Health stories in the news

U.S. stimulus funds boost local medical research

Washington state scientists are slated to receive more than $300 million for research projects as part of the federal economic stimulus package, Sandi Doughton reported in the Seattle Times over the weekend.

The funds have been flooding into the state, she writes.

On Monday, a consortium of Seattle scientists will announce $16 million in federal stimulus grants to figure out whether popular cancer treatments and screening tests really save lives.

On Thursday, the University of Washington received a $25 million stimulus grant to launch the nation’s first genomics center in a decade, dedicated to the search for genes linked to heart, blood and lung diseases.

Most of the money comes from a $10 billion fund allocated by Congress to the National Institutes of Health to create jobs in science and advance research into human health.

To learn more:

• Read Sandi Doughton’s article Stimulus-funded research up to $300 million in state

It’s back to basics in Seattle Public Schools PE programs

Seattle Times staff report Marnette Federis writes today about move by Seattle Public Schools to adopt more a structured fitness program in their physical education classes.

Federis writes:

This year, Seattle Public Schools has moved forward with a standardized PE curriculum it tested in 10 schools last year that aims to give kids a deeper understanding of health. The curriculum uses technology to track students’ fitness over the years and includes more academics.

“PE is not recess or mindless play anymore,” said Millsap, who has taught the subject for nine years.

Proponents of the curriculum say that it’s a step toward addressing the nation’s growing problem of childhood obesity and that Seattle could serve as a model for how large urban districts can provide quality standardized physical education at all schools.

To learn more:

• Read Federis’ article: Fitness a priority with Seattle schools’ standardized PE
• Visit the Treeswing, the Seattle non-profit that is helping the schools adopt the new curriculum.

E.coli in ground beef still sickens tens of thousands

Fifteen years after the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, people continue to fall ill from eating tainted beef, New York Times reporter Michael Moss writes in major article that appeared in the paper’s Sunday issue.

Moss writes:

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

An investigation by the New York Times found that “Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe,” Moss writes.

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

To learn more:

• Read Moss’s article: E. coli path shows flaws in beef inspection, which is accompanied with multimedia and video content on the New York Times Web site.

Tags: E. coli, Fitness, Seattle Science

Category: News