What should be done about E. coli contamination of foods?
” Most responses were in the “other” category, with answers covering a range of ideas, but none of which endorsed the news media’s drum-beating for expanded Public Health inspections and a larger FDA budget. Since the additional comments mainly seemed to reflect a fair amount of confusion on this topic, we’re not reprinting any of them this week. Factual Background: When is a disease an epidemic? That question isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. Several cases of a disease or dozens, or hundreds might indicate the spread of an underlying cause, or they may be essentially unrelated or insignificant. Each year, over 2.5 million Americans die; over 100,000 of those are deaths from infectious diseases (which translates into nearly 300 a day dying of infectious causes). Against that background, deciding whether several ill people constitute a new epidemic can be largely a matter of interpretation. The radical Public Health movement, a creature of the anarchist French Revolution that aims to
