Published On: June 6th, 2011
Tainted Sprouts?: While testing isn’t yet complete, it looks like bean sprouts grown in Germany could be the source of the E. coli outbreak that has killed 22 people in Europe and sickened 1,600, many of them seriously, the WSJ reports. Agricultural officials say a bean-sprout supplier has been linked to restaurants where people ate and then fell ill, and that an employee of the bean-sprout supplier has also been infected by E. coli. With no confirmed link, though, officials are still warning Germans to avoid eating fresh cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, the previous prime suspects in the outbreak, the paper says.
Implementation Funding: The costs for states to implement the federal health-care overhaul law are significant, pushing some states to seek aid from philanthropic foundations, Kaiser Health News reports. The California HealthCare Foundation, for example, is funding two consultants to help the state apply for federal aid to set up its health-insurance exchange, which must be up and running by 2014, KHN says. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation helping 10 states pay for technical help.
Targeting Treatments: Cancer researchers are increasingly able to better tailor treatments by matching drugs to the genetics of a patient’s tumor, the WSJ reports. While there’s optimism about the prospects for this kind of personalized medicine, there are also caveats: most tailored treatments don’t offer a flat-out cure for the disease, the drug-approval system may need a revamp to bring more therapies to market, there’s a need for new diagnostics to be used to figure out who will benefit from the drugs and once available, the treatments are expensive.
Changing Sides: Michael Loucks, the health-care fraud prosecutor turned corporate defender, is urging some health-care companies accused of fraud to ask judges to unseal complaints earlier in order to better mount a defense, the NYT reports. Lawyers representing whistleblowers with whom Loucks once worked say it’s a bad idea; Loucks says more transparency puts pressure on companies to deal with their issues. We wrote earlier about Loucks’ proposal to cap whistleblower payments.
Image: iStockphoto

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A.M. Vitals: Bean Sprouts May Be Source of European E. coli Outbreak



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