Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.
Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.
Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007.
“I ask myself every day, ‘Why me?’ and ‘Why from a hamburger?’ ”Ms. Smith said. In the simplest terms, she ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance whose rules and risks are not widely known.
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.
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New York Times. Oct 3, 2009.
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2 comments:
I remember before you said about this news on the lesson, you had mentioned the obesity problem. On Tuesday night, I watched the “The Shaw Prize 2009” on TVB. One of the winner who had won the Life Science and Medicine prize, express his research about obesity problem. He said that each people can produce a kind of hormone called, “瘦素”. This hormone can help us to maintain a constant body weight, and prevent getting over. It means all of us have the potential to get a healthy weight. However, this hormone is not function well in each people because of their body cells may not detect this hormone. I think I’m one of them!
At last, the winner had shown an experiment. By injecting a certain amount of the hormone, that group of people I have mentioned above can reduce the body weight by 5%. If inject the hormone with another chemical, they can reduce the body weight by 10%. Although the result is not surprising, it still brings good news to us!
Nicola,
I think I'm similar to you. I have to spend a lot of effort in losing weight, but the effect is still not apparent. The most important point to me is to keep yourself healthy by not eating too much all the time and do exercise regularly. If you can follow so, I'm sure you can see some effect on your body later.
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