Citizen Cartwright

Crackdown on deceptive food labels

The Food and Drug Administration has warned 17 food manufacturers to change their health and nutrition claims.

Among the targets are Gerber baby food, Juicy Juice, Dreyer’s ice cream, POM pomegranate juice, Diamond shelled walnuts and Gorton’s fish fillets.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest says the move is the biggest crackdown on food labeling in more than a decade, but that the FDA should turn its individual enforcement actions into binding regulations.

Study: Foodborne illness costs $152 billion a year

The study on the burden to the country of pathogens in food — by the Produce Safety Project, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts — comes as Congress is working on the first major overhaul of the food safety system in 50 years.

More on deadly infections

I wrote last week about the increasing number of Americans who are dying from bacterial infections because the bugs have become resistant to our antibiotic weaponry.

Now a reader has alerted me to an article on Norway, the most infection-free country in the world. Norway restricts the use of antibiotics to when they're really needed so resistance doesn't develop.

MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) accounts for less than 1 percent of staph infections in Norway, compared to 63 percent in the United States and 80 percent in Japan, according to the article, part of an Associated Press series on drug resistance.

Another article in the series discusses increasing concerns about antibiotic use in farm animals causing drug resistance in humans.

The United States used about 35 million pounds of antibiotics in 2008 — and 70 percent were given to pigs, chickens and cows, often just to make them grow faster, AP says.

Federal food safety studies routinely find drug resistant bacteria in the pork, chicken and beef sold in grocery stores, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., has introduced a bill (HR 1549) to phase out antibiotic use in healthy animals. A related Senate bill (S 619) was introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Billion-dollar vaccine

A new vaccine against pneumonia, meningitis and other infections was approved for children on Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration.

The vaccine's maker, Pfizer, reportedly is counting on it to become the firm's top moneymaker after cholesterol drug Lipitor loses its patent protection next year.

The threat of deadly infections

We've been hearing more and more about people who go into the hospital for even minor elective surgery and end up losing their lives to infections they get there.

Now a new study says an estimated 48,000 people die each year of blood poisoning or pneumonia they come down with in the hospital, at a cost of more than $8 billion.

And that's just half the estimated 100,000 deaths every year from all "hospital-acquired" infections.

Why can't antibiotics just knock out these infections? For one thing, bacteria have become resistant to the antibiotics we've got.

And drug industry R&D on new antibiotics has declined. Antibiotics that someone will take for a short time aren't as profitable as, for example, cholesterol drugs they'll take for decades.

So we're dealing with "superbugs" like MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a strain of staph that's become resistant to the antibiotics that have been used to treat it.

While MRSA used to be just an issue in hospitals, it now is common outside them, too. The Infectious Diseases Society has on its Web site stories of people who have battled MRSA, including some who have died.

The society is urging the public to write their congressman supporting a bill (HR 2400) by Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to strengthen the federal response to infectious pathogens.

As far as protecting yourself, Scientific American put out a list of ways to "stave off hospital superbugs and other nasty germs."

Number one: When doctors and nurses come in to examine you, ask them to wash their hands. I've been doing this at doctors' visits for a couple of years, and only one doctor expressed any annoyance. Another doctor said, "Everybody should be asking this."

Drug safety

A Senate Finance Committee report linking the diabetes drug Avandia to heart attacks is putting pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to upgrade its drug safety program, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Some FDA critics have been saying for years that the agency's unit that tracks problems with drugs after they go on the market needs to be independent. Now it's subordinate to the division that approves new drugs.

"It doesn't make any sense to let these [safety reviewers] be overruled by officials who approved the drug in the first place and have a natural interest in defending their decision," says Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa, the committee's ranking Republican.

London's new playground for baby boomers

Hyde Park is the site of the city's first playground to enable people over 60 to gently exercise outdoors.

"In the U.K. there are now more pensioners than children but few facilities for them in our parks," says Madeline Elsdon, spokeswoman for the Knightsbridge Association, the local group that came up with the idea.

''We proposed the playground because many older people find indoor gyms intimidating and expensive and therefore aren't exercising enough," she says.

The first elder playground in Europe opened in Berlin in 2008. It was designed by Renate Zeumer, an engineer who had seen older people in China exercising in parks, on the streets and in subway stations using simple equipment provided by the government.

Who's mentally healthy, and who isn't?

You have until April 20 to tell the American Psychiatric Association what you think about changes it's proposing to its diagnostic manual.

The revised manual will help shape which emotions, behaviors, thoughts and personality traits society considers part of the natural spectrum, The Washington Post says, and those considered pathological — requiring treatment and possibly even criminal punishment.

Billions are at stake for drug and insurance companies, government health plans, doctors, researchers and patient advocacy organizations.

The changes, which have been discussed for a decade, would, for example, add a category called "behavioral addictions." Gambling would be listed; Internet addiction wouldn't.

The Post says other examples include a diagnosis of "temper dysregulation with dysphoria" for children who have too many tantrums, and "psychosis risk syndrome" for teenagers who are particularly eccentric.

Downsizing America's children

The first lady's campaign against childhood obesity is the latest in a long series of efforts dating back more than 50 years, all the way to the Eisenhower administration.

Study confirms link between older mothers and autism

A 40-year-old woman's risk of having an autistic child is 50 percent higher than for a woman in her late twenties, according to a study published online in the journal Autism Research.

The risk also is increased when the father is older and the mother is under 30, according to the study.

The reason for the link isn't known.