects more a “proxy for trustworthiness” than religious conviction.

In June 2008, Casey was hired by the Obama campaign to “focus on outreach to evangelical voters,” according to a June 27, 2008 Washington Post article. The article also said that Casey, who was named senior adviser of religious affairs, had been informally advising the campaign for a year before his official appointment.

The Washington Post also reported that Casey was raised as an evangelical Christian and had earned degrees from Abilene Christian University and Harvard Divinity School.
Casey also informally advised Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean of Vermont in the past, the article said.
During Obama’s presidential campaign, Casey defended Obama’s affiliation with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial and left-wing pastor of the United Church of Christ in Chicago and one-time “spiritual adviser” to Obama.
Obama attended Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years.
Obama distanced himself from Wright after his many controversial remarks and sermons were made public during the 2008 campaign.
On Mar. 18, 2008, Casey told The Washington Post, "The senator [Obama] is not naive, and what he's doing is very hard. He's trying to remain loyal to his pastor but also differentiate himself politically."
Source: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-s-former-faith-adviser-i-frankly-am-glad-american-civil-religion-dying

McDonald’s drops use of ‘pink slime’ ammonium hydroxide in hamburger meat

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:59 -0500

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver can claim one more victory in his food revolution after McDonald’s stopped using what he called “pink slime” in its burgers.
On Thursday, McDonald’s USA announced it was discontinuing the use of ammonium hydroxide in its beef.
The Naked Chef had publicly denounced the use of the additive on his show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. He questioned how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could allow the compound to be used in foods.
Ammonium hydroxide is made of water and ammonia and is used to kill bacteria. Typically it is used in household cleaning products.
On one episode of his show, Mr. Oliver said that beef producers take beef “trimmings” that would normally go to dog food and wash it with the compound until it is fit for human consumption.
“Imagine how happy an accountant is, you just turned dog food into what can potentially be your kids’ food,” he said on the episode.
Beef Products Inc. produces the beef for McDonald’s USA. On its website, the company said that ammonium hydroxide naturally occurs in most foods. The company claims that the use of it in processing beef results in a reduction in bacteria such as e-coli.
The website pointed to a 1973 study printed in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition to substantiate its facts.
However, Mr. Oliver campaigned against its use and argued that the U.S. Department of Agriculture should at least force the company to put the compound on the list of ingredients. He further claimed it can be found in 70% of beef in the United States.
Todd Bacon, the senior director of quality systems for McDonald’s USA, said in an email that food safety was a top priority for the restaurant, but it was not Mr. Oliver’s show that influenced them.
“The decision to discontinue its use was not related to any particular event, but rather a result of our efforts to align our standards for beef around the world,” he said.
Karin Campbell, spokeswoman for McDonald’s Canada, said the additive had not been used in the burgers in this country. McDonald’s beef in Canada came from Cargill beef producers, a different company from the one used in the United States. She said the only ingredients used in their burgers was 100% beef, salt and pepper.
Source: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/26/mcdonalds-drops-use-of-pink-slime-in-u-s-meat/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Mexican swine flu outbreak kills 29, infects nearly 1,500

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:57 -0500

MEXICO CITY (BNO NEWS) -- An ongoing swine flu outbreak in Mexico has left at least 29 people dead and nearly 1,500 others infected, health officials confirmed on Saturday. Thousands more are also ill as the country faces several types of flu this season.
Since the start of the ongoing winter season, at least 7,069 people have reported suffering from symptoms similar to those of swine flu. Lab tests are still underway and have so far confirmed 1,456 cases of the disease, which is officially known as A/H1N1.
According to Mexico's Health Ministry (SSA), at least twenty-nine people have died of swine flu so far this season. While no health emergency has been declared, officials expect the death toll will rise in the coming weeks as Mexico also faces A/H3N2 and B influenza.
The H1N1 influenza virus emerged in the Mexican state of Veracruz in April 2009 and quickly spread around the world, causing the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global flu pandemic in June 2009. At least 18,000 people have died of the disease since, although the actual number is believed to be far higher.
In August 2010, the WHO declared that the swine flu pandemic was over. "In the post-pandemic period, influenza disease activity will have returned to levels normally seen for seasonal influenza," the WHO said at the time. "It is expected that the pandemic virus will behave as a seasonal influenza A virus."
Source: http://channel6newsonline.com/2012/01/mexican-swine-flu-outbreak-kills-29-infects-nearly-1500/

Antibiotics prove powerless as super-germs spread

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:54 -0500

Antibiotics were once the wonder drug. Now, however, an increasing number of highly resistant -- and deadly -- bacteria are spreading around the world. The killer bugs often originate in factory farms, where animals are treated whether they are sick or not. By SPIEGEL Staff
The pathogens thrive in warm, moist environments. They feel comfortable in people's armpits, in the genital area and in the nasal mucous membranes. Their hunting grounds are in the locker rooms of schools and universities, as well as in the communal showers of prisons and health clubs.

The bacteria are transmitted via the skin, through towels, clothing or direct body contact. All it takes is a small abrasion to provide them with access to a victim's bloodstream. Festering pustules develop at the infection site, at which point the pathogens are also capable of corroding the lungs. If doctors wait too long, patients can die very quickly.

This is precisely what happened to Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old student at Staunton River High School in Bedford County, in the US state of Virginia. Ashton spent a week fighting for his life -- and lost. This is probably what also happened to Omar Rivera, a 12-year-old in New York, who doctors sent home because they thought he was exhibiting allergy symptoms. He died that same night.
The same thing almost happened at a high school in the town of Belen, New Mexico. Less than two weeks ago, a cheerleader at the school was hospitalized after complaining about an abscess. Twelve other female students had been afflicted with suspicious rashes. All the students tested positive for a bacterium that the US media has dubbed the "superbug."
The school administration in Belen believes that the bacterium was spread on mats in the school's fitness and wrestling rooms. The facility was thoroughly disinfected 40 times, and yet the fear remains.
Fears of a Pandemic
Microbiologists refer to this bacterium as community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or ca-MRSA. The terrifying thing about it is its resistance to almost all common antibiotics, which complicates treatment. And, in contrast to the highly drug-resistant hospital-acquired MRSA (ha-MRSA) strains, which primarily affect the elderly and people in hospitals and nursing homes, ca-MRSA affects healthy young people. The bacterium has become a serious health threat in the United States. Doctors have already discovered it in Germany, although no deaths have been attributed to it yet in the country.
The two bacteria, ha-MRSA and ca-MRSA, are only two strains from an entire arsenal of pathogens that are now resistant to almost all available antibiotics. Less than a century after the discovery of penicillin, one of the most powerful miracle weapons ever produced by modern medicine threatens to become ineffective.
The British medical journal The Lancet warns that the drug-resistant bacteria could spark a "pandemic." And, in Germany, the dangerous pathogens are no longer only feared "hospital bugs" found in intensive care units (ICUs). Instead, they have become ubiquitous.
About two weeks ago, consumers were alarmed by the results of an analysis of chicken meat by the environmentalist group Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND), which found multidrug-resistant bacteria on more than half of the chicken parts purchased in supermarkets.
The dangerous bacteria have even been detected on one of Germany's high-speed ICE trains. Likewise, more than 10 percent of the residents of German retirement homes have been colonized by MRSA bacteria. In their case, every open wound is potentially deadly. The pathogens have also been found on beef, pork and vegetables.
Another alarming finding is that about 3 to 5 percent of the population carries so-called ESBL-forming bacteria in the intestine without knowing it. Even modern antibiotics are completely ineffective against these highly resistant bacteria.
Diminishing Defenses
When the neonatal ICU at a hospital in the northern German city of Bremen was infested with an ESBL-forming bacterium last fall, three prematurely born babies died.
Infestation with multidrug-resistant bacteria is normally harmless to healthy individuals because their immune systems can keep the pathogens under control. Problems arise when an individual becomes seriously ill.
"Take, for example, a person who is having surgery and requires artificial respiration and receives a venous or urinary catheter," explains Petra Gastmeier, director of the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Berlin's Charité Hospital. "In such a case, the resistant intestinal bacteria can enter the lungs, the bloodstream and the bladder."
This results in urinary tract infections, pneumonia or sepsis, which are increasingly only treatable with so-called reserve antibiotics, that is, drugs for emergencies that should only be administered when common antibiotics are no longer effective.
The Spread of Killer Bugs
Recently, an even greater threat has arisen. With the spread of ESBL-forming bacteria, reserve antibiotics have to be used more and more frequently, thereby allowing new resistances to develop. In fact, there are already some pathogens that not even the drugs of last resort in the medical arsenal can combat.

In India, where poor hygiene and the availability of over-the-counter antibiotics encourage the development of resistance, an estimated 100 to 200 million people are reportedly already carriers of these virtually unbeatable killer bacteria. There is only one antibiotic left -- a drug that is normally not even used anymore owing to its potentially fatal side effects -- that is still effective against these killer bacteria. In serious cases, people who become infected with these types of pathogens die of urinary tract infections, wound infections or pneumonia.

The killer bugs have also reached England, presumably through medical tourists who traveled to India for cosmetic surgery, and they have reportedly already infected several hundred people. A few cases have also turned up in Germany.
Israel even experienced a nationwide outbreak a few years ago. Within a few months, about 1,300 people were afflicted by an extremely dangerous bacterium that killed 40 percent of infected patients. Even today, the same bacterium still sickens some 300 people a year.

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,811560,00.html

Starbucks: We should legalize Same-sex marriage everywhere

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:50 -0500

Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee shop chain, added its name to the list of major corporations that have endorsed a gay marriage bill in Washington State, saying the legislation shares the company’s values at its core. The decision was criticized by many conservative, pro-family organizations.
Leading traditional marriage organizations, for instance, are accusing the Seattle-based company of “meddling” in the debate, after Starbucks joined Google, Microsoft, and Nike in support of the legalization of same-sex marriage that is currently gathering momentum in the state legislature.
Kalen Holmes, executive vice president for Partner Resources, released a statement on Jan. 24 entitled, “Starbucks Supports Marriage Equality,” to all of the company’s U.S. employees. Starbucks employs 149,000 people internationally.
“Starbucks is proud to join other leading Northwest employers in support of Washington State legislation recognizing marriage equality for same-sex couples,” Holmes said. “Starbucks strives to create a company culture that puts our partners first, and our company has a lengthy history of leading and supporting policies that promote equality and inclusion.”
“This important legislation is aligned with Starbucks business practices and upholds our belief in the equal treatment of partners,” she wrote. “It is core to who we are and what we value as a company.”
Holmes added, “We are deeply dedicated to embracing diversity and treating one another with respect and dignity, and remain committed to providing an inclusive, supportive and safe work environment for all of our partners.”
“We look forward to seeing this legislation enacted into law,” she concluded.
“This is just a sad development,” said Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), a group dedicated to countering the homosexual activist agenda. “We’re seeing the corporate world gravitate more and more towards the pro-gay position and, of course, it ends up with ultimately supporting same-sex marriage.”
“It’s just very sad because corporations, including Starbucks, they seem so much more solicitous of 1 to 3 percent of the population than the many, many millions of pro-family, mainly Christian consumers who oppose the redefinition of marriage,” he said.
Gay Marriage Watch, a news site that promotes same-sex marriage laws, is now calling for Amazon to support the bill.
The Family Research Council (FRC), a conservative organization that promotes faith, family and freedom, published a post on its Web site saying, “Starbucks Doesn't Know Beans about Marriage.”
Calling attention to the endorsement, the FRC wrote, “Coffee isn’t the only thing brewing at Starbucks. So is controversy -- as customers learn about the company’s bold blend of liberal politics.”
“While the state is still sharply divided over same-sex ‘marriage,’ Starbucks has decided to sweeten the pot for homosexual activists and join the attack on local families,” stated the organization.
“Despite the coffeehouse’s meddling, families in Washington State are doing their best to keep the legislation at bay,” the FRC wrote.
Nonetheless, the same-sex marriage bill passed on a 4-3 vote out of the Senate Government Operations, Tribal Relations and Elections Committee on Jan. 26, and is now awaiting a vote in the full Senate. It appears the Senate has enough votes to pass the measure, joining a solid majority in the House and support by Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire, according to the Associated Press.
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) released a statement on Monday vowing to mount a referendum campaign in response to the efforts by the Democrat-controlled legislature to make Washington the seventh state to allow gay marriage.
“NOM will not stand by and let activist politicians redefine marriage, the bedrock of civilization, without voters having a say,” said Brian Brown, the organization’s president.
The group has previously worked to overturn gay marriage laws by ballot referendum in Maine and most famously in California, with Proposition 8.
The NOM also conducted a statewide survey that found 57 percent of Washingtonians, after being made aware the state has a civil union law for homosexual couples in place, said it was not necessary to redefine marriage. The results also showed that 72 percent think state lawmakers should work on other issues instead of gay marriage; 71 percent believe the people should decide the marriage issue; and 9 percent think it should be decided by the legislature.
Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the FRC, in an e-mail to CNSNews.com, said: “Starbucks' endorsement of controversial legislation to change the definition of marriage that was codified by the Washington state legislature only 14 years ago makes no sense. As their statement notes, they already give ‘domestic partner benefits’ to partners of their homosexual employees, as a way of ‘embracing diversity’ and treating them with ‘respect and dignity.’ For the state to redefine civil marriage will add nothing to these internal policies.”
“However, their concern for ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ apparently does not extend to Christians and other citizens who have legitimate concerns about affirming homosexual conduct,” said Sprigg. “Starbucks could well have remained silent in this heated political debate. But by taking sides, they have only shown their contempt for their employees and customers who believe in traditional family values -- in contradiction of their expressed corporate values.”
LaBarbera said a majority of Americans support traditional marriage since 30 states have passed defense of marriage amendments that prohibit civil unions, gay marriage or both. “Why isn’t that a factor in Starbucks’ corporate decisions?” he said.
In the past, the AFTAH has called for a boycott of the restaurant chain Chili’s for being a National Corporate Partner to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a homosexual activist group.
While his group is not yet calling for a boycott of Starbucks, LaBarbera says, “Consumers should not take their dollars to companies that basically repudiate their own values.”
 LaBarbera said the company inserting itself into controversial issues could backfire. “If somebody wants to boycott Starbucks, it’s certainly an easy company to boycott.”
“It’s so easy you, just get your expensive cup of coffee somewhere else,” he said.
Source: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/starbucks-legalizing-same-sex-marriage-core-who-we-are-and-what-we-value

National DNA database needed for personalized medicine drive

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:47 -0500

A national DNA database is needed if the NHS is to capitalise on advances in technology and offer personalised medicine to all in the future, advisors have told the Government.
At the moment the health service is just starting to offer patients genetic testing, for example to tell if they will respond to certain cancer fighting drugs.
But in the future the technology is likely to be central to many areas of healthcare - from testing pregnant women's blood to check the foetus's risk of Down's syndrome, to tracking disease outbreaks.
Sir John Bell, chair of the Human Genomics Strategy Group, said to deliver 'genomic' based medicine in the future, a national database was necessary.
Speaking yesterday (Wednesday) to launch a report by the group to make this happen, he said: "It's almost impossible to go forward with the whole personalised medicine agenda, unless you have this database."
Such a database "benefits everybody" he said - the public, clinicians, the research community and pharmaceutical companies, who are likely to be given access to anonymised data to help develop new drugs.

In the future everybody's details could be included on it, although he said such a scenario was a very long way off.
"Will people at birth get their genome sequenced? I have absolutely no doubt that at some point in the future that will happen, but not in the foreseeable future," he said.
The cost of mapping an individual's whole genome, known as sequencing, was coming down so fast that he said it would soon be cheaper to do that rather than test for specific genetic anomalies.
He believed predictions that it would soon cost just $1,000 (£650) adding that it could soon fall to "practically nothing".
However, even if that becomes the case, the cost of building what the strategy group termed a "central repository for storing genomic and genetic data" could be considerable.
The Government recently pulled the £12 billion National Programme for IT, at its heart a project to computerise everybody's medical records, after Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said it "wasted taxpayers' money".
Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer for England, also a member of the group, said yesterday that it was likely the database would grow bit-by-bit, starting with the results of those who needed specific genetic tests.
The database idea is one a series recommendations made in the report, Building on our inheritance, Genomic technology in healthcare.
Mr Lansley welcomed the report, saying the promise of genomics was "immense". He also announced a new process for commissioning and funding genetic cancer tests, to ensure patients got the right drugs, to be in place by next April.
However, some experts believe the report hypes how the NHS is using genetic testing at the moment, and what can be achieved.
Dr Stuart Hogarth, a political economist at King's College London with a specialist interest in molecular diagnostics, said: "This report grossly exaggerates the current utility of testing for risk of common, complex diseases.
"For the most part, at the moment we can do no more than tell people that they are at slightly higher than average risk or slightly lower than average risk."

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9038712/National-DNA-database-needed-for-personalised-medicine-drive.html

Peacemaker: Lauderdale police put trouble spots under surveillance

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:43 -0500

FORT LAUDERDALE— Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her.

She's not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that's been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days.

"Warning: You are under video surveillance," reads the bold message on the side of the truck.

From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts: "Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?"

The truck is a new weapon for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in the fight against drugs and neighborhood nuisances, and it looks like a Winnebago on steroids. They call it "The Peacemaker," and it may be a first in South Florida.

Mixing high tech with simplicity, the in-your-face strategy is straightforward: load an out-of-service armored truck with some of the latest surveillance equipment available and decorate it with police emblems. Then, simply leave it parked in front of trouble spots.

"Make no mistakes about it," said Detective Travis Mandell. "We want people to know that we are watching the bad guys."

In August, police got the first of their two Peacemakers after paying the Brinks company $10 for a discontinued armored bank truck. They retrofitted the vehicle with cameras that can stream live video back to headquarters. With its cameras hoisted on each bullet-proof window, the truck can gather panoramic footage for up to 700 hours.

Last month the department added a second truck to its arsenal, converting a former SWAT vehicle into the second Peacemaker. Police park the unmanned trucks in front of the homes of suspected drug dealers and at crime-plagued street corners.

On a recent afternoon, a Peacemaker had at least one of its eight cameras trained on Ouaknine's one-story establishment.

"They say I am running a whorehouse," said the 60-year-old innkeeper. "I run a motel. The only thing that I don't have is the five stars."

Police wouldn't say why they parked the Peacemaker last week in an abandoned lot directly across Ouaknine's Parisian Motel in the 500 block of Northwest 23rd Avenue.

Police and city records show Ouaknine and her motel had been the subject of an undercover operation targeting prostitution starting in September. Ouaknine was arrested on Oct. 28 on three counts of renting rooms to prostitutes for $20 an hour. Her case is pending.

The city's nuisance abatement board sent her a warning letter and summoned her to appear for a hearing in February based on the investigation. It's the second time since 2008 that the board has targeted the motel, city records show.

She says she's doing nothing illegal.

"They've tried everything to shut me down and have failed," she said. "Now they bring this truck to intimidate me and my customers."

Some neighbors surrounding the Parisian Motel say the truck is another form of constant police harassment.

On a recent afternoon, Leo Cooper watched as two undercover street-crime officers jumped out of an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria just yards from the Peacemaker. They began questioning a group of men gathered at the corner. Within minutes, one of the men ran away. A second man was charged with loitering.

"This is what happens here every day. We can't sit outside without being harassed," said Cooper, 27. "Now we have that truck. Most of us are not doing anything wrong. We can't be outside?"

Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-neighborhood-crime-surveillance-20120126,0,5814428.story

New York’s Long-distance body scanners challenge 4th Amendment

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:40 -0500

New York Police Commissioner Joe Kelly (left) is considering the latest in technology — Terahertz Imaging Detection (TID) — to be mounted on police cars and allowing them to roam the streets of New York looking for people carrying guns. The NYPD, sometimes referred to as the world’s “seventh largest army” with 35,000 uniformed officers, already does a brisk business frisking potential suspects, with little pushback. In the first quarter of last year, 161,000 New Yorkers were stopped and interrogated, with more than nine out of 10 of them found to be innocent. And there are cameras already in place everywhere: in Manhattan alone there are more than 2,000 surveillance cameras watching for alleged miscreants.
But the new technology will avoid the necessity of doing public pat-downs because it would allow officers to note, from their cruisers, who is carrying heat. The technology, effective up to 16 feet (with improvements in longer scans already being tested), measures body heat and indicates any “blockages” of that heat by metal obstructions, assumed in most cases to be handguns carried on the person. What it can do is “allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone walking the streets of New York,” according to the report at RT.com. “Any object on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt police officers to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else, under their clothes.”
Commissioner Kelly assured investigators that the scanners would be used only in what he calls “reasonably suspicious circumstances.” That’s a long way from the language in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which says: “The rights of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The difference is being noted by the American Civil Liberties Union. Donna Lieberman of the NYCLU told CBS:
It’s worrisome. It implicates privacy, the right to walk down the street without being subjected to a virtual pat-down by the Police Department when you’re doing nothing wrong.
But Kelly isn’t concerned: “We have involved our attorneys as we go forward with this issue. We think it’s a very positive development.”
Terahertz Imaging Detection is the next iteration of Fourth Amendment invasions of privacy. Last July Raven Clabough, writing for The New American, warned about iris scans and facial recognition scans and noted that Chicago has been keeping an eye on its citizens for some time now through the use of 10,000 cameras in public places. The ACLU of Chicago voiced similar concerns:
Chicago’s camera network invades the freedom to be anonymous in public places, a key aspect of the fundamental American right to be left alone. Each of us then will wonder whether the government is watching and recording us when we walk into a psychiatrist’s office, a reproductive health care center, a political meeting, a theater performance or a bookstore.
Mayor Richard Daley, reading from the same script as NYPD Policy Commissioner Joe Kelly, put a happy face on it: “We’re not spying on anybody,” adding that it’s just a cost-effective way to fight crime.
All of this non-spying and non-surveillance on innocents is probably unconstitutional, according to Bill Rounds. Rounds is a California attorney with special interest in privacy and the Fourth Amendment. He says that “if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy…the police need a warrant to conduct a search.” But, he adds, “There is no reasonable expectation of privacy for things that are in plain view of the public [and] technologies that enhance the senses to be able to see what is in plain view, like common binoculars, can be used by police without a warrant. Something that is not visible to the naked eye [like a concealed weapon] is not in plain view” and would require either a warrant or the person’s consent to a search.
In the 1967 Supreme Court case Katz v. United States, the court ruled 7-1 that “electronic as well as physical intrusion into a place that is in this sense private may constitute a violation of the Fourth Amendment and…that an invasion of a constitutionally protected area by federal authorities is, as th[is] Court has long held, presumptively unreasonable in the absence of a search warrant.”
In a more recent case, Kyllo V. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that because the police did not have a warrant when they used an electronic device the search was presumptively unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional.
It is worthwhile noting that Katz was decided in 1967 and Kyllo in 2001, a very long time ago, legally speaking. To rely on judicial restraint to protect precious liberties is hardly likely to dampen the enthusiasm of either Mayor Daley in Chicago or police commissioner Joe Kelly in New York to continue to push the envelope of technological surveillance as far as possible. The best push back is an informed citizenry which is increasingly unwilling to be cast in the mold of “guilty until proven innocent.”
Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/10609-new-yorks-long-distance-body-scanners-challenge-4th-amendment

McDonald’s Proposal divides Loma Linda, home of a well-known Adventist hospital

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:35 -0500

Without a single liquor store, and legally smoke-free for nearly three decades, the tiny hillside town of Loma Linda brims with pride about its devotion to health and spiritual well-being.

So news that the first McDonald's was coming to town, with its special-sauce-slathered Big Macs and 500-calorie sheaves of large fries, has triggered enough political reflux to put City Hall on the defensive.

A noisy group of doctors at the city's landmark Loma Linda University Medical Center definitely isn't lovin' it. Already, there are whispers of election day payback and crafting a ballot measure to choke off a proliferation of fast-food joints.

"McDonald's does not fit the Loma Linda brand of health and wellness," said Dr. Wayne Dysinger, head of preventive medicine at the medical school. "Compare it to smoking laws: There's no question that smoking is harmful to people's health. Exposing people to fast food also is harmful to their health."

That healthful lifestyle is a core tenet of the Seventh-day Adventist faith, which is woven through the San Bernardino County town of 21,000, from the Adventist-run Loma Linda University Medical Center to a City Council governed exclusively by church members. There's even a Loma Linda line of vegetarian food, produced by the same company that makes Morningstar Farms vegan burgers.

Along with being vegetarian, most Adventists shun tobacco, alcohol and fancy dress. They are quick to brag about being home to the healthiest, and longest-living, folks in the nation. National Geographic in 2005 identified Loma Linda as one of the world's four "blue zones" — towns with greatest number of people living healthy lives into their 90s and past 100. The others were Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; and Nicoya, Costa Rica. "It's a great point of pride that their commitment to health is paying off," said Dysinger.

For Loma Linda residents, temptation already is just down the street. There are a half-dozen McDonald's restaurants within five miles, all outside the city limits, and the town already has a Carl's Jr. and Del Taco. But something about the Golden Arches popping up along Barton Avenue, within sight of the rolling hills that Adventist prophet Ellen G. White envisioned as a haven for the church, has proved too much to bear for many.

Dysinger is a member of the Healthy Loma Linda Coalition, composed mainly of preventive health professionals, which opposes the McDonald's.

The group is considering a ballot measure to require the city to ensure that the number of eating establishments that offer healthful food will always outnumber fast-food restaurants.

"Plus, every city councilman is an elected official," he warned, referring to consequences at the ballot box.

The City Council so far has taken its chances, voting 3-2 to approve the McDonald's as part of a larger development of a vacant lot a block from City Hall. The controversy has created an uncomfortable rift among Adventists. Dysinger and other parishioners call fast food an affront to the faith's teachings of holistic wellness. Others call that an extreme view of the Adventist faith.

Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes Rigsby, an Adventist and director of the medical center's home care services, expressed frustration about all the attention. His city's political dust-up has been dissected on ABC's "Nightline," and he's gotten calls from reporters in Germany.

"The press is casting it as health-conscious people versus greedy business people. It's not. This is a disagreement about the role of government," said Rigsby, a physician and lifelong vegetarian.

"My perspective as a conservative libertarian is that government's role should be minimalized. We should keep people from harming one another, but government doesn't have a strong need to keep people from harming themselves."

Darold Retzer, executive pastor at the Loma Linda University Church of Seventh-day Adventists, said all the attention was "almost an embarrassment to the church."

Within a block of the Clark's Nutrition and Natural Foods market is a Stater Bros. market stocked with rib-eyes.

The Adventist church's holistic devotion to people's health and spiritual well-being dominates daily life.

For 81 years, the post office didn't deliver mail on Saturdays, the Adventist Sabbath, opting for Sunday instead. The postal service ended that policy last spring in a cost-cutting move, which faithful Adventists took as another slap at their traditions.

The Adventists' emphasis on health, nutrition and exercise would be easy to miss for those living outside the city limits were it not for the medical center and university's schools of health. They attract 600,000 patients a year. For many, the hospital's vegetarian-only cafeteria is the first hint that life is different here.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-loma-linda-mcdonalds-20120122,0,5540685.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fnews%2Flocal+%28L.A.+Times+-+California+%7C+Local+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

AMA Journal: Make Participation in Vaccine Trials Mandatory

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:54:38 -0500

An article published by the American Medical Association’s Virtual Mentor journal advocates making participation in vaccine trials mandatory, arguing that people should be forced to take experimental shots in a similar vein to how jury service is compulsory.
The article, written by Oxford University’s Susanne Sheehy and Joel Meyer, is entitledShould Participation in Vaccine Clinical Trials be Mandated?
Concerned about the “distressing decline in the numbers of healthy volunteers who participate in clinical trials,” the piece argues that “Compulsory involvement in vaccine studies” should be considered for the “greater good of society.”
“Many societies already mandate that citizens undertake activities for the good of society; in several European countries registration for organ-donation has switched from “opt-in” (the current U.S. system) to “opt-out” systems (in which those who do not specifically register as nondonors are presumed to consent to donation) [10], and most societies expect citizens to undertake jury service when called upon. In these examples, the risks or inconvenience to an individual are usually limited and minor. Mandatory involvement in vaccine trials is therefore perhaps more akin to military conscription, a policy operating today in 66 countries. In both conscription and obligatory trial participation, individuals have little or no choice regarding involvement and face inherent risks over which they have no control, all for the greater good of society.”
Using the example of military conscription – the draft – to justify the idea of compulsory participation in vaccine trials, illustrates how the whole idea is completely rooted in authoritarian tendencies. The draft has its historical origins in slavery and has largely been abolished by developed nations.
And if you thought the use of the term “for the greater good of society” wasn’t downright creepy enough, the authors later propose tackling society’s reluctance to accept compulsory recruitment to vaccine trials by virtually advocating the arrival of a more deadly disease than swine flu in order to ensure “compulsory recruitment becomes a more palatable option.”
“Consider an infectious disease with a high transmission and mortality rate for which vaccine development were possible but limited by a shortage of volunteers willing to participate in clinical trials. Would mandatory participation in clinical trials then be an acceptable policy?” ask the authors, ruminating on how an “Increase (in) the severity of the disease in question,” would increase the likelihood of society accepting mandatory vaccine trials.
The authors conclude by bemoaning ethical considerations that would present a roadblock to the effort to force people to take experimental vaccines, proposing instead that a system of “mandated choice” be introduced to coerce people into agreeing to be given the shots.
Mandating that people take experimental vaccines is of course completely abhorrent, it violates the fundamental human right not to be forcibly medicated, and harks back to the dark days of eugenics, mandatory sterilizations, and episodes like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
The very reason why less people are willing to volunteer for vaccine trials is the fact that vaccines, whether approved or experimental, have been responsible for deaths and injuries worldwide in increasing numbers. The United States, which administers the highest number of vaccines to babies, has the highest infant mortality rate out of all developed nations, a connection that is no coincidenceaccording to a recent medical study published in a prestigious medical journal.
Indeed, earlier this month GlaxoSmithKline was fined $93,000 dollars for its role in an experimental vaccine program in Argentina that killed 14 babies between 2007 and 2008.
For this authoritarian premise to even be considered in the AMA’s ‘Journal of Ethics’ is shocking, but the increasing move towards making vaccines mandatory is a wider phenomenon.
Last year, California passed a law that allows children to be given the Gardasil shot, which has been linked with thousands of adverse reactions and dozens of deaths, without parental consent.
Parents who try to remove their children from the ever-expanding list of “required” vaccine programs for school-age kids are being targeted by law enforcement. When Rachel Garmon told her doctor that she had taken the decision not to vaccinate her healthy 2 and a half year old son, she was subsequently visited by a Pennsylvania State Trooper who was tasked with investigating her “suspicious behavior,” despite the fact that Pennsylvania is one of the many states that allows vaccination exemptions on both religious and medical grounds.
The AMA article represents a shocking insight into the control freak tendencies of some of today’s most influential medical minds. Forcing people to take part in experimental vaccine trials that pose a serious risk to their health is totally contemptible and has no place in a free society.
Source: http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2012/01/pfor1-1201.html
Source: http://occupycorporatism.com/?p=4106

Home School Families in Sweden Brace For New Government Assault

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:54:35 -0500

A liberal Swedish politician has sent a shot over the bow of that country’s home school community. Writing in a Swedish newspaper, with a follow-up posting on her blog, Lotta Edholm (left) of Sweden’s Liberal Party called for changes to the country’s laws that would allow government social workers to more easily take children away from home school families.

Declared Edholm: “Today I write with Ann-Katrin Aslund on Aftonbladet’s debate page that the social services law should be amended so that social services are able to intervene when children are kept away from school by their parents — often for religious or ideological reasons.”
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a U.S.-based conservative legal advocacy group, noted that Edholm’s recommendation comes at a time when home school families in Sweden are under severe assault. The ADF, in partnership with another U.S. group, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), has come to the legal aid of a Swedish home school family whose nine-year-old son was abducted by the Swedish government in 2009. According to an ADF press release, Swedish officials “seized the child because they believe home schooling is an inappropriate way to raise a child and insist the government should raise [him] instead, even though home-schooling was legal in Sweden at the time he was taken into custody.” After Swedish courts sided with the government in its seizure of the boy, ADF and HSLDA attorneys asked the European Court of Human Rights to hear the case, explaining that Swedish authorities would not allow the family to be represented in Sweden’s courts by the foreign attorneys.
HSLDA’s Mike Donnelly said that “Sweden’s educational policy is becoming increasingly totalitarian,” adding that “a country that does not permit home education is not really a free country.”
The home school advocacy group noted that the Swedish government has been cracking down on home school families for many years. “In 2010 the Swedish Parliament changed its basic education law, making it virtually impossible to obtain permission to home school,” the group reported in an update on the state of home schooling in the country. “The previously enacted 1985 school law had allowed parents to apply for permission from local authorities, where permission was mostly granted. However, the changes made by the Swedish Parliament now require ‘exceptional circumstances’ and also make it possible for parents to be criminally prosecuted if they don’t send their children to school — something that was not possible under the previous law.”
For the last two years virtually no family in Sweden has been given permission to home school, explained Jonas Himmelstrand, president of the Swedish Association for Home Education. Himmelstrand knows personally the hardship of trying to educate children at home in a country that is trying criminalize the practice. He and his wife have been in court for years over their family home school program, and the government has fined them at least $26,000 — an impossible sum for an average Swedish family.
Himmelstrand said that Edholm’s intransigent attitude toward home school families is representative of most government bureaucrats in Sweden. “Edholm argues that because children have a right to an education, this means that public school is the only valid option,” he explained to the HSLDA. But in light of the academic success most home school families — in Sweden and around the world — are having, such an attitude “is pure ignorance,” he said. “Home education is an effective and perfectly legitimate way for children to learn. Edholm’s argument is totalitarian and breaches fundamental democratic principles. It’s fine for the government to provide schools, but it goes against basic human rights norms to force every child to go to school.”
The problem, however, is that “in Sweden the line between parents and the state has become strongly blurred,” he said, adding that “many countries have education systems —such as England, Canada, the United States, and our Nordic neighbors — which show that democracies can and must make room for home education.”
ADF’s European legal adviser, Roger Kiska, said that parents everywhere — including in Sweden — have the right to do what is best for their children without the worry of government intrusion. “Swedish policy on home education is at odds with recognized international legal standards that uphold the right of parents to direct the education of their children,” he said.
HSLDA’s Mike Donnelly pointed out that “the right of parents to choose the kind of education their children receive is a fundamental human right recognized in international legal documents…. Somehow Swedish politicians have lost their way and are ignoring these basic human rights. Sweden has joined Germany in repressing educational freedom. It’s important that free people stand up to governments who persecute their own people.”
HSDLA noted that scores of home school families have fled Germany as that country’s officials “have sought crushing fines, jail sentences, and have even sought to remove children from otherwise functional families just because of home education.” Germany’s highest courts have sanctioned such action, arguing that home schooling encourages the creation of “parallel societies.”
Donnelly said that it is important for home school proponents in America to pay attention to what is happening elsewhere because such trends could be pushed by education “experts” in this nation. He noted at least one professor who is forwarding such ideology.
“In her book What Is Right for Children, Emory University School of Law Professor Martha Albertson-Fineman makes the argument that it is not enough that children have the opportunity to go to public school — they must all go to public school, meaning that home schooling and private schools should be banned,” Donnelly wrote recently.
He argued that such thinking “is one of the reasons why it is important for American home schoolers to be interested in what happens overseas. By fighting these ideas wherever they occur globally, we can prevent them from gaining traction here.”
Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/10598-home-school-families-in-sweden-brace-for-new-government-assault

Artificial meat grown in a lab could become a reality this year

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:35:30 -0500

Scientists have figured out the riddle of growing meat in a laboratory and are now just working out how they can make it profitable, it has been claimed.
Some 30 teams around the world are working on growing meat in petri dishes, as investment and research talent is poured into a technology that could solve world hunger.
Produced in huge vats from muscle cells, the ‘meat without slaughter’ would be kinder to the environment than the real thing and reduce animal suffering.

Animal welfare group Peta have promised a $1million reward to any scientist who can prove chicken grown in a laboratory is commercially viable by 2016.
And now a string of recent developments cited by Food Safety News indicate that 2012 could be the year a breakthrough is finally made in the development of in vitro meat.

Mark Post, from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, has all but promised that meat will soon be grown in his lab.
His work is funded by the Dutch government, as well as an anonymous donation of 300,000 euros, but it is not eligible for the Peta prize as he is growing beef, not chicken.

Messy: Peta hopes in vitro meat production could cut the number of animals raised for slaughter
In the U.S., meanwhile, the University of Missouri was given funding to take on Nicholas Genovese to work with R. Michael Roberts, their leading expert on stem stells and livestock.
Mr Genovese has already worked with Vladimir Mironov at the Medical University of South Carolina.
Mr Mironov has taken his research to Brazil, where the government is also pursuing in vitro meat research and development.
If an industrial process can be discovered, it is hoped that it would slash the price of test tube meat to less than that of real meat.
It remains to be seen, however, whether it will find favour with a public that likes to think of its chops, steaks and sausages as having their roots in nature, rather than in test-tubes.
And with the meaty texture of muscle being the most difficult element to recreate, it is likely that the first test-tube meat dishes would mimic processed meat products like burgers and sausages.
Enlarge

To make the meat, scientists take muscle cells from an animal and incubate them in a protein 'broth'.
This makes the microscopic cells multiply many times over, creating a sticky tissue with the consistency of an undercooked egg.
This ‘wasted muscle’ is then bulked up through the laboratory equivalent of exercise – it is anchored to Velcro and stretched.
Some researchers say that with the right starting material and conditions, just ten pork muscle cells could produce 50,000 tons of meat in two months.
Peta has said it decided to promote lab-grown meat because a lot of people 'cannot kick their meat addictions'.
The group's £1million prize will go to any researcher who can develop lab-grown chicken with the same taste and texture as the real thing, and sell at least 2,000lb of the stuff in 10 American states by early 2016.
Their evaluation process deadline is in June this year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2087837/Test-tube-meat-reality-year-scientists-work-make-profitable.html?ITO=1490

India reports new TB strain resistant to all drugs

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:35:27 -0500

Indian doctors have reported the country's first cases of "totally drug-resistant tuberculosis," a long-feared and virtually untreatable form of the killer lung disease.
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No one expects the Indian TB strains to rapidly spread elsewhere. The airborne disease is mainly transmitted through close personal contact and isn't nearly as contagious as the flu. Indeed, most of the cases of this kind of TB were not from person-to-person infection but were mutations that occurred in poorly treated patients.
What's more, there's a debate within the public health community about whether to even label TB infections as totally drug resistant. The World Health Organization hasn't accepted the term and still considers the cases to be what's now called extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR. However, Dr. Paul Nunn, a coordinator at the WHO's Stop TB Department in Geneva, said there is ample proof that these virtually untreatable cases do exist.
The Indian hospital that saw the initial cases tested a dozen medicines and none of them worked, a pretty comprehensive assessment. A TB expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they do appear to be totally resistant to available drugs.
"It is concerning," said Dr. Kenneth Castro, director of the CDC's Division of Tuberculosis Elimination. "Anytime we see something like this, we better get on top of it before it becomes a more widespread problem."
Ordinary TB is easily cured by taking antibiotics for six to nine months. However, if that treatment is interrupted or the dose is cut down, the stubborn bacteria battle back and mutate into a tougher strain that can no longer be killed by standard drugs. The disease becomes harder and more expensive to treat.
In India, doctors in Mumbai have reported a total of 12 patients who failed initial treatment and also didn't respond to the medicines tried next over an average of two to three years. Three have died. None of the others have been successfully treated.
The doctors detailed the first four cases in a letter to a U.S. medical journal last month, blaming private doctors for prescribing inappropriate drug plans that sparked greater resistance in three of those four patients.
"These three patients had received erratic, unsupervised second-line drugs, added individually and often in incorrect doses, from multiple private practitioners," wrote the doctors from P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Center in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.
One of the doctors, Zarir Udwadia, in a phone interview, said there is little hope for the surviving nine patients, all poor slum dwellers living in the community. He said he has detected one case of a mother passing the strain to a daughter living in close quarters. One of the patients was also infected with HIV, which typically results in faster death.
Udwadia criticized the testing and treatment methods of the Indian government's TB program, which he says forces patients to turn to private doctors, many of whom do not understand how to properly treat TB or the risks of increasing drug resistance by prescribing the wrong drugs.
"It was a given that this would happen," Udwadia said. "They have had no help from the Indian TB system. They are the untouchables, so no one is making a fuss. They don't have the power to vocalize. There's going to be more family contacts. It's going to spread for sure."
India's Health Ministry did not respond to phone calls and written requests for comment Monday and last week.
Dr. Nata Menabde, WHO's representative in India, said a team of national experts started investigating the cases Monday. She said the government is also working to improve laboratory diagnostics to help find more drug-resistant cases, and discussions are ongoing to identify ways to regulate TB treatment in the private sector.
"Now there is a high urgency attached to these findings even though the knowledge about the existence of such cases is not new," she said. "The political momentum is right because it has attracted the top level of attention, given the seriousness of the matter."
Similar highly resistant cases have been noted before. In 2003, two Italian women died and there were 15 cases reported from Iran in 2009. That same year, The Associated Press reported on a case of a Peruvian teenager who was infected at home but diagnosed while visiting Florida. He was successfully treated for a year and a half with experimental high doses of medicines not typically used for TB, costing about $500,000.
Those resources are unthinkable in the developing world, where TB remains a menacing killer and where few hospitals can perform tests to find out which antibiotics might work.
"For there to be another report coming out from India is no surprise at all. Indeed, in a sense, it's surprising it's taken so long," said WHO's Nunn. This is "yet another alarm call for countries and others engaged in TB control to do their jobs properly."
Tuberculosis is an age-old scourge that lies dormant in an estimated 1 in 3 people. About 10 percent of those people eventually develop active TB, which kills roughly 2 million a year, according to WHO. Each victim infects an average of 10 to 15 others every year, typically through sneezing or coughing.
If a TB case is found to be resistant to the two most powerful anti-TB drugs, the patient is classified as having multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR). An even worse classification of TB — one the WHO accepts — is extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR), a form of the disease that was first reported in 2006 and is virtually resistant to all drugs.
An estimated 20 percent of the world's multi-drug-resistant cases are found in India, which is home to a quarter of all types of tuberculosis cases worldwide.

Source: http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/story/2012-01-16/India-reports-new-TB-strain-resistant-to-all-drugs/52592516/1?

CDC expands ‘bush meat’ testing for virus

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:35:25 -0500

Bloody, raw, smoked or dried, untold thousands of pounds monkey parts, giant African cane rats and other illegal “bush meat” slips into the United States each year.
For some of the Washington area’s African residents, the meat is a taste of home, a treat for the holidays and reunions.
“It’s a delicacy, for special occasions,” said Sambourou Diop, a Gabonese national living in the region, who sampled bush meat in his West African homeland but has not eaten it here.
For the nation’s disease detectives, though, bloody bags of wild meat could mean big trouble. They’re worried about exotic viruses causing a deadly outbreak — or, in the worst case, an AIDS-like pandemic.
That’s why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an expanded effort to test confiscated bush meat for potentially dangerous viruses after a two-year pilot study.
After all, the virus that causes AIDS jumped from chimpanzees to humans at least three times early in the 20th century, sparking a worldwide crisis that has killed at least 25 million people. And in 2003, an unknown virus leapt from bats to civet cats to people in southwest China. The virus then spread to 29 countries and killed at least 774 people. It was dubbed SARS, for severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Infectious-disease experts are convinced those two viruses moved into humans via the butchering, handling and eating of infected meat. And they’re all but certain that other scary viruses lurk in the world’s wildlife.
“We’re in the dark with risks,” said Kristine Smith of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance. “We know there are risks out there, but we aren’t able to quantify them.”
Beginning in 2008, Smith, a wildlife health expert, aided the CDC on a pilot project to test bush meat confiscated at Dulles International Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, and airports in Houston and Atlanta.
The effort netted heads, arms and other pieces of two chimpanzees (members of an endangered species), seven monkeys and 35 rodents, mostly giant cane rats. It is illegal to bring any of those animals into the United States.
Also found were three exotic viruses, although they do not appear dangerous to humans. Two of the viruses are in the same broad family as the viruses that cause herpes in humans. The third virus, simian foamy virus, was found in seven monkeys and one of the chimpanzees. That virus has been on CDC’s radar for a few years because, like HIV, it is a retrovirus. It insinuates itself into the host’s DNA, where it persists, perhaps for a lifetime.
To date, there are no signs that simian foamy virus makes people sick, the CDC’s William Switzer said. But the agency has estimated there are 130 people infected with it worldwide. The agency is tracking only about 15 of those cases. Most are laboratory or zoo workers who handled monkeys and apes, or blood or tissue from the primates.
“We’re looking at whether these viruses are transmissible to close contacts, spouses, children, and so on,” Switzer said.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/cdc-expands-bush-meat-testing-for-viruses/2012/01/11/gIQAd9ZDzP_story.html