"Overdose deaths in the U.S. reached record levels in 2021" PBS NewsHour 5/11/2022
Excerpt
SUMMARY: New CDC data released Wednesday indicates that deaths from drug overdoses in the U.S. reached a record-high last year. More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, the highest annual death toll ever recorded. Deaths from fentanyl, methamphetamine and cocaine rose sharply. Dr. Nora Volkow, the National Institute On Drug Abuse director, joins Geoff Bennett to discuss.
In an address to law enforcement, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions made two dubious claims about marijuana and opioids:
Sessions made his claims on March 15 during an address to law enforcement at the Justice Department. He first discussed trends in violent crime, correctly noting that while “crime rates in our country remain near historic lows,” FBI statistics show that “the violent crime rate in the U.S. increased by more than 3 percent” between 2014 and 2015.
- Sessions said marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin, an illicit opioid. Experts says heroin is three times more harmful than marijuana based on a rating scale that takes into account lethal overdoses, dependence potential, economic harm and other factors.
- He said he is “astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana.” While medical marijuana may not “solve” the epidemic, research suggests legalization may curb opioid overdoses, which have surged in recent years.
Sessions also said that it's his “fear” that the increase in violent crime is “the start of a dangerous new trend.” Later on during his speech, he added that to “turn back this rising tide of violent crime, we need to confront the heroin and opioid crisis in our nation.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 52,404 people died of drug overdoses in 2015, 63.1 percent of which involved an opioid. This includes illicit opioids, such as heroin, and prescription opioids, including oxycodone and hydrocodone.
The 2015 numbers are part of a larger trend. Opioid-related deaths have gone from around 3 per 100,000 people in 2000 to over 10 per 100,000 people in 2015, according to the CDC.
At the same time that opioid-related deaths have increased, the CDC also notes, “Sales of prescription opioids in the U.S. nearly quadrupled from 1999 to 2014, but there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain Americans report.”
So Sessions was on the mark when he said that “every three weeks, we are losing as many American lives to drug overdoses as we lost in the 9/11 attacks.” About 3,023 people die every three weeks of drug overdoses, while 2,977 died in the 9/11 attacks. But he made other claims about drugs that were questionable:
Sessions, March 15: I reject the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store. And I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana – so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that's only slightly less awful. Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs will destroy your life. In the '80s and '90s, we saw how campaigns stressing prevention brought down drug use and addiction. We can do this again.
We'll explain why Sessions' claim that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin contradicts expert opinion. We'll also lay out evidence that suggests medical marijuana may help curb the opioid epidemic, which includes heroin.
Marijuana Versus Heroin
Though Sessions' claim that marijuana is “only slightly less awful” than heroin is subjective, it runs counter to the opinion of experts.
In a study published in The Lancet in November 2010, David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, and other members of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, a group of drug experts in the U.K., ranked 20 drugs based on 16 criteria.
The criteria took into consideration both the harm the drugs do to users and to society, including lethal overdose potential, abuse and addiction potential, damage to physical and mental health, economic cost, link to crime, environmental damage, and family dysfunction. The researchers also considered the extent to which a drug is used in the U.K.
On a scale of 1 to 100, marijuana ranked eighth most harmful with a score of 20. Heroin came in second place with a rating of 55. Alcohol was the most harmful drug, according to the experts, with a harm rating of 72, while mushrooms ranked last with a score of 6. A large chunk of alcohol's overall score came from harm it did to society, although alcohol also ranked fourth in terms of the harm it does to users. Heroin, on the other hand, was the second most harmful drug to users and the third most harmful to society.
To be clear, the researchers ranked drugs for the U.K. in particular. Since no ranking of this sort has been done for the U.S., we reached out to Nutt by email to ask him if the U.K. rankings could translate to the United States. He said largely yes, but “if anything with the legalization of medical [marijuana] in the USA, cannabis would be even lower in harm than in our ratings.” He added, “Heroin would stay about the same.”
When we asked why, he told us that marijuana legalization eliminates “black market harms,” which means that there would be less harm related to crime, for example. Marijuana is currently illegal in the United Kingdom. Heroin, on the other hand, would likely have a similar rating because the U.K. is also currently experiencing a heroin epidemic, he said.
However, some researchers, including Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, have argued that ranking drugs under a single measure obscures the nuance behind how and why certain drugs are harmful.
So let's go over a few specifics.
First off, no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose, but nearly 13,000 people died of heroin overdose in the U.S. in 2015 alone. According to the National Cancer Institute, the receptors in the brain activated by marijuana aren't located in the brainstem regions that control respiration, while those activated by heroin and other opioids are. This means that “lethal overdoses” from marijuana don't occur, says the NCI.
Second, heroin is highly addictive, whereas only about 1 in 10 marijuana users become addicted, according to the CDC. Withdrawal symptoms of heroin include muscle and bone pain, sleep problems, diarrhea, vomiting, cold flashes and uncontrollable leg movements. Withdrawal symptoms of marijuana include grouchiness, sleep problems, decreased appetite and anxiety. In other words, marijuana withdrawal “symptoms appear to be mild compared with withdrawal symptoms associated with opiates,” adds the NCI.
Intravenous heroin use, which is the most common means of taking the drug, can also put people at risk for HIV, hepatitis C and other infections. Marijuana is typically smoked, but there isn't conclusive evidence to suggest that it can cause lung cancer, though there is some association with testicular cancer. However, studies have shown that smoking marijuana can impact heart rate and blood pressure, which means it may increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes, says the CDC.
Lastly, it's important to note that marijuana and heroin are both classified as Schedule 1 drugs by the Drug Enforcement Administration. This means the DEA sees them “as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.” This is also despite the fact that Chuck Rosenberg, the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency in 2015, has said that “heroin is clearly more dangerous than marijuana.”
In short, marijuana isn't harmless, but experts agree it's considerably less harmful than heroin.
Marijuana and Opioids
Currently, 28 states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana in some form, while eight states and D.C. have legalized marijuana for recreational use.
We reached out to the Justice Department to ask if Sessions meant medical or recreational marijuana when he said he is “astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana.” But we have yet to receive a response. We'll update this article, if we do.
There's no research suggesting legalizing recreational marijuana will “solve” the heroin crisis, but there is evidence backing the idea that medical marijuana may help curb the opioid epidemic more broadly.
For example, Marcus A. Bachhuber, now a doctor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and others found that states with medical marijuana laws had an almost 25 percent lower annual rate of opioid overdose deaths on average between 1999 and 2010 than states without such laws. Three states had medical marijuana laws prior to 1999 and 10 additional states implemented laws during the course of the study. The group looked at all 50 states.
Published in JAMA Internal Medicine in October 2014, the study also found that the association between medical marijuana legalization and reductions in opioid overdose deaths generally improved over time. There was a little less than a 20 percent reduction in deaths after the first year of the medical marijuana law's implementation and a more than 33 percent reduction after six years of implementation, the study found.
And when the researchers conducted additional analyses that included heroin overdose deaths, they got similar results — a 23 percent lower annual rate of deaths.
Another study published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence in February 2017 found medical marijuana legalization was associated with a 23 percent reduction in hospitalizations for opioid-related dependence or abuse and a 13 percent reduction in hospitalizations for opioid-related overdoses between 1997 and 2014, compared with states that hadn't legalized marijuana.
Conducted by Yuyan Shi, a professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, the study did conclude that it's “premature to advocate medical marijuana legalization as a strategy to curb” opioid abuse and overdose. Shi argued this last point, in part, because the causal mechanisms to explain the relationship between opioid and marijuana use have yet to be fully fleshed out.
However, a study by Ashley C. Bradford and W. David Bradford, a master's student and a professor of public policy, respectively, at the University of Georgia, provides evidence for one causal explanation — people may be swapping opioids for marijuana.
Published in Health Affairs in July 2016, the study investigated whether medical marijuana laws affected “prescribing patterns” between 2010 and 2013 in “Medicare Part D for traditional (FDA-approved) drugs that treat conditions marijuana itself might treat.” Part D is the prescription drug program for Medicare, which is available to individuals 65 and older and certain younger individuals with disabilities. State medical marijuana legislation, which the researchers reviewed, also notes specific conditions that medical marijuana might be able to treat.
Generally, the pair found that “prescription drugs for which marijuana could serve as a clinical alternative” fell significantly between 2010 and 2013 once a medical marijuana law was implemented. This was particularly the case for pain medications, including opioids, which dropped by 1,826 daily doses filled annually by doctors after medical marijuana laws were implemented.
The researchers “haven't yet analyzed how many of those doses were opioid drugs versus other painkillers, but David Bradford suspects it's a large chunk,” reported Science in November 2016. “It's suggestive evidence that medical marijuana might help divert people away from the path where they would start using [an opioid drug], and of course if they don't start, they're not on that path to misuse and abuse and potentially death,” he told Science.
It's also important to note that the study estimated that, nationally, the Medicare program and its enrollees spent over $515 million less between 2010 and 2013 “as a result of changed prescribing behaviors induced by seventeen states and the District of Columbia — the jurisdictions that had legalized medical marijuana by then.”
One limitation of the study is that it looks at primarily older individuals, which may not be representative of marijuana and opioid users as a whole. However, the researchers also told Science that they're in the process of publishing a follow-up study that looks at medical marijuana legislation's effect on prescription patterns for Medicaid recipients.
Younger individuals are eligible for Medicaid, including those who are low-income or disabled. So far, the drop in pain medication prescriptions appears to be even more significant than that for Medicare, Bradford told Science.
An additional study backs up the Bradford study.
In June 2016, Daniel J. Clauw, the director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, and others published research that looked at patterns of prescription opioid and medical marijuana use in 244 individuals with chronic pain surveyed between 2013 and 2015.
Published in The Journal of Pain, the study found that marijuana use was associated with 64 percent less opioid use in patients with chronic pain. The researchers also found marijuana use “was associated with better quality of life” in 45 percent of the individuals surveyed.
The CDC also states, “Although prescription opioids can help manage some types of pain, there is not enough evidence that opioids improve chronic pain, function, and quality of life.” The CDC adds that “long-term use of opioid pain relievers for chronic pain can be associated with abuse and overdose, particularly at higher dosages.”
And there is still more research that supports the idea that medical marijuana may help curb the opioid epidemic.
While these studies primarily looked at prescription opioids — that is, not heroin — there's a relationship between prescription opioid use and heroin use. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 79.5 percent of “recent heroin initiates” previously used prescription opioids and 31.3 percent previously abused or were addicted to prescription opioids.
For this reason, the CDC says that past “misuse of prescription opioids is the strongest risk factor for starting heroin use.” However, the CDC adds, “Increased availability, relatively low price (compared to prescription opioids), and high purity of heroin in the U.S. also have been identified as possible factors in the rising rate of heroin use.” For example, the DEA confiscated less than 500 kilograms of heroin between 2000 and 2008 on the southwest border of the U.S., compared with 2,196 kilograms in 2013.
So while marijuana may not be the silver bullet for the heroin crisis, or the opioid epidemic more broadly, there is some evidence that medical marijuana may help.
SUMMARY: With 12 confirmed cases of the Zika virus in Miami-Dade County, officials are asking residents to take part in mosquito-prevention efforts, including draining standing water and wearing insect repellent. Gwen Ifill speaks with Alina Hudak, Deputy Mayor of Miami-Dade County, for details on the identified cases, what containment measures are being utilized and the “many unknowns” about the disease. (update, 14 confirmed cases)
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): In Florida, workers went door to door today to check for mosquitoes, and to spray in neighborhoods, in the hope of clamping down on the Zika virus.
Officials say 15 people have become infected in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood, and it's believed these are the first mosquito-transmitted cases in the mainland U.S.
The CDC says the mosquitoes are proving harder to eradicate than expected.
For an on-the-ground look, I'm joined by Alina Hudak, the deputy mayor of Miami-Dade County.
Thank you for joining us.
We know now of 15 locally transmitted case of Zika infections. How many more are likely, and are you prepared to handle an increase?
ALINA HUDAK, Deputy Mayor, Miami-Dade County: Gwen, thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight to you and to your viewers.
I would like to clarify first and foremost that the confirmed cases in Miami-Dade County are 12. I want to reiterate and really just be very clear about our mosquito control program here in Miami-Dade County. We have a very strong and aggressive program that we have had in place since 1935. We have many years of a proven track record in managing and controlling disease.
We work together with our Department of Health, with the Department of Agriculture. We have had consultations with the CDC, and they are working very closely with us. So we feel very confident that this can be contained and it can be contained to a very small area.
I want the viewers to understand that we're talking about one square mile in a community that is over 2,000 square miles, and I think that's important for context and for people to understand exactly the area that we're talking about.
GWEN IFILL: Why is it confined so far to this one area, Wynwood, which contains an art district and attracts people from outside of the neighborhood? Why there?
ALINA HUDAK: You know, I certainly would be speculating relative to that.
We have a high international presence there and a lot of travel in that community. It is unknown exactly how it is that the transmission takes place, and obviously there is a lot of focus on the mosquito, but there are many unknowns about this disease. And, you know, quite frankly, we have been able to isolate at this point these particular cases, in consultation with the Department of Health.
Our crews have been there every single day, and have been on the ground since day one. The moment that a suspected case is identified, our crews are there. They do inspection. They do treatment. And we have, again, a very aggressive program.
In addition to that, we have a very aggressive outreach program to our residents, and we're communicating with our residents regularly about the part and the role that they play in being our partner with this. We want our…
(CROSSTALK)
GWEN IFILL: And pardon me. What are you asking them to do?
ALINA HUDAK: We're asking our residents to look in their backyards, to drain any standing water. We're asking our residents and our visitors to wear repellent.
I heard someone today in a meeting describe it as you leave your house in the morning in Miami and you put on sunscreen. Put on insect repellent and help us and be preventive and do your part in preventing the spread of this disease.
SUMMARY: A 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman has been found carrying a strain of E-coli that is resistant to last-resort antibiotics, which researchers say marks the first appearance of a drug-proof bacteria on U.S. soil. Scientists in Pennsylvania are working with the Centers for Disease Control to find a way to fight the superbug. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Dr. Beth Bell of the CDC for more.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): A sobering new development with superbugs and public health concerns about the limited effect of antibiotics.
For the first time in the U.S., a person has been found to be carrying a strain of E-coli (Escherichia coli) that's resistant to antibiotics of last resort. The Washington Post reported the strain was discovered last month in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman. She was resistant to Colistin. And researchers said it — quote — “heralds the emergence of a truly pan-drug-resistant bacteria.”
Dr. Beth Bell is with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And she is now working with Pennsylvania officials. She's the director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.
Thanks for joining us.
First, how — what is so distinct about these findings?
DR. BETH BELL, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Colistin is an antibiotic that we have already had for quite a long time, but we use it as a last line.
So, it's our drug of last resort. And so when patients are infected with some of these superbugs that we have talked about before, where the strain is resistant to pretty much every antibiotic, we rely on Colistin as the last resort.
And what we find here in this patient, the bacteria that infected this patient, is that her strain contains one of these mobile genes that confers resistance to Colistin. So, because bacteria can spread these mobile genes among themselves, it sets off a situation where we can see a bacteria that's resistant to every known antibiotic. And, of course, that is a very frightening prospect for all of us.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Right.
So, when I am go to the pharmacy, and I'm prescribed something like azithromycin or something, it's pretty low on the scale of the arsenal that doctors have. So, this is the top end. There is nothing after this. That means that the patient is untreatable, and that means there is a, what, greater chance that they might die because of this?
DR. BETH BELL: Sure.
There’s — we luckily haven’t seen actual bacteria that are resistant to every single antibiotic here in the United States. But there are reports of this in other parts of the world, and these patients have a very high mortality rate. It’s extremely difficult to treat them. And, again, this raises the specter of a post-antibiotic era.
SUMMARY: The CDC does not list “medical error” as a cause of death in its annual mortality statistics. But according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the nation. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Dr. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins, the report’s author, about why medical errors are usually ignored and how patients and doctors can try to avoid them.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For the better part of two decades, there’s been a growing recognition that medical errors kill too many patients in the U.S.
While exact numbers are elusive, a new analysis and estimate portrays an even grimmer picture. The new paper finds that as many as 250,000 people die each year from errors in hospitals and other health care facilities. That would make it the third leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of respiratory disease, accidents and even stroke.
Dr. Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, joins me now.
So, how did we get to this number? What did your research find?
DR. MARTIN MAKARY, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine: Well, we took the best available studies, the data from the medical literature, and we basically came up with a meta-analysis point estimate, and then asked, where would that fall if medical error were counted as a disease?
It turns out that we learned that the CDC doesn’t consider medical error to be a cause of death in listing our national health statistics each year, even though the point estimate comes right in between number two and number three on the list, which means medical error is the number three cause of death in the United States. We’re just not measuring it.
HARI SREENIVASAN: OK. So, let’s talk a little bit about the methodology.
If the numbers are scarce, are these studies representative enough sample sets to be able to extrapolate this quarter-million?
DR. MARTIN MAKARY: These are studies of hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations in the top medical journals. And they are updating the 1999 Institute of Medicine report.
And there’s broad consensus that the range is somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000. Our analysis came up with 251,000. No matter what number you pick, it is well above the currently listed number three cause of death. And it turns out that the reason it’s not being counted is that the system relies on billing codes to compile our national health statistics.
But people don’t always die of a billing code. They can die from diagnostic errors, fragmented care, preventable complications. These are not things that are captured in national health statistics. That list of most common causes of death in the United States, that list is a big deal.
It informs all of our research funding priorities as a country, all of our public health campaigns. We spend a lot of time and money on heart disease and cancer, but we haven’t even really recognized that the third leading burden on health in America in terms of death is medical error in its many forms.
SUMMARY: New York is facing the largest outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in its history; eight people have died from the respiratory illness since early July, and nearly 100 cases have been reported. Hari Sreenivasan learns more from Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The disease is often characterized as a severe form of pneumonia. And it appears that water cooling towers have been a breeding ground for the bacteria that causes it. Legionnaires is rarely the focus of much public attention, but there were more 4,500 cases in the U.S. in 2013.
Let’s get some further information about the disease itself, the outbreak and the risks to people.
Dr. Anne Schuchat is the director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. She joins me now from Atlanta.
So tell me, first of all, what does this do to the body?
DR. ANNE SCHUCHAT, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Legionnaire’s disease is a form of pneumonia. It can cause fever, cough, difficulty breathing and other complications.
It’s one of the more severe pneumonias. And we think between 5 percent and 30 percent of people who develop Legionnaires’ disease can have fatal infections.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And how widespread is it? That 4,500 number is probably not something people are familiar with.
DR. ANNE SCHUCHAT: Well, actually, we think there is under-reporting.
So, based on some studies that we have done, we think there are probably between 8,000 and 18,000 cases of Legionnaires’ disease each year in the United States. Many of them don’t get diagnosed specifically. They’re just treated as pneumonia, and even those that do get diagnosed may or may not get reported to the public health authorities.
SUMMARY: Live anthrax was shipped to 51 labs across the country and to three foreign nations. That's a larger number than previously disclosed by the Pentagon, and there could be more. Judy Woodruff talks to Nancy Youssef of The Daily Beast.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): The Pentagon today gave new information about that scare over live anthrax samples. Officials said 51 labs in 17 states, plus Washington, D.C., and three foreign countries received the suspected live spores. That’s a larger number than what was previously disclosed.
At a news conference today, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work sought to reassure the public.
ROBERT WORK, Deputy Secretary of Defense: We continue to work with the CDC to ensure that all possible safeguards are taken to prevent exposure at the labs in question and that any worker that might have had risk of exposure, even to these low-concentrated samples, they are closely monitored.
We know of no risk to the general public from these samples. To provide context, the concentration of these samples are too low to infect the average healthy individual. Everyone in the Department of Defense takes this issue very seriously, because it is a matter of public health and also the health of all of the members of our department.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Joining me now to tell us more about what happened and the response is Nancy Youssef. She’s the senior national security correspondent for The Daily Beast.
Nancy, welcome back to the program.
So, many more samples of anthrax were sent out to these labs than was known before. Why is this coming out in bits and pieces like this?
NANCY YOUSSEF, The Daily Beast: Well, part of it is that it takes several days to determine which samples were sent out that were positive and which were negative.
This is out of 400 lots, and from each lot comes several scores of samples that are sent to various labs, and so they’re going through lot by lot and doing testing. The number that we’re giving is only out of four lots, 1 percent. And in 100 percent of the cases that have tested so far, it has come back positive for anthrax.
And so it portends of a lot more laboratories and states coming up as recipients of live anthrax.
SUMMARY: This year’s flu season is shaping up to be one of the worst in recent years. Judy Woodruff talks to Dr. Tom Friedan of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about this year’s influenza strain and the benefits and limitations of using antiviral drugs for patients sick with flu. The CDC director also gives an update on the Ebola outbreak response in West Africa.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): No doubt about it, we’re in the middle of flu season, and this one is shaping up to be a particularly tough slog, possibly the worst since 2008.
The Centers for Disease Control report that flu activity is widespread in 46 states. In fact, the only places where flu activity was limited to local pockets were Arizona, California, Alaska, Hawaii, and here in Washington, D.C.
CDC Director Dr. Thomas Friedan is here to discuss that, as well as what he thinks people should do, and why some in the field are questioning some of those recommendations.
Former Secret Service Director Julia Pierson was compelled to resign last month after a series of mishaps at the agency -- including an incident at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in which President Obama found himself on an elevator for a security guard armed with a gun.
Pierson, however, wasn't the only one who lost her job after the incident at the CDC's Atlanta headquarters on Sept. 16. Kenneth Tate, the private security guard who rode in the elevator with Mr. Obama, was fired about a week after the president's visit, the New York Times reports.
"This was unjust and has been a nightmare," Tate told the Times, explaining his side of the story.
For one thing, Tate said he was assigned to accompany Mr. Obama as the President visited the CDC. Additionally, while reports initially indicated that Tate was a convicted felon, his employer -- the private security firm Professional Security Corporation -- confirmed to the Times that Tate had no felony or misdemeanor convictions. Tate had been arrested on robbery and assault charges but never convicted.
The security guard said he was never given an official explanation for his termination, though it seemed like the Secret Service was angry over a picture he tried to take of Mr. Obama's armored limousine, called "the beast."
After he snapped the picture, the Secret Service pulled Tate aside for questioning, he said. He deleted the picture as requested. After the interview, the CDC took away his badge, and he was fired about a week later.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to a series of alarming safety lapses at the federal Centers for Disease Control. No one’s been hurt, but they have raised serious questions. And, today, the head of the CDC traveled to Capitol Hill to address them.
Hari Sreenivasan has the story.
REP. TIM MURPHY, R, Penn.: What we have here is a pattern of reoccurring issues of complacency and a lax culture of safety. This is not sound science, and this will not be tolerated.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): Revelations of safety and security problems put Dr. Thomas Frieden under the microscope at a House hearing. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was called to account after more than 80 CDC lab workers were exposed to live strains of anthrax last month in Atlanta.
The agency has also acknowledged that it mistakenly shipped the avian flu virus to outside labs. Separately, several 60-year-old vials of smallpox, some with still viable strains, were found at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
No one was sickened in the incidents, but Frieden conceded:
DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The fact that it appears that no one was harmed and that there were no releases does not excuse what happened. What happened was completely unacceptable. It should never have happened.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The study ranks excessive alcohol consumption as the fourth leading cause of preventable deaths in the U.S., accounting for one in 10 deaths among working-age Americans each year. Its effects also cost the U.S. economy roughly $224 billion every year.
And it is not just the alcoholic drinker who is at risk. Partying, bingeing and daily drinking all take a toll.
For a closer look, we turn to Dr. Robert Brewer. He’s head of the Alcohol Program at the CDC and co-author of the report. He joins us from Chicago.
So, first of all, we have known that excessive drinking has different costs on society. It’s often a tragedy for the family or the loved ones of the diseased, but what surprised you about these numbers in this study?
DR. ROBERT BREWER, Alcohol Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Well, Hari, you’re right.
We have known that excessive alcohol use is a huge public health problem for a long time. What surprised us in this study was the extent to which that public health impact was focused on working age adults. And as you noted in your opener, we estimate that about one in 10 deaths among working-age adults, ages 20-64 years, are attributable to excessive alcohol use.
That’s a huge number and certainly indicates to us that we need to redouble our efforts to prevent it.
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): Infection by a virus that causes cervical cancer has dropped more than 50 percent in teenage girls since a vaccine against the virus was introduced in 2006. That's the finding in a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testing the effectiveness of the new vaccine against human papilloma virus, or HPV.
It found the infection rate in girls between the ages of 14 and 19 dropped by 56 percent, even though only one-third of teenage girls in the U.S. have been vaccinated with the full three-dose course. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted virus. An estimated 75 percent to 80 percent of men and women are infected during their lifetime, but most do not develop cancer.
For more, we turn to Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC. She's the director of its Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): There may be hope yet for bringing the national epidemic of obesity under control. At least the latest numbers on calories and fast food released today indicated possible progress.
For years, health officials have warned about Americans' growing girth. Now research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests the fight against fat may be having an effect. Among the findings, American children consumed fewer calories in 2010 than a decade before, seven percent less for boys, four percent less for girls. And for adults, fast food accounted for just over 11 percent of the calories consumed in 2010, down from nearly 13 percent in 2006.
The researchers acknowledge the changes are small and can't be fully explained. But public campaigns against obesity have intensified in recent years. Last September, for instance, New York City's Board of Health limited sugared drinks and sodas to 16 ounces or less. Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the prohibition that takes effect Mar. 12th.
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, I- New York City: This is the single biggest step any city I think has ever taken to curb obesity, but certainly not the last step that lots of cities are going to take. And we believe that it will help save lives.
RAY SUAREZ: And, today, continuing her long-running Let's Move campaign, first lady Michelle Obama , along with Big Bird of "Sesame Street," issued new public service announcements encouraging kids to get active and eat healthy.
Health officials are investigating a mysterious and scattered outbreak of the E. coli bacteria linked to 14 illnesses and one death.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said no form of contaminated food or other cause has been identified in the illnesses, which occurred in April and May. They are spread among six states.
Three people were hospitalized. One — a child in the New Orleans area — died last week.
The outbreak strain is E. coli 0145, a dangerous but not well-known type of bacteria. The strain was fingered in a 2010 outbreak that sickened more than two dozen people in at least five states.
Death rates among people with diabetes have declined substantially in recent years, according to a survey conducted by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
Since 1997 the C.D.C. has done five surveys of people with and without diabetes, each sampling about 107,000 adults. Compared with the 1997-98 figures, 2006 death rates from cardiovascular disease had declined 40 percent and all-cause mortality had declined 23 percent among people with diabetes, even after the researchers controlled for age and other health factors. Death rates also declined among those who did not have diabetes, but the decline was not as steep.
The study, in the June issue of Diabetes Care, attributes the progress to advances in medical care and self-management.
But every silver lining has a cloud.
“The good thing is that people with diabetes are living longer,” said one of the authors, Sharon Saydah, a senior research scientist with the C.D.C. “But people with diabetes are at risk for a number of complications — cardiovascular disease, lower leg amputations, kidney disease, eye problems, dementia and other kinds of disability. Preventing all of these complications means that we will have greater health care expenses for people living with diabetes.”
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): The government has launched an investigation into the deadliest outbreak of foodborne disease in more than a decade.
The Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration say at least 13 people have died so far from listeria found in contaminated cantaloupes. Three other deaths are reportedly under investigation, and 72 people have been sickened.
Scientists have determined the tainted fruit originated at Jensen Farms in eastern Colorado. The melons were shipped to at least 25 states and some foreign countries.
And the number of reported infections is expected to rise.
----
DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: This is first time we have ever documented this particular bacteria, listeria, in cantaloupe.
And the Food and Drug Administration is currently doing an investigation at the farm to figure out why, so we can prevent future cases of contamination. But the skin, the flesh of the cantaloupe is actually a good place for bacteria to grow. Listeria is quite unusual as a bacteria for a couple of reasons.
One is that, once you eat it, it may be one to three weeks or even one or two months before you become ill. And that's the main reason we expect to see, unfortunately, case numbers rising in the coming weeks. And the second is that it's one of those rare bacteria that can actually grow even when it's refrigerated.
So as you put it in your refrigerator, most food, even if it's contaminated, you will knock down that contamination. But with listeria, the bacteria can continue to grow in your refrigerator, and that's why we tell people to throw out anything from Jensen Farms, any cantaloupe from Jensen Farms.
