More than 30 incoming medical school students will get a full ride to UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine thanks to a $100-million gift from the school's benefactor.
The donation by Geffen, a philanthropist and entertainment executive, will create a scholarship fund to cover the recipients' entire cost of medical school, including tuition, room and board, books and other expenses.
"It is a fantastic vote of confidence for higher education," said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "We're eternally grateful."
The gift, which will be announced Thursday, makes Geffen the largest individual donor to UCLA and to any single UC campus. In 2002, Geffen donated $200 million in unrestricted funds to the medical school. At the time, the campus was renamed in his honor.
Geffen, 69, declined to comment but said in a statement that students shouldn't be discouraged by the expense of medical school.
"The cost of a world-class medical education should not deter our future innovators, doctors and scientists from the path they hope to pursue," he said. "We need the students at this world-class institution to be driven by determination and the desire to do their best work and not by the fear of crushing debt. I hope in doing this that others will be inspired to do the same."
More than 85% of medical school students nationwide graduate with some debt. Among those, the average is $170,000, according to the Assn. of American Medical Colleges. That debt often influences graduates' career choices and has contributed to a shortage of primary care doctors, who often earn less than specialists. That shortage will be exacerbated by the aging of the population and the federal expansion of health coverage to the uninsured.
The UCLA scholarships are "unprecedented," said John Prescott, chief academic officer for the association. "My mouth dropped open when I saw this," he said. "It is going to create quite a legacy for the school."
The medical school's dean, A. Eugene Washington, said that he was thrilled by the donation and that it will free scholarship recipients from the tremendous burden of debt. The four-year tab for medical school students entering next fall could exceed $300,000 in tuition, housing, fees and other costs.
The scholarship will allow the school to free up some of the money it uses for financial aid and will enable students to follow their passions and become leading physicians and researchers without worrying about paying off loans, he said. "It is going to be for a group of the top students who will be freed up to pursue whatever their interests are," he said.
The David Geffen Medical Scholarship Fund will provide scholarships for up to 33 students beginning medical school in 2013. Up to three of the scholarships are available for students pursuing a joint doctorate and medical school degree. The students will be chosen based on merit, not financial need.
Block said the scholarships will help recruit more of the nation's top medical school applicants. Already, more than 7,500 applicants compete for 163 first-year slots at the school.
Emily Dubina, 25, a third-year medical school student at UCLA, received a partial scholarship from Geffen's original contribution. The new scholarships, she said, are an amazing opportunity that will take away a lot of the stress of day-to-day life. The recipients will be able to focus on becoming great physicians rather than on how much money they are spending on their education.
"I so wish they had that when I started," she said. "Life would have been much better."
Geffen began his career as a mail room worker at the William Morris Agency in Manhattan and later earned a fortune in the record and movie industries. He formed DreamWorks SKG in 1994 with Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. He has also become a well-known benefactor, giving to such organizations as the Motion Picture and Television Fund and to the Geffen Playhouse.
Ravi Shankar, who died on Tuesday at age 92, spent much of his adult life outside India, earning generations of fans in the United States and Europe, where he inspired musicians, sparked movements and won adulation.
On India Ink, our sister blog, Heather Timmons has culled the pages of The New York Times, which followed his career for more than 50 years.
“For nearly three decades, ever since his first tour of the United States and Europe in the 1956-57 season, Ravi Shankar has served as India’s unofficial ambassador for music,” Donal Henahan wrote. And that was in September 1985.
Read more of Heather’s post from the archives here, and read Allan Kozinn’s obituary of Ravi Shankar here.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – After weeks of anticipation, Pope Benedict sent his first tweet on Wednesday.
“Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.”
The tweet was sent when the 85-year-old pope tapped on a touch screen at the end of his weekly general audience in the Vatican before thousands of people.
(Reporting By Philip Pullella, editing by Paul Casciato)
The wedding's back on – though it may be a good idea to save that gift receipt.
Hugh Hefner, 86, officially confirms that he is once again engaged to Crystal Harris, 26, telling his Twitter followers, "I've given Crystal Harris a ring. I love the girl."
And to prove it, Harris posted photos of the big diamond sparkler, calling it "my beautiful ring."
Neither announced a wedding date, though sources tell PEOPLE they're planning to tie the knot at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve.
Whether that still happens remains to be seen.
This is the plan they had in 2011 – a wedding at the mansion – except that Harris called it off just days before the nuptials were scheduled to happen in front of 300 invited guests.
Hugh Hefner and Crystal Harris
David Livingston / Getty
The onetime Playmate of the Month then ripped Hef's bedroom skills, calling him a two-second man, to which Hefner replied, "I missed a bullet" by not marrying her.
A year later, Hefner's "runaway bunny" bounded back to him.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.
No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.
That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.
"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.
Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.
His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."
Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.
Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.
Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.
"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.
Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.
Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.
Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.
The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.
"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.
Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.
Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.
Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.
Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.
Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.
"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.
Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.
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Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber
NEW YORK — Brandon Woodard checked out of his midtown Manhattan hotel room Monday afternoon and emerged onto 58th Street a block from Columbus Circle.
As the 31-year-old Playa Vista man walked down the street, a man standing near a Lincoln sedan pulled a hood over his head as Woodard passed. A short time later, the two passed each other a second time. The man turned, pulled out a gun and shot Woodard at close range in the back of the head with a 9-millimeter pistol. He got back into the Lincoln, which pulled away.
The shooting has riveted New York and made for tabloid headlines. New York police have described the killing as an assassination-style attack.
But it has also reverberated in Los Angeles, where Woodard was raised and made his home.
Woodard grew up in Ladera Heights, played basketball at the exclusive Campbell Hall private high school in Studio City and graduated from Loyola Marymount University in 2003. His stepfather, Rod Wellington, said in an interview Tuesday that Woodard was pursuing a law degree at the University of West Los Angeles School of Law (school officials would not confirm if he was enrolled).
His stepfather described Woodard as a "loving son, a loving father and a loving brother." Woodard had a 4-year-old daughter and had a "great relationship" with the girl and her mother, he said.
"He was a good young man," Wellington said.
But court records revealed a more complex picture. Woodard has been arrested at least 20 times, according to New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
In 2004, Woodard was cited by Las Vegas police and summoned to court after a backstage scuffle with a security guard at an Usher concert at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Police said Woodard had entered a restricted area and refused orders to leave.
He failed to appear in court in connection with the citation and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was arrested in 2008 on that bench warrant but police could not immediately say how the matter was resolved.
Los Angeles authorities allege that in February 2008 he stole items from a Whole Foods Market and a Gelson's. He was sentenced to nine days in county jail and 200 hours of community service.
In December 2009, he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor hit-and-run driving charge in Torrance. He received three years and a day in county jail.
Prosecutors said that he came back to court in 2010 and 2011 for probation violation hearings related to arrests for grand theft and battery against a former spouse as well as a spousal battery arrest in January. In April, prosecutors said his probation was completed.
The Los Angeles city attorney's office said there was a hearing related to the September 2010 spousal abuse allegation and noted that a bench warrant had been issued for Woodard's arrest as recently as July 3. It was not immediately clear how the warrant was resolved.
Officials with the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Woodard was due in Beverly Hills Superior Court on Jan. 22 for a hearing in connection with a single charge of cocaine possession. He was originally charged in June.
Court records also indicated that Woodard's mother had been involved in multiple civil lawsuits related to her real estate business dealings. When Woodard was arrested in January, he listed his occupation as real estate.
Neither police nor family members said they have any idea for a motive.
On Tuesday, Kelly said detectives had made progress in their investigation from ballistics evidence and video surveillance footage that captured the shooting and the suspected getaway vehicle.
He added that investigators were pursuing all leads, including Woodard's criminal history and his family's real estate dealings.
Kelly said Woodard, who carried three cellphones, was believed to be a promoter of some kind, but did not elaborate.
It was not clear what brought Woodard to New York after he purchased a one-way ticket from California, Kelly said, or where he was going when he left the hotel. Woodard checked into the hotel Sunday and checked out about 1:15 p.m. the next day.
Kelly said it was clear the gunman lay in wait for Woodard and didn't act alone.
The suspect had a driver who, after the hit, pulled a silver or gray Lincoln onto 58th Street, Kelly said. Once the gunman was in the car, the vehicle headed south on 7th Avenue and disappeared. A short time later, a car "similar in description" was seen heading through the midtown tunnel eastbound into Queens, where the driver paid the toll with cash.
Investigators had the license plate of the vehicle, but Kelly declined to release the information, citing the ongoing investigation.
Kelly also said ballistics analysis linked the weapon to a 2009 shooting in Queens. The gun was fired at a residence, he said — no one was hurt and no arrests were made.
Kelly said Monday's crime was particularly surprising, given such a public setting.
"You can characterize it as either being brazen or foolhardy," he said.
Times staff writers Adolfo Flores, Jeff Gottlieb and Frank Shyong contributed to this report. Susman reported from New York, Mather and Blankstein from Los Angeles.
But visitors to this city, the capital of Mongolia, seldom find a blue sky today. It is smoggy, and soot rains down from the hills, as the poorest residents burn cheap brown coal to stay alive through the winter.
The investment prospects of Mongolia, a darling of the emerging markets, are similarly shifting.
In May, the Parliament passed a law that restricted foreign investment in the country’s most attractive asset, its mineral deposits. The government is also taking aim at a crucial deal with the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, a pact that many see as the foundation of the country’s recent economic growth.
Now, the underlying fundamentals of the country look increasingly shaky. Mongolia faces a financing crunch, as investment dollars flowing from abroad have fallen. And revenue from coal, the country’s main export, has dropped along with Chinese demand.
“There are a series of elements that have built up less-than-welcoming attitudes to Mongolia at a time when the macroeconomic situation is deteriorating,” said John P. Finigan, the chief executive of Golomt Bank, the country’s second-biggest bank.
Mongolia’s star rose — and is now falling — with the fortunes of one company: Rio Tinto, the country’s largest investor.
In October 2009, Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian exploration company, negotiated a deal with the Mongolian government about developing Oyu Tolgoi, the crown jewel of the country’s mining sector and the world’s biggest new source of copper. The copper and gold mine would cost more than $10 billion to build, and the potential investors wanted assurances. Under the so-called Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement, taxes and royalty payments to the government would be fixed for 30 years. At the time, it was considered “the initiation of a new stage in Mongolia’s history,” said Oliver Belfitt-Nash, an analyst at Monet Capital, a Mongolian investment bank.
The agreement set off a boom.
Rio Tinto spent billions of dollars to buy out Ivanhoe’s stake in the project and build the Oyu Tolgoi mine. Investors followed, encouraged by the cooperation between a multinational corporation and a coalition government. Some investors financed smaller mines. Others imported mining equipment or Hummers to sell to newly minted millionaires. Skyscrapers rose in central Ulan Bator.
The impact of this spending was significant in this country of only three million people. Last year — when capital expenditures on the Oyu Tolgoi mine peaked — Mongolia’s gross domestic product increased by 17.5 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. It was the fastest-growing economy in the world.
But optimism has fizzled since May. That month, Mongolia passed the Strategic Foreign Investment Law, which states that Parliament must approve foreign takeovers of assets in strategic sectors like mining and banking.
In Ulan Bator, the law was widely seen as a torpedo aimed at one deal, Chalco’s takeover of SouthGobi Resources, a coal mining company. Chalco, China’s largest state-owned mining company, agreed in April to buy a controlling stake in SouthGobi Resources, a Rio Tinto subsidiary, for $926 million. In September, Chalco walked away, citing regulatory uncertainty.
Both foreign investors and local businessmen have complained about the law’s lack of clarity. The rules set up the potential for severe regulatory delays, as politicians from all parties intervene in the deal-making. The government has not yet specified how the law would work in practice, but it has already affected transactions beyond the SouthGobi acquisition.
“We haven’t made any new investments,” said an executive at an financial company with extensive holdings in Mongolia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. It “is a horrible law. It is very menacing and unclear. At a time when investors are scared of allocating capital anyway, it’s definitely had a negative impact.”
In the months after the law’s passage, foreign direct investment plunged. In September, investment flows from abroad dropped 44 percent compared with the same month in 2011, according to data from the central bank.
The commodity markets are partly to blame for the financing crunch. Prices for coal and copper, the country’s main exports, are lower this year.
But government policies have only worsened the problem. Ovoot Tolgoi, a large coal mine owned by SouthGobi Resources, has suspended its operations for the last six months after the failed deal with Chalco.
Tavan Tolgoi, the state-owned coal mining company, did not export coal for three months this summer. In the run-up to elections in June, the government raided the company’s treasury to pay for cash handouts to the populace.
The ruling party eventually lost the elections. And the policy left Tavan Tolgoi so starved for money that it could not afford to transport its coal to Chinese markets, according to a company official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political nature of the matter.
The combination — the weakness in the mining industry coupled with the government actions — has hurt the country’s finances. The International Monetary Fund expects that Mongolia will face a fiscal deficit of 900 billion tugrik, or $643 million, in 2012, and several policy makers in Ulan Bator expect it to widen next year.
The situation has left the government scrambling to make up the gap, putting the Rio Tinto deal directly in the cross hairs.
Last month, the Parliament approved a budget for 2013 that tries to renegotiate the Oyu Tolgoi Investment Agreement with Rio Tinto. The budget calls for 446 billion tugrik, or $319 million, of extra income from the Oyu Tolgoi mining project next year. This revenue would come from new royalty payments that are up to four times as high as in the original deal. The budget legislation refers to “when the amendment is made,” as if it were already a done deal.
“We believe the recent surge in government support to renegotiate” the deal with Rio Tinto “is to meet the proposed budget deficit,” Dale Choi, an analyst at Origo Partners, a private equity investor in Mongolia, said in a note last month. But revising the deal “would undoubtedly adversely impact both near- and longer-term economic growth and Mongolia’s sovereign risk profile in the global financial markets.”
The changes in the budget could threaten Rio Tinto’s returns. Significantly higher payments to the government could make the project uneconomical, prompting the company to freeze new investment and start international arbitration.
So far, Rio Tinto and its partners have spent more than $6 billion building Oyu Tolgoi, a vast complex that gleams with state-of-the-art equipment in the Gobi Desert. But the investors have not seen a dollar in profit because the mine will not start producing copper until next year. A spokesman for Rio Tinto declined to comment.
The two sides are in a standoff. The mining minister said at a news conference in October, “We have a strong need to renegotiate the investment agreement. If Oyu Tolgoi keep refusing, we will work until they understand and accept the changes.” But the company is unwilling to accept the tax and royalty amendments proposed in the budget, said a person with knowledge of the situation. Low-level discussions between the company and the government are under way, according to people on both sides, who declined to be identified.
Now, Mongolia faces a tough choice.
The country needs the money to plug the hole in the budget. The Rio Tinto deal has also become politically toxic, and the government needs to please many members of its coalition who campaigned and won seats by opposing the agreement.
But foreign investment — the lifeblood of the economy — could dry up if Rio Tinto pulls back.
Even as pessimism about the economy and investment policy deepens in Mongolia, outside investors continue to buy into the country’s “blue sky” future. Last week, Mongolia sold $1.5 billion of sovereign bonds amid strong demand.
In New York, Singapore and Hong Kong, a Mongolia delegation showed a PowerPoint presentation that featured photographs of the wide-open steppe. The first slide reads: “Mongolia: The Country with Unmatched Growth Potential.”
But within Mongolia, some are wondering whether such claims match the reality.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 11, 2012
A previous version of the article said that Chalco walked away from buying a controlling stake in SouthGobi Resources in May. The company walked away in September.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A recently announced hacking of the U.N. nuclear agency’s computer servers was not the first time an attempt had been made to break into the organization’s computer system, the head of the agency said on Thursday.
Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that a few months ago a group broke into the agency’s computer system and stole personal information of scientists working on peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
In response to questions at a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington, Amano repeated what he said last week after the hacking was revealed: no sensitive information about the IAEA‘s nuclear inspections had been stolen.
The IAEA has shut down the server that had been hacked and is continuing an investigation, Amano said. But he also said it wasn’t the first attempt to break into the system.
“If you ask if this is the only case? I would say there have been some other tries but we are doing our best to protect our system,” Amano said.
The hackers – a group using an Iranian-sounding name – have posted scores of email addresses of experts who have been working with the U.N. agency on a website, and have urged the IAEA to investigate Israel’s nuclear activity.
Israel, which has an undeclared nuclear arsenal, and the United States accuse Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapons capability. Tehran denies such ambitions.
Amano would not say if he believed Iran was behind the attacks on the IAEA, whose missions include preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and which is investigating Iran’s disputed nuclear activities.
“The group … they have what looks like an Iranian name. But that does not mean that the origin is Iran,” he said.
There has been an increase in suspected Iranian cyber attacks this year, coinciding with a deepening standoff with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.
(Reporting by Deborah Charles. Editing by Warren Strobel and Doina Chiacu)
Nashville star Hayden Panettiere has broken up with her boyfriend of more than a year, New York Jets wide receiver Scotty McKnight, a source confirms to PEOPLE.
But the split doesn't appear to be the stuff of a sad country song. The actress, 23, is still friends with McKnight, 24, and one source tells TMZ that their pals wouldn't be surprised if they got back together.
This is Panettiere's second go at a relationship with an athlete. Before dating McKnight she was with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko for about two years. – Julie Jordan
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.
Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.
The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.
"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.
"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.
That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.
It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.
Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.
Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.
There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.
But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.
What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.
This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.
PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.
Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.
The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.
To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.
But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.
A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.
Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.
"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.
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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick
