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Florida health department investigates possible local Zika transmission

(Reuters) – Florida health officials said on Tuesday they are investigating a case of Zika virus infection that does not appear to have stemmed from travel to another region with an outbreak.

The statement from the Florida Department of Health did not specify whether the Zika case was believed to have been transmitted via mosquito bite, sexual contact or other means.

The department said the case was reported in Miami-Dade County and that it is working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on an epidemiological study.

The department also reiterated guidance to Florida residents on protecting themselves from mosquitoes that may carry the virus.

“Zika prevention kits and repellant will be available for pickup … and distributed in the area under investigation,” the health department said in a statement. “Mosquito control has already conducted reduction and prevention activities in the area of investigation.”

Zika, which can cause a rare birth defect and other neurological conditions, has spread rapidly through the Americas. A small number of cases of Zika transmitted between sexual partners have also been documented.

There has yet to be a case of local transmission by mosquitoes in the continental United States, though more than 1,300 people in the country have reported infections after traveling to a Zika outbreak area.

U.S. officials have predicted local outbreaks to begin as the weather warms, particularly in southern states such as Florida and Texas.

(Reporting by Michele Gershberg in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Bernard Orr)

U.S. GMO food labeling bill passes Senate

A customer picks up produce near a sign supporting a ballot initiative in Washington state that would require labelling of foods containing genetically modified crops at the Central Co-op in Seattle, Washington October 29, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

By Chris Prentice

(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would for the first time require food to carry labels listing genetically-modified ingredients, which labeling supporters say could create loopholes for some U.S. crops.

The Senate voted 63-30 for the bill that would display GMO contents with words, pictures or a bar code that can be scanned with smartphones. The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) would decide which ingredients would be considered genetically modified.

The measure now goes to the House of Representatives, where it is expected to pass.

Drawing praise from farmers, the bill sponsored by Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas and Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan is the latest attempt to introduce a national standard that would override state laws, including Vermont’s that some say is more stringent, and comes amid growing calls from consumers for greater transparency.

“This bipartisan bill ensures that consumers and families throughout the United States will have access, for the first time ever, to information about their food through a mandatory, nationwide label for food products with GMOs,” Stabenow said in a statement.

A nationwide standard is favored by the food industry, which says state-by-state differences could inflate costs for labeling and distribution. But mandatory GMO labeling of any kind would still be seen as a loss for Big Food, which has spent millions lobbying against it.

Farmers lobbied against the Vermont law, worrying that labeling stigmatizes GMO crops and could hurt demand for food containing those ingredients, but have applauded this law.

Critics like Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, say the bill’s vague language and allowance for electronic labels for scanning could limit its scope and create confusion.

“When parents go to the store and purchase food, they have the right to know what is in the food their kids are going to be eating,” Sanders said on the floor of the Senate ahead of the vote.

He said at a news conference this week that major food manufacturers have already begun labeling products with GMO ingredients to meet the new law in his home state.

Another opponent of the bill, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said it would institute weak federal requirements making it virtually impossible for consumers to access information about GMOs.

LOOPHOLES

Food ingredients like beet sugar and soybean oil, which can be derived from genetically-engineered crops but contain next to no genetic material by the time they are processed, may not fall under the law’s definition of a bioengineered food, critics say.

GMO corn may also be excluded thanks to ambiguous language, some said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raised concerns about the involvement of the USDA in a list of worries sent in a June 27 memo to the Senate Agriculture Committee.

In a letter to Stabenow last week, the USDA’s general counsel tried to quell those worries, saying it would include commercially-grown GMO corn, soybeans, sugar and canola crops.

The vast majority of corn, soybeans and sugar crops in the United States are produced from genetically-engineered seeds. The domestic sugar market has been strained by rising demand for non-GMO ingredients like cane sugar.

The United States is the world’s largest market for foods made with genetically altered ingredients. Many popular processed foods are made with soybeans, corn and other biotech crops whose genetic traits have been manipulated, often to make them resistant to insects and pesticides.

“It’s fair to say that it’s not the ideal bill, but it is certainly the bill that can pass, which is the most important right now,” said American Soybean Association’s (ASA) director of policy communications Patrick Delaney.

The association was part of the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food, which lobbied for what labeling supporters termed the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK Act, that would have made labeling voluntary. It was blocked by the Senate in March.

(Reporting by Chris Prentice in New York; Additional reporting by Karl Plume in Chicago, Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles and Kouichi Shirayanagi and Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Ed Davies)

Flint children’s blood lead levels rose in water crisis: U.S. officials

Water fountain in a school near Flint, Michigan

DETROIT (Reuters) – Federal health officials on Friday confirmed that the blood lead levels of children in Flint, Michigan, rose after the city switched to the Flint River as the source of its drinking water, exposing residents to dangerously high contamination.

Flint, with a population of about 100,000, was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014 when it switched its water source to the river from Detroit’s municipal system to save money. The city switched back in October.

The river water was more corrosive than the Detroit system’s and caused more lead to leach from aging pipes.

Lead can be toxic, and children are especially vulnerable. The crisis has prompted lawsuits by parents who say their children have shown dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said on Friday that they found that the percentage of young children with elevated blood lead levels was significantly higher when the water source was the Flint River.

“This crisis was entirely preventable, and a startling reminder of the critical need to eliminate all sources of lead from our children’s environment,” Patrick Breysse, director of the agency’s National Center for Environmental Health, said in a statement.

When the water source was switched back to the Detroit system, the agency said, the percentage of children under 6 years old with elevated blood lead returned to levels seen before the switch.

The agency urged residents to use filters on their faucets to get water for drinking, cooking and brushing teeth. It said regular tap water could be used for bathing and showering because lead is not absorbed into the skin, but young children should not be allowed to drink bath water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday that properly filtered water in Flint was safe to drink. City officials, however, said bottled water was still needed since not every home can use the filters.

(Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

EPA says filtered Flint, Michigan drinking water safe to drink

DETROIT (Reuters) – Federal officials said on Thursday it is safe for anyone to drink properly filtered water in Flint, Michigan, where a public health crisis erupted after residents were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in a statement that the most recent testing at nearly 50 locations in the city showed lead levels far below the levels considered dangerous.

But the city’s mayor said some homes in Flint cannot be fitted with filters, so bottled water is still needed.

Flint, with a population of about 100,000, was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager in 2014 when it switched its water source from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River to save money. The city switched back in October.

The river water was more corrosive than the Detroit system’s and caused more lead to leach from aging pipes. Lead can be toxic, and children are especially vulnerable. The crisis has prompted lawsuits by parents who say their children have shown dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.

The EPA, which worked in coordination with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the testing, said properly filtered water is safe even for pregnant and nursing women, and children, groups more susceptible to the effects of lead poisoning.

“Residents can be confident that they can use filtered water and protect their developing fetus or young child from lead,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Dr. Nicole Lurie said in a statement. Lurie has led federal support efforts for the Flint crisis.

The EPA said the filters distributed by the state of Michigan effectively remove lead or reduce it to levels well below the level of 15 parts per billion at which federal officials say action is needed. In the testing, nearly all filtered water tested below 1 part per billion. In January, water samples tested above 150 parts per billion.

The state began offering free water filters in Flint in January.

“This good news shows the progress we are making with overall water quality improving in Flint,” Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said in a statement.

Snyder has been criticized for the state’s poor handling of the crisis.

Flint Mayor Karen Weaver noted that some homes have faucets where the filters do not fit. “This is not the ultimate solution,” she said in a statement. “We still need new infrastructure, replacing the lead-tainted pipes in the city remains my top priority.”

(Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by David Gregorio)

Philadelphia passes soda tax after mayor rewrites playbook

By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney scored a victory that eluded more than 40 U.S. public officials who took on the powerful U.S. soda industry when the city council voted on Thursday to slap a tax on sweetened drinks.

After a bitter, months-long battle, the city council voted 13-4 to approve a 1.5 cent-per-ounce tax on sugary and diet drinks. The council already approved the plan in a preliminary vote last week, and the outcome had not been expected to change.

The City of Brotherly Love became the biggest U.S. city to have such a tax. Much smaller Berkeley, California, was the first.

Similar efforts, including several spearheaded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, were defeated after intense lobbying from organizations like the American Beverage Association, which opposes the Philadelphia move and represents Coca-Cola Co and PepsiCo Inc.

The Philadelphia tax marked a major victory for health advocates who say sugary drinks cause obesity and diabetes. But experts noted those concerns were not the focus for Kenney and other backers of the tax as they took on critics complaining that “nanny state” public health measures intrude on residents’ personal lives.

Instead, Kenney rewrote the soda-tax advocate’s playbook. He played up the benefits of the cash injection from the tax for the city’s depleted coffers. In the first year, the tax is projected to raise $91 million, and he pledged to spend funds on public programs such as universal pre-kindergarten.

The strategic shift could lend momentum to movements in San Francisco, neighboring Oakland, California, and Boulder, Colorado. Residents of those cities will vote in November on similar taxes, which could deal further blows to a U.S. soft drink industry already hit by declining soda consumption.

U.S. soda consumption fell for the 11th straight year in 2015, according to Euromonitor data.

AVOIDING THE BLOOMBERG TRAP

Bloomberg made public health a centerpiece of his tenure as New York City mayor between 2002 and 2013. He moved to limit smoking in parks and restaurants, ban transfats and require calorie counts posted in some restaurants.

On soda, he pushed for a tax, then a ban on soda purchases with food stamps, and finally a much-lampooned limit on the size of sugary drinks. His efforts were ultimately rejected, with critics decrying the moves toward a “nanny state.”

The strategy worked in Britain, where a new soft drinks levy was announced in March after officials emphasized the country’s obesity crisis, saying it cost the economy billions of pounds annually and was a huge burden on the state-funded health system.

That approach never worked in Philadelphia. Michael Nutter, the previous mayor, twice tried to pass a soda tax as a health initiative and as a way to plug a budget shortfall. He was unable to push it through the city council.

Kenney, who became Philadelphia’s mayor in January, had made a campaign pledge to provide universal pre-kindergarten, and he kept that issue as his focus. A spokeswoman said complex state laws on taxation made enacting a citywide soda tax the best option to raise revenue for that signature proposal.

Bloomberg personally contributed funding to support Philadelphia’s pro-tax campaigners.

FIZZING WESTWARD

Opponents of Philadelphia’s soda tax argued that the measure will disproportionately hurt the poor and prompt Philadelphians to travel to nearby suburbs to buy soda.

In Colorado, Boulder hopes to use soda tax revenue on health programs, and San Francisco and Oakland officials would recommend but not require funds raised to go toward obesity and diabetes prevention.

When Berkeley passed its soda tax in 2014, industry groups dismissed the measure as a fluke given the city’s largely white population and reputation as a hotbed for liberal measures.

But Philadelphia is the fifth-largest U.S. city, with 1.6 million people. “No one can trivialize it as they can trivialize Berkeley,” said Larry Tramutola, a California political strategist who worked on the Berkeley campaign and is currently leading the San Francisco and Oakland efforts.

(Additional reporting by Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by David Gregorio and Dan Grebler)

World’s oldest person dies in NYC, age 116

Susannah Mushatt Jones (C), known as "Miss Susie" is wheeled into a celebration for her 116th birthday with family members, local dignitaries, and friends in the Brooklyn borough of New York, July 7, 2015.

By Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – The world’s oldest living person, 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones, died on Thursday in New York City, a research group said.

Jones’ death makes Emma Morano-Martinuzzi, a 116-year-old woman in Italy, the oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

Jones, who was born in the southern U.S. state of Alabama in 1899, was the daughter of sharecroppers and granddaughter of slaves.

After graduating from high school she moved north in 1922 to New Jersey and then New York, where she worked as a housekeeper and childcare provider, according to Guinness World Records and the Vandalia Senior Center in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where she lived.

Jones, who retired in 1965, had said that lots of sleep is the secret to her longevity and that she had never smoked or drank alcohol.

The oldest verified person was Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997 at 122 years and 164 days, the research group said.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Zika spread, impact ‘scarier than we initially thought’: U.S. health official

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, speaks about the Zika virus from the White House in Washington

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The spread and impact of the Zika virus is wider than initially anticipated and the first vaccine candidate for the virus should be available in September, U.S. health officials said on Monday.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, a deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters the type of mosquito in which the virus is carried is present in more U.S. states than initially thought. She said what authorities are learning about the virus is “scarier than we initially thought.”

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at a White House briefing the first Zika vaccine candidate should be available in September.

(Adds dropped word “initially” in quote in headline and second paragraph)

(Reporting by Clarece Polke; Editing by Tim Ahmann)

Guinea, Origin of West Africa Ebola Outbreak, Now Free of Virus

Health officials say that Guinea is officially free of Ebola, a milestone achievement for the nation that was the original source of a deadly outbreak of the disease about two years ago.

The World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations, made the announcement on Tuesday, saying it had been 42 days since test results on the West African nation’s final confirmed Ebola patient came back negative. The WHO said the outbreak that ravaged Guinea and the neighboring nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia, killing thousands of people and sickening scores more, originally began in Gueckedou, Guinea, late in 2013 before spreading.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the rare-but-often-fatal disease killed 2,536 people in Guinea, the vast majority of people who fell ill with it. The virus also killed 3,955 in Sierra Leone and more than 4,800 in Liberia. In isolated instances, Ebola arrived in seven other nations and killed 15 more people, including one in the United States.

Though the outbreak received widespread coverage from around the globe, 11,300 of the 11,315 Ebola deaths occurred in the three West African nations most severely impacted by the virus. Likewise, CDC data show 28,601 of the 28,637 suspected ebola cases occurred in those nations.

The WHO deemed Sierra Leone free of the disease in November, according to a statement at the time. The WHO had also declared Liberia free of the disease in September, according to the CDC, though three additional cases of the Ebola virus have surfaced in the past few weeks.

The WHO says that Ebola can linger in the bodies of some male survivors for up to one year, making monitoring important. The organization said officials would be on high alert for the next 90 days to ensure any potential new infections are rapidly discovered to prevent transmission.

California Hospital Warns 350 Newborns May Have Been Exposed to Tuberculosis

A California hospital is warning that about 350 infants might have been exposed to tuberculosis.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose issued a news release Friday saying that a female employee who worked near the newborn nursery had been diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease.

The hospital said in the news release that it is contacting mothers who visited its Mother & Infant Care Center between mid-August and mid-November of this year. The hospital will screen them and their infants for tuberculosis and give them antibiotic medicine that kills the disease.

The hospital said its employee underwent an annual tuberculosis test in September and did not show any signs of the disease — including any symptoms. But when the employee later saw her doctor for an unrelated issue, the physician discovered the employee had in fact been infected.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tuberculosis is transmitted when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. Nearby people can breathe in the bacteria. If the bacteria multiplies enough, they can develop symptoms like a bloody cough and chest pain.

The CDC said tuberculosis was once the leading cause of death in the United States, but there were fewer than 10,000 reported cases of the disease in 2013. Tuberculosis usually affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body including the brain, kidneys and spine.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center said it placed the infected employee on leave to cut down the risk of exposing its patients, visitors and staff.

“While the risk of infection is low, the consequences of a tuberculosis infection in infants can be severe,” the hospital’s pediatrics chair, Dr. Stephen Harris, said in a statement. “That’s why we decided to do widespread testing and start preventative treatments for these infants as soon as possible.”

Groups call human embryo editing ‘a line we must not cross’

Scientists, scholars and advocates are among those calling for a worldwide ban on the genetic manipulation of human embryos, warning the practice would “irrevocably alter the nature of the human species and society.”

The words appeared in an open letter on the website of the Center for Genetics and Society on Monday, a day before the International Summit on Human Gene Editing began in Washington.
The letter accompanied a report that the Center for Genetics and Society jointly released with the Friends of the Earth, in which the groups call for a ban on editing genes in human embryos.

Modern advancements have brought humans close than ever to creating “genetically modified humans,” but those who signed the open letter agree that humans should not engineer genes that will be passed on to their children, particularly with so little known about long-term effects.

“Genetic modification of children was recently the stuff of science fiction,” Pete Shanks, a consulting researcher with the Center for Genetics and Society and the report’s lead author, said in a statement. “But now, with new technology, the fantasy could become reality. Once the process begins, there will be no going back. This is a line we must not cross.”

The most pertinent technological advancement in the field is CRISPR/Cas9, a cost-effective tool that allows researchers to search for a specific DNA sequence in a cell. Once it finds what it’s looking for, the tool can be used to cut out the DNA strand and paste a different one into its spot.

While those who signed the open letter acknowledge that human gene editing could have some potentially good applications, like treating damaged tissues in a grown person, they wrote there isn’t any justification for tweaking the genes of future children. They wrote that parents who want to prevent their children from inheriting genetic diseases, one of the major arguments used in favor of gene editing, can usually do that another way — like a traditional embryo screening.

The letter also states that allowing any kind of reproductive cell editing “would open the door to an era of high-tech consumer eugenics in which affluent parents seek to choose socially preferred qualities for their children,” or so-called designer babies.

“At a time when economic inequality is surging worldwide, heritable genetic modification could inscribe new forms of inequality and discrimination onto the human genome,” the letter states.

Scientists are expected to discuss recent developments and technologies in human gene editing at this week’s summit. They’re also slated to discuss potential ethical and legal concerns, weigh the risks and benefits of research and examine regulations, according to the summit’s website.

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