Infants sickened following exposure to dog food have raised flags with the Food and Drug Administration.
The agencyannounced a recall of pet food, citing concern that products from one manufacturer have been contaminated with salmonella.
As of Nov. 1, seven people — six of whom were under the age of 1 — across seven states have been infected with salmonella, including one hospitalization but no deaths as of yet.
According to the FDA, five of the cases picked up the pathogen through contact with a dog, and three had fed their animals Victor brand pet food. A retail sample of the brand’s Hi-Pro Plus kibble revealed the same strain of salmonella for which the seven patients tested positive.
“People in this outbreak got sick from touching recalled dog food, touching things like dog bowls that contained the dog food, or touching the poop or saliva of dogs that were fed the dog food,” a statement on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website reads.
Mid America Pet Food voluntarily recalled the brands it manufactures — Victor, Eagle Mountain, Wayne Feeds and certain types of Member’s Mark — with best-buy dates for Oct. 31, 2024, and the FDA is urging consumers to throw away their contaminated packages of dog food in a secure container.
“Do not feed it to your pets or other animals. Do not donate the food,” the recall announcement instructed.
“Clean and disinfect all pet supplies and surfaces that the food or pet had contact with.”
Bernie Marcus, the billionaire co-founder of the Home Depot chain of home improvement stores, has endorsedDonald Trumpfor president, writing that the GOP front-runner is the best person to restore American prosperity and to dismantle an "administrative state" that he claims is strangling the country.
In a scathing assessment of America, Marcus, 94, gave his backing to the former president via an op-ed on Real Clear Politics, writing that he believes the nation is on a perilous trajectory after three years under President Biden’s leadership.
He wrote that American cities are crime-ridden, citizens are struggling to pay for necessities, the border is wide-open and freedoms are being curtailed as "the government gets bigger and weaponized against its political opponents."
The only people benefiting from America’s decline are the elite, Marcus wrote, and the only candidate who can restore the nation to its former grandeur is Trump. He called for the Republican National Committee to scrap the debates and row in behind Trump, arguing the debates only benefit ad makers and political consultants.
"Many of our once-great cities have devolved into lawlessness with random violent attacks on innocent people, rampant looting, and large-scale homeless encampments," Marcus wrote.
"Moreover, our southern border is unprotected, and millions of people we know nothing about pour into our nation to receive care and benefits that we cannot afford to provide to our struggling military veterans. Worse, many of the border crossers may be gang members who commit violent crimes here."
"Schoolchildren across America cannot read, write, or do basic math, while our educational leaders tell us that they know better than parents how to raise our children," he continued.
"Working men and women are struggling to provide for their families and must raid their retirement funds just to feed, clothe, and take care of their children. These are just a few of the problems America is facing after three years of bad government policies. They cannot be our legacy."
Marcus wrote that at age 94, he would rather be sitting on the sidelines and enjoying his retirement, but he was compelled to pen the op-ed since "the stakes are just too high."
Marcus pinned much of the nation’s woes on the Biden administration and called on Democrats, Republicans and independents to come together and elect Trump.
"This should not be a partisan issue. This should be an issue for all Americans," he wrote.
Marcus bemoaned how the American Dream appears to be out of reach for many everyday Americans today, and recounted how the nation’s free market capitalist system paved the way for him to make his fortune. Marcus established The Home Depot with his business partners at age 48, having lost his job.
"We could only have done this in America because of America’s system of free enterprise and pro-jobs growth government policies," he wrote.
"The state of America today, especially record inflation, government over-regulation, and the problems of the last three years, would prevent my partners and I from succeeding as we have."
Marcus wrote that despite Trump’s brash leadership style, he stewarded the country effectively during his first term, and is the best person who can face current and future challenges like war in the Middle East and Ukraine.
"This will require a president with the judgment, strength, decisiveness, and courage that Donald Trump displayed in his first term when he ordered the strike that killed the Iranian terrorist Gen. Qasem Soleimani and dissuaded Russia from invading Ukraine," he wrote.
"I urge my fellow Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to put their love for America above all else," Marcus added.
Bayer has restructured and expanded its ongoing partnership with Recursion Pharmaceuticals on artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery, switching to a focus on cancer via a revised deal that could be worth up to $1.5 billion.
The two companies will now work on up to seven precision oncology projects, making use of Recursion’s drug discovery platform that draws on a dataset of five trillion biological and chemical relationships and combines wet-lab biology and chemistry with machine learning tools in a form of “digitised” drug discovery.
The dataset covers 50 different human cell types, as well as a library of approximately 1.7 million small molecules, and is supported by BioHive-1, a supercomputer operated by tech giant NVIDIA, which invested $50 million in Recursion earlier this year.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Bayer gets the option to exclusively license novel therapeutics derived from the programme.
Bayer’s venture capital arm was a participant in Recursion’s $239 million Series D financing in 2020, leading the round with a contribution of $50 million that was accompanied by a five-year research collaboration focusing on fibrotic diseases and was expanded in 2021 to include up to 12 projects.
That has now been wound up, but Bayer was clearly impressed by the technology deployed in the partnership and wants to tap into it for its oncology pipeline.
Juergen Eckhardt, the German group’s business development head, said it “could be one of the most disruptive technologies of our time.”
Recursion’s platform has attracted other big pharma clients, notably Roche/Genentech, which signed up for a decade-long partnership in 2021 focusing on neuroscience and oncology drugs that involved a $150 million upfront payment and could be worth several billion dollars if fully exercised. That alliance recently generated its first ‘hit series’ for an undisclosed oncology target.
“We believe that the next generation of biopharma leaders will operate at the convergence of rigorous science, scaled datasets and accelerated computing,” said Chris Gibson, co-founder and chief executive of Recursion.
The Bayer alliance highlights “the scale and broad-scale applicability of our platform […] as we turn our focus together on challenging targets in oncology with the goal of bringing better medicines to patients more efficiently,” he added.
Alongside the new Bayer agreement, Recursion also announced a four-fold expansion of its allocation of computation capacity on BioHive-1, and an alliance with fellow AI drug discovery company Tempus Pharma giving it access to the latter’s proprietary, de-identified patient dataset in cancer, which spans DNA, RNA, health records, and other data sources.
Recursion is paying up to $160 million to Tempus over the next five years in either cash or equity under the terms of the deal.
Short- or long-term use of opioids may increase risk of poor outcomes in patients withinflammatory bowel disease(IBD), according to investigators.
These findings amplify the safety signal from previous inpatient studies by showing that even a short course of opioids in an outpatient setting may increase risks of corticosteroid use and emergency department utilization, prompting caution among prescribers, reported Laura Telfer, MS, of Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, Pa., and colleagues.
"Opioids are frequently prescribed to treat pain associated with IBD," the investigators wrote in Gastro Hep Advances. "Unfortunately, they are associated with many problems in IBD, including increased risk of emergency room visits, hospitalization, surgery, and mortality. Chronic opioid use may also exacerbate symptoms and induce IBD flares, prompting discontinuation, thus increasing the risk of opioid withdrawal syndrome. Ironically, there is no published evidence that opioids even help to improve abdominal pain in IBD, particularly in the long term. Notably, most studies investigating opioid use in IBD have been limited to hospitalized patients, and few have directly evaluated the impact of opioid prescription length."
To address this knowledge gap, Ms. Telfer and colleagues conducted a retrospective, population-based cohort study involving patients with IBD who were classified as either long-term opioid users, short-term opioid users, or nonusers. Drawing data from more than 80,000 patients in the TriNetX Diamond Network, the investigators evaluated relative, intergroup risks for corticosteroid use, emergency department utilization, mortality, and IBD-related surgery.
Comparing short-term opioid users and nonusers revealed that short-term use more than doubled the risk of corticosteroid prescription (relative risk [RR], 2.517; P less than .001), and increased the risk of an emergency department visit by approximately 32% (RR, 1.315; P less than .001). Long-term use was associated with a similar doubling in risk of corticosteroid prescription (RR, 2.383; P less than .001), and an even greater risk of emergency department utilization (RR, 2.083; P less than .001). Risks of death or IBD-related surgery did not differ for either of these comparisons.
Next, the investigators compared long-term opioid use versus short-term opioid use. This suggested a duration-related effect, as long-term users were 57% more likely than were short-term users to utilize emergency department services (RR, 1.572; P less than .001). No significant differences for the other outcomes were detected in this comparison.
"Unlike previous studies, we did not find an association between opioid use and IBD-related surgery or death," the investigators wrote. "Notably, these [previously reported] associations utilized opioid dosage (e.g., morphine equivalent or number of prescriptions), rather than length of opioid prescription (as we did). We also focused on IBD outpatients, while prior studies evaluated (in part or completely) inpatient populations, who typically present with more severe illness."
Still, they added, the present findings should serve as a warning to prescribers considering even a short course of opioids for patients with IBD.
"This study demonstrates that prescribing opioids to IBD outpatients carries significant, specific risks, regardless of prescription length," Ms. Telfer and colleagues wrote. "Healthcare professionals should exercise caution before prescribing these agents."
The study was supported by the Peter and Marshia Carlino Early Career Professorship in Inflammatory Bowel Disease, the Margot E. Walrath Career Development Professorship in Gastroenterology, and the National Institutes of Health. The investigators disclosed no conflicts of interest.
We've all heard of tummy tucks and BBLs, but would you break your legs in the pursuit of what you consider to be the perfect body? Recently, a friend sent me an article about short men who are going to great lengths to be tall. And I have to tell you, since reading that article, I have been on a bit of a metaphorical journey. I really mean that, and so much so that I thought I'd make a whole video about it, even knowing that there are videos about this already out there, including some from a few doctors, because this is a different take. I want to talk to you not only about leg-lengthening operations, but about the commodification of major surgery and shopping for a new body online.
Hello? I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I was a ceiling-insulation installer. I wish I had a femur with a crack like that and I was 80 grand poorer. I wish my legs were like 10-feet high, girls would think I'm fine. They'd say "I love your ratio. Do you want f******o?" I wanna have surgery cos the world's hurt me. Ignored, looked down on, they see me with a frown on. I want to be a kaiju. Then I'd get a waifu. Girls say they want a tall guy. They don't want a small guy. That's why they all swipe left and I'm left feeling bereft. But maybe there is a solution. I crave absolution. Now I'm Lilliputian, but there's a revolution. I'm gonna get my legs broke, my height'll be bespoke. I ain't no Roman Roy. Man's gonna be Top Boy. I'm going to grow my bones, so I won't be forever alone.
Now, I had heard about the surgical operation in question before in the context of pathologically small children perhaps affected by some forms of dwarfism or to correct leg-length discrepancy, but I had no idea it had become an easily accessible option for adults and one that is growing in popularity remarkably quickly, assisted of course by the internet. From a niche procedure a few years ago, many of the major medical centers in the U.S. now offer it. One surgeon in California said he performed 50 in the last year, up from 20 just 3 years earlier.
In short, men are deliberately breaking their femurs, the thigh bones, and sometimes even the bones of the lower legs too, the tibia and fibula -- which I have always thought should have been called the tibula and fibula -- and over the course of many months are slowly and painfully elongating their legs using a special device.
Now, don't worry. I'm not going to show you any gory surgery because that always leads to my videos being demonetized. If you really want to see some technical aspects of the surgery, check out videos from my colleagues at the Hospital of YouTube, Antonio Webb and Chris Raynor, both of whom are actually orthopedic surgeons, the kinds of doctors that would do this operation. If you really want to go into depth, there is a great channel called "Cyborg 4 Life" run by a guy called Victor who had the operation himself and covers lots of aspects.
German: There is still the matter of the height.
Vincent Anton Freeman: So I can wear lifts.
German: Even with lifts, you're not that tall.
Vincent Anton Freeman: So what? No, we never discussed that.
Jerome: Oh, I thought you were serious, Vincent.
Vincent Anton Freeman: I am serious, I'm not doing that. I won't do that.
Francis: I quite like the backstory to this because Soviet-era medicine is a bit of an area of interest of mine. The apparatus that allows the procedure was invented by a guy called Gavriil Ilizarov, a Jewish Azerbaijani doctor who achieved amazing things, in spite of being repeatedly attacked by the Soviet regime, and develops his apparatus to treat injured soldiers in the Second World War.
Now, over the years the technology has obviously advanced to become less like a medieval torture device. But if you are one of the growing numbers of medical tourists to India or Turkey who advertise heavily online with prices perhaps a quarter of what is charged in the U.K. or the U.S., where leg lengthening can go north of $100,000, you might still find an old-fashioned Ilizarov frame being used.
I started reading the article. The guy they were profiling as he went through the process, called John, ended up 6-foot. That's a great height. I wonder what he started at. I assumed most men going for this would have been really short. Well, he started at 5'8". I mean, that's taller than me and I can honestly say I've never been bothered by my height, so now I was intrigued. How come he was so unhappy with his quite-normal height? Maybe he was some young guy with low self-esteem caused by a lack of romantic success.
Well, actually, he was around 40 years old. He was married with kids and the journalist said he was a normal, likeable guy. Our lives actually sounded pretty similar. Well, maybe not the normal likeable bit. And while I have never been even so much as tempted to wear lifts in my shoes, clearly he had been so scarred through his life or felt so insecure about his height that he felt that this was something he needed to do. I was fascinated and I read on.
I think we're all familiar at the lengths that people are willing to go to change their appearance. With the exception of a few minutes of being sorely tempted when a Turkish hair transplant clinic offered me £50,000 to go out there and make a video where I get a hair transplant... you know, I have just said that out loud and I've realized something -- this isn't in the script -- that £50,000 was the exact cost of leg-lengthening surgery in one place that I saw. I have just realized that I could have got a new hairline and a new height effectively for free. And all I would have had to have sacrificed would've been the trust of my audience for promoting a medical procedure. Well, no, that's too valuable. I'd rather be short, and bald, and have my ethics intact.
Man, I should stick to the script because that's interrupted the point that I was making, which is that I have never felt any personal connection to all the examples of body modification that we normally see in the media, like nose jobs or butt lifts, and so on. I mean, obviously, I don't need a butt lift. My ass is incredible.
Stick to the script.
Here was what is essentially cosmetic surgery, but this time it was aimed almost exclusively at men and I'm in the target demographic. Because you see, my friends, I am a short dude, or a short king as I believe I'm now supposed to say and what is quite a wholesome meme. I stand a proud 169.5 cm. Don't forget my 5 mm. That last line is not going to be taken out of context, is it?
Rohin Francis, MBBSopens in a new tab or window, is an interventional cardiologist, internal medicine doctor, and university researcher who makes science videos and bad jokes. Offbeat topics you won't find elsewhere, enriched with a government-mandated dose of humor.
In the summer of 2021, Florentino Rios was working at SpaceX,Elon Musk’s rocket company.
Working about 25-feet off the ground, he signaled to the crane operator to stop moving.
But his hand signal was missed.
The operator tried to move a beam after it was fixed in place, causing a chain to snap and strike Rios in the face.
(Florentino Rios) “I couldn’t see anything anymore. So, I yelled to my friend, ‘I lost my eye, I lost my eye,’ and he didn't answer me because he was also hit.”
Rios went to the hospital that night. Days later, doctors told him he had lost vision in the eye. He was now legally blind, and could no longer drive or work construction.
SpaceX, he says, should've equipped the team with walkie-talkies and better lighting at the site.
(Florentino Rios) “What I saw while doing this work at SpaceX is that it wasn’t safe enough. It wasn’t.”
Rios isn’t the only seriously injured SpaceX worker.
A Reuters investigation found the company has disregarded worker-safety regulations and standard practices for years.
Through government records and interviews, Reuters documented more than 600 injuries since 2014.
Many were serious or disabling. They included lacerations, broken bones, crushed hands and head injuries. Eight accidents led to amputations. One employee died in 2014.
Lonnie LeBlanc died from a head injury after being blown off a trailer by a gust of wind at the SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas.
SpaceX did not respond to detailed questions from Reuters for this report.
The company has defended its safety practices in responses to government inspections.
It says it provides workers extensive safety training.
Reuters spoke to three dozen people with knowledge of SpaceX safety practices, including current or former employees.
They say its high injury rates reflect a chaotic workplace.
Under-trained and overtired staff routinely skipped basic safety procedures as they raced to meet Musk’s aggressive deadlines for space missions.
SpaceX takes the stance that workers are responsible for protecting themselves. That's according to more than a dozen current and former employees, including a former senior executive.
Musk himself could appear cavalier about safety on visits to company sites.
Four employees said the CEO, on his visits to a California rocket factory, sometimes played with a novelty flamethrower that shoots a thick flame five or ten feet long.
He also discouraged workers from wearing safety yellow, because he hates bright colors.
Since Musk co-founded the rocket company in 2002, SpaceX has achieved major breakthroughs, including becoming the first private company to send humans into orbit.
It now employs about 13,000 people.
The more than 600 SpaceX injuries that Reuters documented represent only a portion of the total case count.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, known as OSHA started requiring companies to report their total number of injuries annually in 2016.
Six major SpaceX facilities across the U.S. failed to submit reports for many of those years.
Reuters reviewed OSHA violation records on SpaceX and found no agency sanctions for its data-reporting failures.
For violations it found following accidents, the agency levied only small fines.
In one case, SpaceX paid a $7,000 OSHA fine for violations resulting in a worker’s death.
OSHA said it has recently heightened scrutiny on all companies.
But the agency did not comment on its enforcement decisions regarding SpaceX.
Jordan Barab is a former deputy assistant secretary of OSHA.
“Pushing workers to do dangerous work, regardless of their knowledge that the work is dangerous, essentially shows that this company is putting its profits ahead of worker safety and putting its profits ahead of worker health and workers’ lives.”
After losing his eyesight, Rios sued SpaceX.
He alleged the company’s negligence caused the injury by failing to implement or follow worker-safety procedures.
The company, in court records, argued that Rios’ own negligence was to blame.
(Florentino Rios) “It's a very sad thing because unfortunately, well, I'm the one who supports my children and it has totally changed everything for me, it’s too much. I feel incomplete because I used to be someone who didn’t like sitting around. I worked day and night to give my children what they needed. And now I can’t. Now I feel very sad because wherever I want to go, I need help.”
