• Should health insurance policies cover faith healing?

    Clauses that could force health insurers to pay for religious and spiritual healing have slipped into at least two of the healthcare reform bills currently making their way through Congress

  • Victims of foodborne illness press White House for food safety reform

    Visit to White House comes after victims and their families press Senate to pass legislation to protect the public from foodborne illness

  • Food safety programs alter farming

    Anticipating greater attention by the Obama administration to food safety, farmers are already changing their practices; the majority have began to keep better records; other changes farmers have undertaken include researching information about better food safety practices by subscribing to topical publications, networking and meeting with other farmers, and changes to facilities and to processes

  • Some in the livestock industry worry about disease lab's Kansas location

    Two national cattlemen’s organizations say moving the study of dangerous pathogens to the mainland would be unwise because a tornado or other mishap could allow diseases to escape into the surrounding animal population; supporters say facility presents no risk to agriculture

  • Uganda to conduct Marburg and Ebola vaccine trials

    Ebola and Marburg are viral infections that have a high mortality, killing 90 percent of victims; no effective treatment exists for these highly infectious diseases, which cause extensive internal bleeding and rapid death

  • FDA awards 83 grants in FY2009 totaling $17.5 million

    The Food and Drug Administration awarded $17.5 in grants to improve food safety by emphasizing improved response, intervention, innovation, and prevention

  • The Top 10 foods most likely to make you sick

    Some of the healthiest foods are also the most dangerous, causing most food-borne disease in the United States; the leading illness-carrying foods: leafy greens, eggs, and tuna

  • IBM's wants to make food smarter

    Big Blue offers systems for tracing the raw materials of food products through “an increasingly complex global supply chain”

  • Victims of food-poisoning on Hill in support of S. 510

    Food safety debate intensifies as food-borne illness victims lobby for stronger food laws; new bill, S. 510s would increase FDA inspections of food processing plants, especially of high-risk facilities, require imports to meet U.S. safety standards, establish science-based minimum safety standards for growing fresh produce, and give the agency mandatory recall authority

  • Congress allocates funds for planning Kansas biolab

    Congress allocates $32 million for planning and design of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas; the money for construction of the 520,000-square-foot lab and the transferring of research equipment from Plum Island, New York — about $915 million — will be released only if security concerns are satisfactorily addressed

  • Trust for America's Health calls on Senate to reform U.S. food safety

    Approximately 76 million Americans — one in 4 — are sickened by food-borne diseases each year. Of these, an estimated 325,000 are hospitalized and 5,000 die. Medical costs and lost productivity due to food-borne illnesses in the United States are estimated to cost $44 billion annually

  • 25 years to Oregon salmonella bioterrorism

    The 1984 Oregon outbreak of Salmonella enterica Typhimurium sickened 751 people and sent 45 to hospitals; the attack was launched by a mystical cult which tried to take over the remote Oregon county

  • New advanced sensors developed

    Queen’s University Belfast researchers use Raman spectroscopy, which involves shining a laser beam onto the suspected sample and measuring the energy of light that scatters from it to determine what chemical compound is present; they mixed nanoscale silver particles to amplify the signals of compounds

  • Has biodefense research made America a safer place to live?

    Death of University of Chicago scientist as a result of infection with the plague bacterium, raises more questions about the downside of growing research into bio terror agents — and the means to counter them

  • The risks of pet-borne disease

    Small mammals, birds, and reptiles may offer companionship to people in situations when dogs, cats, or larger animals are not practical or permitted — but these smaller creatures require particular care to prevent illness; beware especially of salmonella, tularemia, psittacosis, and lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus