JOSEPH KISHORE, WSWS.ORG

The Obama administration is preparing to release next week a proposal for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to federal health care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. These cuts will have catastrophic consequences for the American people.

The proposed cuts will be submitted to the congressional “super committee” tasked with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit-reducing measures. Obama is urging the committee, established by the bill passed August 2 to raise the debt ceiling, to go far beyond its mandate, putting in place cuts that previously would have been considered politically impossible.

The committee itself embodies the anti-democratic nature of the attack on health care being spearheaded by the Obama administration. It is designed to impose massively unpopular measures over the heads of the people.

Among the likely proposals is an increase in the age of eligibility for Medicare and cuts in federal funding for Medicaid. Both these measures, initially proposed by Obama during negotiations over the debt ceiling, will deprive millions of Americans of access to basic health care. The administration also called for changes in the cost of living formula for Social Security that will reduce payments to retirees.

This is only the beginning. The Committee for a Responsible Budget, a group of corporate executives and former government officials of both parties—including one-time members of the Obama administration and the two co-chairmen of the Simpson-Bowles budget commission set up by Obama in 2010—released a report earlier this month with a more extensive wish list for the congressional committee. It includes reducing provider payments, increasing premiums for individuals, and limiting the ability of people to sue doctors or hospitals for medical malpractice, a long-time right-wing demand championed by Obama.

The group also calls for the committee to “seriously consider… moving to a premium support system for Medicare,” i.e., transforming Medicare into a voucher system for the purchase of private insurance, the same proposal advanced by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan earlier this year. This means the effective abolition of the principal health care program for the elderly, which dates back to 1965.

Also to be considered is “putting federal health care spending on a budget”—i.e., placing a cap on overall spending—and “strengthening the Independent Payment Advisory Board to better control costs.” IPAB was formed as part of Obama’s 2010 health care “reform” bill and is tasked with recommending cuts in social programs.

The cuts to be proposed by Obama are so sweeping they have provoked concern among elements within the Democratic Party who fear they will completely expose the party’s right-wing policies in the run-up to the 2012 elections. An article in the New York Times on Tuesday (“Democrats See Perils on Path to Health Cuts”) notes that Obama’s intervention is “delighting Republicans and dismaying many Democrats who fear that his proposals will become a starting point for bigger cuts in the popular health programs.”

The attempt by sections of the Democratic Party to present these cuts as a shift in the overall direction of the administration is a fraud. The assault on health care began with Obama’s so-called “reform” bill, passed last year. This reactionary scheme to slash health care costs for corporations and the government was hailed by the administration’s supporters on the “left” as a progressive social reform.

The current drive to expand the attack on Medicare and Medicaid in the name of fiscal “responsibility” exposes the utterly cynical nature of last year’s “reform.” The desperate plight of the uninsured was exploited to push through the bill, which was packaged as a major step toward universal health care coverage.

One year later, the question of the uninsured is not even an issue. The recent census report showing staggering levels of poverty also documented an increase in the number of people without health insurance to 50 million. This statistical expression of a social disaster has passed without comment by Obama.

The 2010 health care overhaul requires individuals to purchase insurance from private corporations or face a stiff fine. This is a boondoggle for the insurance companies and sets the stage for corporations to end their employer-provided health plans. Many have already begun to do so, even though the major provisions of the health care overhaul do not take effect until 2014.

Other companies, including Verizon—against which 45,000 workers recently went on strike—are cutting benefits, citing a sharp increase in taxes on more comprehensive so-called “Cadillac” plans included in the health care bill.

The bill imposes $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. The passage of the overhaul coincided with a campaign in the media, led by the New York Times,against supposedly “excessive” or “unnecessary” tests and medications.

The World Socialist Web Site wrote in July 2009 that far from representing a progressive reform, Obama’s proposal “marks an unprecedented attack on health care for the working population. It is an effort to roll back social gains associated with the enactment of Medicare in 1965.”

The overhaul was the beginning of “a counterrevolution in health care, being carried out in the profit interests of the giant pharmaceutical companies, insurance conglomerates and hospital chains, as well as the corporations, which will be encouraged to terminate health care for their employees and force them to buy insurance plans providing less coverage at greater out-of-pocket expense.”

As the WSWS insisted, the plan was aimed at undermining any conception of quality health care for all, even in the limited form of government coverage for all seniors, and replacing it with a class-based system of rationed health care. The wealthy will have access to the best care available while the working class, denied access to procedures and medicines, will be consigned to inadequate, second-class coverage. As a result, many will unnecessarily die, others will be debilitated and both life expectancy and quality of life for masses of people will deteriorate.

This analysis has now been entirely confirmed.

Obama’s role in the assault on health care is emblematic of his entire presidency. He was presented to the American people as the “candidate of change.” In fact, Obama was the vehicle for a further shift of the political establishment to the right on every front—from the bank bailout and the utilization of the economic crisis to slash the jobs and wages of the working class, to the expansion of war and attacks on democratic rights.

The political forces that promoted and continue to back Obama do so not out of some misapprehension, but because they agree with his policies. Their aim is to prevent the working class from drawing the necessary political conclusions and keep it tied to the Democratic Party. The liberal and pseudo-left organizations, along with the trade unions, are now gearing up to promote Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

Every gain of the working class in the 20th century is under ferocious attack by both political parties. The only way to halt this assault is to unleash the social power of the working class in mass and direct resistance—strikes, protests, factory and work place occupations—as part of an independent political movement of working people against the capitalist system and all of its political representatives. This requires a struggle for a socialist program and a workers’ government.

Joseph Kishore is a prominent member of the Socialist Equality Party.

¶

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By Kristen Gwynne, AlterNet

Few countries offer as eloquent a picture of what a brutal and corrupt form of freewheeling capitalism can do to people than the transformation of Russia after the toppling of the Soviet Union, a highly flawed system, no doubt, but where runaway gangsterism, corruption and social destitution were unheard of.  Incidentally, this should not be read as a plea to further police and criminalize drugs, but to regulate them in a rational and compassionate manner.—Eds

Effects of "Krokodil" on a Russian addict.

In the United States, OxyContin addiction is spreading across the country and causing a rash of problems.A powerful narcotic, Oxy’s grip on addicts is so tight it even drives people to murder, as was evidenced last week in Long Island, where an addict’s pharmacy burglary of 8,000 pills left four people dead.

Now the powerful pull of addiction is showing new strength in Russia, where it has reached an unprecedented level of self-destruction by rotting its victims to death in a short period of time.

In Russia, efforts to stunt the flow of Afghan heroin have resulted in a diminished dope supply with higher prices. To some, this may seem like a success, but expensive heroin did not result in fewer junkies.

Instead, Russian heroin addicts are turning to Krokodil – a devastating home-made substitute so addicting users will inject it long beyond the decay of their flesh sets in, until they literally rot to death. Nearly inconceivable, the effects of the drug are horrifying, and so many Russians are using Krokodil it can be seen as approaching a national epidemic.

Desmorphine, a synthetic with similar effects of heroin made from house-held chemicals like codeine (available over the counter in Russia), iodine, lighter fluid, gasoline, and industrial cleaning oil, is street-named Krokodil for the way it literally devours its users (like the mean crocodile). Injection sites turn flesh grey, green and scaly until gangrene skin peels away and bone is exposed; it can lead to amputated limbs.

Photographs of addicts are shocking, to say the least. Exposed bone from wrist to elbow, arms look more like the half-devoured limbs of a zombie than a living human.

Also like the living dead, users can be identified by their smell. Iodine, the flesh-decaying component of Krokodil, causes a scent so pungent Russian drug treatment doctor Artyom Yegrov says “there’s no way to wash it out, all you can do is burn the clothes.”

What’s almost as shocking as the sight of these addicts is the number of them. An estimated 100,000 Russians are using the drug – that’s 100,000 of the walking dead.

The life expectancy of Krokodil addicts is reported to be between one and three years.Recovering Krokodil addict Pavlova told Time nearly all the friends she used Krokodil with are now dead. “For some it led to pneumonia, some got blood poisoning, some had an artery burst in their heart, some got meningitis, others simply rot,” Pavlova said. The drug is so morbid Russian filmmakers titled their documentary on Krokodil “Half-Death.”

Brain-damaged from an incredible six years of use, Pavlova has developed a speech impediment, a vacant gaze, and poor motor skills. “She’ll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her,” said her recovery house manager Andrei Yatsenko.

Pavlova entered the treatment house when, after weeks of Krokodil binging, she developed gangrene around injection sites on her groin. Blood poisoning was setting in, so she fled to the hospital, where she accepted an offer from Pentecostals inviting addicts to rehab.

As should already be clear, life on Krokodil is not a romantic, doped-out existence, but quite the opposite.

Once users have compiled enough codeine, lighter fluid, industrial cleaning product, and iodine, the thirty-minute cooking process creates enough Krokodil for about a 90-minute high. Most addicts thus spend all their time cooking and shooting, cooking and shooting, until enough skin falls away that they die.

Users say the chemicals in Krokodil actually make it feel unclean, unlike its purer cousin, heroin. Thus, most users turn to Krokodil when heroin becomes unaffordable and then return to dope when they have their funds in check. But while Krokodil is prominent in cities like Tver, it is spreading rapidly in poorer, rural areas.

Krokodil takes understanding the power of substance dependency to a whole new level. As addicts watch abscesses (the inevitable result of missing a vein) ooze and their skin rot before their eyes but continue to use, the addictive nature of the drug should not be shocking.

Desmorphine, the active ingredient in Krokodil, “causes the strongest levels of addiction, and is the hardest cure,” said Dr. Yegrov.

For one Krokodil-withdrawing addict, U.K. newspaper The Independent reported “horrendous withdrawal symptoms that included seizures, a 40-degree temperature, and vomiting.”Lucky to be alive, he nonetheless experienced some horrendous casualties of Krokodil, including hepatitis C and the loss of 14 teeth after his gums rotted away.

“With heroin withdrawal, the main symptoms last for five to 10 days. After that there is still a big danger of relapse but the physical pain will be gone. With Krokodil, the pain can last up to a month, and it’s unbearable. They have to be injected with extremely strong tranquilizers just to keep them from passing out from the pain,” Dr. Yegrov said.

The ingredients necessary to prevent the crippling withdrawal are easy for users to find. Codeine is available over the counter in Russia, and talk about making the drug available on a prescription-only basis has generated heavy lobbying by pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies, some of which make 25% of their profit selling the tablets.

Like OxyContin sales in the U.S. skyrocket with increasing abuse, codeine sales have been on the rise in correlation with Krokodil use. “Over the past five years, sales of codeine-based tablets have grown by dozens of times,” said head of Russia’s Drug Control Agency Viktor Ivanov, “It’s pretty obvious that it’s not because everyone has suddenly developed headaches.”

Codeine’s high availability, matched with heroin’s unattainability, means desperate addicts can quickly switch to Krokodil to grab a fix, and quickly relapse when feeling weak. With heroin already a huge problem in Russia, which accounts for 1/3 of global deaths from the drug, Krokodil has huge potential to spread to many more desperate addicts.

As thousands of addicts turn to Krokodil and use until their skin falls off, it is becoming clear that no punishment or regulation can tame the beast of addiction. What they need is treatment, and fast – before thousands more rotting Russians die.

Kristen Gwynne is a freelance writer and editorial assistant at Alternet.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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Editor’s Note:  The article below is NOT written from a clear left or radical standpoint, but from a totally mainstream, establishment position.  We thought it was worth republishing here because as you will see below, even among mainstream voices the raising of the income cap in social security contributions is seen as the most effective and simple path toward removing this issue from the table as a national problem. Yet the politicians do not act. Isn’t that yet another piece of evidence pointing to the shameless bankruptcy of the US political class? This is a nation without real popular representation. The sooner the masses get that little fact through their benighted heads the sooner some real solutions will have a chance of being discussed. —PG

By Carla Fried | Jun 21, 2011 |

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggested that the earth had seismically shifted on the 37 million members of AARP. Under the headline “Key Seniors Association Pivots on Benefit Cut” that quoted AARP’s policy chief John Rother at length, the June 17 article stated that AARP was ready to drop its opposition to cutting Social Security benefits. So much for a slow summer Friday news cycle. Before you could utter the phrases “raise the retirement age” or “cut the cost of living adjustment,” a coalition of advocacy groups against entitlement cuts had lodged its displeasure with AARP. And that’s when AARP shot back with a press release titled “AARP Has Not Changed Its Position on Social Security.” Confused? Here’s a cheat sheet for what’s really going on:

• AARP is adamant that Social Security not be part of any discussion of deficit reduction. Right now you can’t talk about much of anything in Washington without it being framed within the context of deficit-reduction talks. So to have a national publication like the Wall Street Journal run an article about reducing Social Security benefits article right in the midst of Vice President Joe Biden’s deficit-reduction talks is, well, sort of interesting. In fact, AARP CEO A. Barry Rand was pretty clear in the organization’s press release that AARP would not entertain any inclusion of Social Security in deficit talks: “We are currently fighting some proposals in Washington to cut Social Security to reduce a deficit it did not cause. Social Security should not be used as a piggy bank to solve the nation’s deficit.”

• But AARP is open to discussing ways to shore up Social Security so it will not be a drain on federal coffers come 2036. While AARP is correct to point out that Social Security did not contribute to the current deficit, the program will in fact be a revenue drain come 2036 when it will no longer be taking in enough from current payroll taxes to cover benefit payments. At that juncture, Social Security will take in enough tax revenue to cover only 77 percent of its current promised benefits. So we either need to get comfy with the notion of a 23 percent buzz cut in benefits down the line, or we can have a grown-up conversation about how to tweak the program today to close that gap. In the press release, Rand made the point that “we have maintained for years — to our members, the media, and elected officials — that long-term solvency is key to protecting and strengthening Social Security for all generations, and we have urged elected officials in Washington to address the program’s long-term challenges in a way that’s fair for all generations.”

In an interview on Monday, David Certner, AARP’s legislative policy director, added “that’s a broader discussion, and it’s a conversation we want to have.” It’s just that AARP refuses to partake in any conversation that frames Social Security reform as part of a deficit-reduction plan. Certner also mentioned that reaction to the WSJ article and dust-up has “so far been fairly light.” Last I checked, there were 178 comments posted on AARP’s Facebook page that included the organization’s response to the WSJ article.

So to recap: AARP is still very much against any attempt to carve into Social Security to reduce the current deficit, but it recognizes that, yes, the program does need tweaks to address its longer-term solvency. That shouldn’t be controversial, it’s just common sense. As for what specific reforms AARP would get behind, Certner said “we’re not even at the beginning” of discussing the various options with AARP’s members.

• Senior citizens: relax; no one is going to touch your benefits. The Wall Street Journal article cited a recent WSJ/NBC News poll in February that found 84 percent of Americans at least 65 years old are opposed to benefit cuts. As if that’s news? Perhaps what’s more surprising is that 16 percent of current retirees would be even open to the idea. But no one, and I mean no one, in Washington is suggesting that current beneficiaries be impacted by any future reform. All the various deficit reduction plans floated this past fall and winter were very clear that anyone age 50-55 would be unaffected by any proposed reforms. Even Paul Ryan was clear that his Medicare plan would not be imposed on anyone already 55 or older. It would be really helpful if all interested parties in entitlement reform discussions stopped with the fear-mongering talk about cutting benefits for current beneficiaries. It’s flat out wrong, and keeps us from focusing on fixing the program for future beneficiaries.

• There is a solution that has wide support. The crazy thing about all this he said/she said inanity is that Americans are pretty clear on how we would like to fix Social Security’s 23 percent shortfall. In poll after poll, a majority of Americans say they are in favor of raising the amount of income that is subject to the Social Security payroll tax. A coalition of entitlement advocacy groups — Social Security Works, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare Foundation, and the Alliance for Retired Americans — is set to release a 5-state poll later this week showing that 77 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Independents, and 65 percent of Republicans are behind the idea of raising the income limit for the Social Security payroll tax. “We think you can solve the shortfall by raising the income cap,” says Frank Clemente, campaign director of Social Security Works.

Right now, we all pay a 6.2 percent tax on the first $106,800 of income (the payroll tax is just 4.2 percent this year, thanks to a one-year stimulus break). Above $106,800, the tax disappears, though the cap is adjusted annually for inflation. The non-partisan Employee Benefits Research Institute figured out that we could completely solve Social Security’s shortfall if we agreed to lift that income ceiling, and tax every dollar of income.

But it turns out we probably don’t need to go all out. Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor under President Clinton and a former trustee of the Social Security Trust fund, says we could actually get all the money we need to close the gap by collecting payroll tax on just the first $180,000 of income. That’s it. Think the rich would be against that? Hmm. In a January poll, 72 percent of respondents with income above $100,000 said they were behind raising the income limit rather than reducing benefits or raising the retirement age. Not exactly a divisive issue, is it?

According to Reich, the last time we reformed Social Security — yep, this isn’t the first tweak; the program was altered in 1983 when the full retirement age was set on its gradual rise from 65 to 67 — the presumption was that the payroll tax would be levied on about 90 percent of the country’s total income. But because the rich have gotten so much richer than everyone else, the payroll tax now collects on just 84 percent of our gross national personal income because it cuts off after the first $106,800. Raising the income cap to $180,000 and then indexing it to inflation would bring us back to the 90 percent capture rate. Is that a new levy on the wealthy? Absolutely. But 7 out of 10 of people who would be impacted say it’s the palatable fix compared to other options, and it’s really just getting us back to what the Social Security trustees intended nearly 30 years ago.

Granted, that doesn’t make for a great headline or purported controversy. All it does is fairly elegantly solve a problem. We can debate if we in fact want to solve that problem, but let’s all be clear that this is one issue with a clear and — for these times — relatively uncontroversial fix.

Read more: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/blog/daily-money/did-aarp-just-sell-out-seniors-on-social-security/2993/#ixzz1Q0hKblnt
moneywatch.com / Long View / The Daily Money

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BY PAUL CARLINE

Escherichia coli O157:H7 is an enterohemorrhagic strain.

EHEC (“enterohaemorrhagic E. coli”) – a new label to conjure with, joining other fear-inducing abbreviations like TB, AIDS, CJD and BSE. At the time of writing, EHEC has affected some 3-4,000 people, mostly in Northern Germany, claiming some 36 victims among the more than 700 who developed the more serious, potentially lethal, HUS (haemolytic-uremic syndrome) form.

Under the headline “Doctors Shaken by Outbreak’s Neurological Devastation”, SPIEGEL Online (09/06/2011) reported that at first “doctors were most concerned about the kidneys of patients with EHEC. In the past week, however, it has become apparent that the neurological side-effects of the bacterial infection could be even worse”. The report quotes Daniel Wertheimer, head physician at a specialist neurology clinic in Hamburg: “We were all looking at the kidney symptoms at first, but perhaps EHEC will eventually go down in history as the pathogen that caused serious damage to the central nervous system. (…) Three weeks ago I would have said that 15 to 20 percent of the severe cases would develop neurological complications. Today I would say it’s about half”.

The doctors are seeing patients who have trouble finding words, can’t remember things, have extremely severe epileptic seizures or fall into a coma. “Neurologically speaking”, says Wertheimer,  “EHEC is like a chameleon”. E-Coli comes in many forms, almost all of them harmless. Like other bacteria (there are at least ten times as many bacteria in the human body than cells – and there are anything from 500 to 1000 trillion cells!), it is present in massive numbers (perhaps as many as 10 billion) in the body, especially in the large intestine. We simply could not live without them. Only a few of the many strains of E-coli cause problems – the most common recent culprit, responsible for 21 deaths in Scotland in 1996 and 12 in Japan in the same year (out of more than 10,000 people infected), is the O157.H7 strain.

But the O104.H4 strain responsible for the outbreak in Germany is different. It is far more toxic – and, as noted above, is causing serious neurological damage of a kind not seen in other outbreaks. Where normal E. coli infections produce only relatively mild symptoms (usually diarrhoea), the O104.H4 strain has somehow acquired the capacity to produce the so-called Shiga toxin, which only occurs when the E. coli is infected with a specific virus. The body’s immunological response to the Shiga toxin causes the walls of all blood vessels, including those in the brain, to become inflamed and swollen. When that happens, parts of the brain are no longer supplied with blood and are at risk of being irreversibly damaged. At the same time, the blood vessels become abnormally porous, allowing toxins to migrate into the organs. Pressure rises in the brain and can cause epileptic seizures.

Another unusual and worrying feature of the O104. H4 strain is that the bacteria have an extraordinarily high level of resistance to antibiotics. As The Guardian reported (05.06.2011):

“According to Germany’s  HYPERLINK “http://www.who.int/immunization_safety/safety_quality/rki/en/index.html” Robert Koch Institute, O104 is resistant to more than a dozen antibiotics in eight classes: penicillins; streptomycin; tetracycline; the quinolone nalidixic acid; the sulfa drug combination trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazol; three generations of cephalosporins; and the combination drugs amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, piperacillin-sulbactam, and piperacillin-tazobactam. Indifference to so many drugs signals that O104 possesses what is called  HYPERLINK “http://www.hpa.org.uk/Topics/InfectiousDiseases/InfectionsAZ/ESBLs/” ESBL resistance – and in fact, according to the Koch analysis, the strain harbors two genes that confer that resistance, TEM-1 and CTX-M-15 – a property that has been making doctors shudder since the 1990s, when strains of ESBL-resistant  HYPERLINK “http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/219907-overview” Klebsiella, a bacterium that causes serious hospital-acquired infections, began pingponging through Europe. […] Where are these resistance factors coming from? The development of resistance is an inevitable biological process; it’s what bacteria do to protect themselves against deadly compounds, whether the compounds were made naturally by other bacteria or artificially in a drug-development lab. But excessive exposure to antibiotics hastens the process and makes its results unpredictable.”

Helge Karch is the director of the Robert Koch Institute’s consulting laboratory at the University Hospital in Muenster. He has devoted almost his entire life as a researcher to EHEC bacteria. “But I’ve never encountered anything like this”, he says. The lab was one of the first to receive stool samples from patients. Two days after receiving the sample, Karch’s staff had identified the extremely rare O104.H4 serotype. It was so rare that Karch had only encountered it once in 30 years and an internet search turned up only one article – a case study from Korea. In the Korean case, as with most of the German cases, the victim was an adult woman, something that is completely atypical for EHEC. Karch contacted another leading American expert; he had also never heard of an O104.H4 outbreak.

After further intensive research, Karch discovered that the bacteria responsible for the German outbreak is a so-called chimera that contains genetic material from various E. coli bacteria. It also contains DNA sequences from plague bacteria, which makes it particularly pathogenic. It’s interesting that outside of the alternative media, this latter strange and worrying fact has not been commented on. The Guardian article quoted above is one of the very few mainstream reports that – by implication (“it’s what bacteria do to protect themselves against deadly compounds, whether the compounds were made naturally by other bacteria or artificially in a drug-development lab”) – raises the possibility that this new lethal strain could have been bio-engineered in a lab and either accidentally, or deliberately, released.

On 5th June, the German online newspaper WELT Online published an article entitled: “The four major theories about the cause of the EHEC outbreak”. The finger of suspicion is pointed at: 1) bio-gas production facilities; 2) contaminated water; 3) overuse/misuse of antibiotics; 4) terrorism.

Biogas

There are currently some 6800 biogas plants in Germany, both large and small. Biogas production has become a popular and profitable way of exploiting farm and other waste materials. As a rule, agricultural biogas plants use liquid manure as a base material. Renewable sources such as corn, cereal crops and other energy plants such as sunflowers, Sudan grass, oil radish, Sorghum bicolor etc. are increasingly being used to raise gas yields. Commercial plants also process wastewater (from purification plants) as well as waste from food production, food scraps, grease traps and slaughterhouse waste.

The extracted biogas is comprised of 55 to 70 percent methane, the energetically usable component. The gas also includes carbon dioxide as well as minimal amounts of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia and hydrogen. Aside from the biogas itself, a digestate is created – a mix of water, minerals and organic substances which have not decomposed. This by-product can be used as a high-grade fertiliser in agricultural uses, thereby closing the nutrient cycle with the cultivation of energy crops, or it can be sold as a mineral fertiliser.

The fermenting process of organic substances in an air and oxygen-free environment uses various anaerobic bacteria, the composition of which depends on their organic feed stock and specific process conditions (temperature and pH level). A decisive factor in the productivity of biogas plants is the microbiological processes that occur during fermentation. An Irish report notes: “Wastes of animal or human origin may contain a wide variety of pathogenic bacteria, parasites and viruses.  These may be disseminated along the pathways created by the systems of production, the routes of transport of live animals, and by the transformation, distribution and consumption of products of animal origin. The transport of animal manures, their mixing together in AD (anaerobic digestion) plants and the return of the treated, mixed effluent for landspreading on farmland creates new potential pathways for disease transfer.  The inclusion of abattoir and fish-processing wastes, sewage sludge and OF MSW (the organic fraction of municipal solid waste) in AD plant feedstocks potentially increases the diversity of pathogens that may be landspread and may enter the animal and human foodchains.”

Critics maintain that the conditions within the fermentation chambers, with ideal temperatures around 37 degrees C, encourage the development of new forms of bacteria resulting from blending and crossing. Up to 80% of the fermentation material – with the modified bacteria – can end up being spread as fertiliser on fields. It is claimed that there is insufficient monitoring and testing of a process which often includes animal dung, liquid manure and animal waste from slaughterhouses.

There are EU hygiene guidelines which state that the substrate has to be heated for an hour at 70 degrees, but doubts have been expressed as to whether all plants meet the EU standards and whether the required process actually removes all pathogens.

Contaminated water

It is suggested by some that the EHEC bacteria may have been transmitted to crops via irrigation water contaminated with faecal matter – for instance, if during a dry spell farmers used their slurry spreaders for irrigation without having cleaned them properly. However, this could not have been the cause of the current outbreak, since the beansprout farm at the centre of the epidemic used no fertilisers or chemicals of any kind and no animals were raised there.

Antibiotics

Microbiologist Professor Alexander Kekulé of the University Hospital in Halle, Germany, is convinced that the new E. coli strain has come into being as a direct consequence of the improper use of antibiotics – either in a hospital or through their use in animal husbandry. He says that the widespread use of antibiotics puts bacteria under strong selection pressure, accelerating evolutionary processes. E. coli bacteria are able to exchange genes in the intestine and he believes that this happened in the current case – either in a hospital patient, who then carried the mutated bacteria into the wider environment, or in a farm animal.

Terrorism

It is being suggested by some – including some reputable scientists – that terrorists might have engineered the new strain and used it to infect crops. But no terrorist group has claimed responsibility, and there are doubts that such groups would have the technical capability to create such a sophisticated strain. Nonetheless, the article warns, with such an atypical disease profile it would be foolish to dismiss out of hand the possibility that the disease agent had been deliberately engineered to kill and terrorise.

The latest reports (12.06.2011) unequivocally identify the products grown at the beansprout farm as the cause of the outbreak. But there are still no clues as to how the sprouts became contaminated.  The regional farm minister told a newspaper that as far as he was aware, the farm workers “had done nothing wrong” and that the farm had “high standards of hygiene”. The minister for the environment and consumer protection in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia stated yesterday that the authorities were “still the dark” as to how the sprouts became infected. The farm’s owner has been growing organic sprouts for 25 years and had been given a clean bill of health specifically in relation to E. coli as recently as the second half of May – more or less the same time as the first victims were eating their sprouts.

So the outbreak remains a puzzle. But despite the fact that no blame is being attached to the Gaertnerhof organic farm, there are already voices suggesting that organically grown food is inherently more dangerous than conventionally grown food. A Reuters article of 7.06.2011 notes:

“Even when it is contained, the outbreak will have done lasting damage to at least some conceptions about ‘healthy’ organic food. Adapting the smiley sun-logo of the German anti-nuclear lobby to oppose genetically-modified food, proponents of natural foods have seen the European organic market grow to 5.8 billion euros (by 2009). Just under a fifth of that comes from German farms. Yet some studies suggest organic food is risky, especially when eaten raw, because farmers shun chemicals and rely on fertilizers such as manure or slurry. The Shiga toxin-producing E. coli behind this outbreak are known to lurk in cattle guts”.

We may never know how those beansprouts became contaminated. But questions remain. Did this unique strain – never before seen – occur naturally through mutation and horizontal gene transfer? Is it possible for such a level of antibiotic resistance to develop naturally? How did the DNA from plague bacteria become incorporated? And most concerning of all the possible questions: does the evidence suggest that the lethal strain was bio-engineered somewhere in a laboratory?

E. coli has been studied for over 60 years. It is the most widely studied prokaryotic model organism, easily and inexpensively grown in the lab. It is the preferred host organism for the majority of the work carried out with recombinant DNA (genetically engineered DNA prepared by transplanting or splicing genes from one species into the cells of a host organism of a different species). We know that there are laboratories around the world – completely beyond democratic control – which work on producing both bio-weapons and possible defences against them. It would be reasonable to assume that E. coli is one of the bacteria which are being investigated as potential bio-weapons, due to its ease of manufacture and ability to be a carrier for the rapid dispersal of other pathogens.

It should not be forgotten that two years ago, when the bogus “swine flu pandemic” was being orchestrated, a laboratory worker in the Czech Republic discovered – by chance (though, as Rudolf Steiner often remarked, there is no such thing as chance) – that the swine flu vaccine distributed to labs across Europe by Baxter Pharmaceuticals had been contaminated with avian flu virus.  This is how one website reported it at the time:

“In a story that most media outlets have ignored the Big Pharma company Baxter International distributed contaminated vaccines for swine flu to Austria and three neighboring countries. The vaccines contained the H5N1 avian flu virus. The Czech Republic just happened to catch the contamination. They tested a batch on ferrets before shipping it out for injection into humans. All of the ferrets died! It was a major scandal. Had they injected humans, we could be facing a disease that could kill millions.

The word “contamination” suggests an accident. But according to the extremely strict procedures for vaccine production, the “accidental” presence of live avian flu in a swine flu vaccine is an impossibility. It is so remote that some Czech newspapers speculated that Baxter was trying to provoke a pandemic. Such a pandemic would help it reap untold billions in profits from producing the vaccine to counter a bird flu outbreak.”

The contamination was explained away as “accidental” – but live avian flu virus is classed as a bio-weapon and is subject to such stringent bio-security regulations that, as the article states, an ‘accidental’ contamination is simply impossible. But the story was not followed up. Could the E. coli outbreak be the result of another deliberate mixing of non-lethal and lethal elements, released in order to test the potency of the mix on a live population, or out of economic or political motives? Unfortunately, in today’s world, such possibilities cannot be ruled out.

Whatever the cause, questions need to be asked about the rationality of the mass production and transport across continents of foodstuffs, and the vulnerability of livelihoods and whole industries to  freak occurrences – whether natural or otherwise – and to political knee-jerk reactions. The cost of compensation to growers in several countries will run into hundreds of millions of Euros. There may be longer-term costs to public health if there is a shift away from fresh and organically grown produce. Beyond that, this outbreak has taken the lives of now 36, mostly young, people and left many more with serious, potentially lifelong side-effects. For their sakes in particular and for the sake of all of us, we really need to know what caused this bizarre outbreak. Perhaps we also need to insist on some form of public oversight of what is being done in our names in such places as Britain’s Porton Down – the UK’s chemical and biological warfare research centre.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Carline, was born in Eccles, near Manchester in Northern England.  Studied modern languages (German, Russian) at Manchester University.   Member of IRI Europe since the beginning. Mainly responsible for translating/editing/proof-reading all IRI Europe’s print and online publications. Other interests and activities: not party-political, but passionate about global justice and human rights; committed to exposing fake democracy and fake terrorism (the state-sponsored variety), which have been used to justify gross contraventions of international law and human rights and have cost the lives of millions.

cf. also: Mail Online, 07.06.2011: “Superbug timebomb: Scientists fear the overuse of antibiotics in medicine and farming may have led to the deadly E. coli outbreak”.  HYPERLINK “http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1395078/E-coli-outbreak-Over-use-antibiotics-led-deadly-strain.html?” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1395078/E-coli-outbreak-Over-use-antibiotics-led-deadly-strain.html?

HYPERLINK “http://www.ava1.de/botulinum/DS4_Colleran-1.pdf” http://www.ava1.de/botulinum/DS4_Colleran-1.pdf

In considering terrorism as a possible cause it would be important not to exclude corporate and political interest groups as potential sources of bio-terrorism i.e. of the planned creation of fear in the public, for example about the safety of certain foodstuffs or organic farming methods. A very recent poll in the UK reveals that almost 1 in 4 British consumers have altered their intake of fresh vegetables as a result of the German outbreak, and as many as 40% of young people in the 16-24 age group have given up or plan to give up eating cucumbers – despite there being no connection between them and the outbreak. Cf. also notes 4 and 5.

The declaration (by WHO) of the outbreak as a “pandemic” was only made possible by changing the standard definition to remove the criterion of large-scale mortality. The change was necessary to trigger the contracts which governments around the world had entered into with the vaccine makers and which reaped the latter vast profits.

cf.  HYPERLINK “http://healthydoctors.com/blog/swine-flu-h1n1-vaccine-from-baxter-international-is-contaminated/” http://healthydoctors.com/blog/swine-flu-h1n1-vaccine-from-baxter-international-is-contaminated/

SEE ALSO:

Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC)
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs125/en/

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