How your chicken dinner is creating a drug-resistant superbug
The Atlantic - 7/11/2012. By Maryn McKenna – Adrienne LeBeouf recognized the symptoms when they started. The burning and the urge to head to the bathroom signaled a urinary tract infection, a painful but everyday annoyance that afflicts up to 8 million U.S. women a year. That was two years ago, and LeBeouf has suffered recurring bouts of cystitis ever since. She is one of a growing number of women, and some men, who have unknowingly become infected with antibiotic-resistant versions of E. coli, the ubiquitous intestinal bacterium that is the usual cause of UTIs. |
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Eating for health
Portland Press Herald - 7/11/2012. By Avery Yale Kamila – Watching her parents suffer through diet-related diseases, Dawn Harlor made a radical change to what she eats in hopes of staying healthy as she ages. "My parents both had strokes – my mom in her 80s and my dad in his 90s," said Harlor, who lives in Camden and is in her 60s. "And I wanted to be proactive about my arteries. I'm hoping to avert the same fate." |
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Keeping kids safe on farms is everyone’s goal
Kennebec Journal - 7/11/2012. Editorial – Officials in the U.S. Department of Labor recently proposed a rule limiting what kinds of jobs teenagers could hold in agricultural industries, including close relatives' family farms. The rules were in response to overall statistics showing that minors suffered a fatality rate four times higher in agricultural work than in other types of industry. |
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Bt toxicity confirmed: flawed studies exposed
Institute for Science in Society - 7/11/2012. By Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji – A new study confirms that the Cry1Ab Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin present in genetically modified (GM) crops kills the larvae of the two-spotted ladybird (Adalia bipunctata L.), a species that GM supporters claim to be unaffected by the toxin. The study raises questions regarding the integrity of previous work published by GM proponents, whose experimental protocols were re-tested and shown to lack the scientific rigour required to pick up signs of toxicity even in target insects that the pesticide is designed to kill. |
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