Subject: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• We've Got a Boat Show, at Least, and Terrorists Hate Our Flatulence

  January 15, 2008

• FDA assures public it's almost, nearly, pretty sure salmonella caused by peanut butter

  The FDA botched the last big outbreak of salmonella when it issued a huge warning to avoid tomatoes based on the fact that people who'd eaten salsa were getting sick. Turns out salsa was indeed making people sick -- but that's because the jalapenos in it were alive with the salmonella bacteria, not tomatoes. The tomato industry was nearly crippled and people continued to get sick off of jalapenos. The FDA is well on its way to messing up another food supply with this latest salmonella outbreak i

  January 16, 2009

• FDA lurves new media

  Unless I still get salmonella from a Clif bar or there's another outbreak, I promise this will be my last post on the peanut butter panic of 2009. Partly because I'm thinking about switching off of peanut butter to Vegemite (oh wait!) and partly because the FDA and CDC are releasing enough gadgets to make Q of the James Bond films happy. First there are the CDC's badges seen below. You place the code for these badges on your social Web sites like Facebook and MySpace to "let your friends know th

  February 5, 2009

• Wrap It, Grandpa

  The Greatest Generation is Kansas City’s newest high-risk group for HIV.

  October 23, 2008

• Official Guide: 2008 Pitch Music Showcase and Awards

  August 7, 2008

• Your Tax Dollars Not at Work

  January 3, 2008

• Memorial Flickers

  November 29, 2007

• Sick Feeling

  The deputy chief yells "Fire!"

  November 22, 2001

• Kill Phil

  January 19, 2006

• Local Yokels

  January 5, 2006

• Doctor's Orders?

  This isn't just female trouble.

  November 18, 2004

• Home Alone

  Waiting for City Hall, Cedric Workcuff feels as abandoned as his house looks.

  November 11, 2004

• Mind Field

  Rachel MacNair has come up with a theory to bring peace. But it could turn soldiers into better killers.

  October 21, 2004

• Feeling This

  "Enema of the Mental State: Notes From the Battle on Irritable Blink-182 Syndrome."

  May 13, 2004

• A Nasty Rumor

  The African-American AIDS Project gets stripped of its funds.

  April 24, 2003

• Home Groan

  Angry neighborhood residents are tired of living with Kansas City's Housing Department director.

  December 5, 2002

• Toxic Crock

  After barrels of hazardous waste piled up in the west bottoms, John Dillon took the fallout.

  October 3, 2002

• Old Ghosts

  Who you gonna call? The Kansas Ed Board.

  June 7, 2001

• Field of Bad Dreams

  Jim Bynum declares a sludge match against the city.

  November 16, 2000

• Fluoride Fighters

  Age differences don't matter in Jereme Dillard and Frances Frech's passion against fluoride.

  July 20, 2000

• Pork OK, alfalfa sprouts are not

  What a crazy weekend. We're in the middle of the swine-flu "Panico 09!" My grandmother called me last night to ask what I knew, and then said that she and my grandfather don't plan to leave their home "until we know how bad this is." Russia has stopped all meat imports from Mexico and several U.S. states including Kansas. The National Pork Board released a statement yesterday wishing "to reassure the public that pork is safe and will continue to be safe to consume." Considering The National Pork

  April 27, 2009

• Swine flu in Platte County? Let's get ready to panic!

  Break out the surgical masks and get ready to panic. The news says someone in Platte County may have swine flu. A sample from the person was sent to the Centers for Disease Control for confirmation (Missouri has yet to be listed on the CDC's board of "confirmed cases") but it could be just a matter of hours before the Show-Me State gets the recognition it so richly deserves. Take that Kansas! You know what else we know? Just about nothing -- other than the world being on the verge of a pandemic.

  April 30, 2009

• Watch Kathleen Sebelius answer questions about swine flu

  Here's the lunchtime conversation we've all been waiting for. Former Kansas Gov. and newly minted secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will answer questions about the regrettably unsexy H1N1 -- aka, the titillating swine flu. Wash your dirty hands and click on the webcast of Sebelius -- and guest stars Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the Centers for Disease Control's acting director, Dr. Richard Besser -- below. And the hysteria continues. Fox

  April 30, 2009

• Do you know what I had for dinner last night?

  I had bacon for dinner. Tonight I plan on having pork. Tomorrow, maybe bacon, pork and ham. I have no qualms about this because, except for hurting my arteries, no harm can come from eating pork. "Swine influenza viruses are not transmitted by food. You cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products." That's the CDC talking, not me.But notice the CDC didn't say anything about drinking pork products. Probably because it doesn't think anyone is crazy enough to, but yes, there are sev

  May 1, 2009

• Wrap it up, KC. Men's Health gives KC a D- for STDs

  This is bad, bad news. Men's Health ranked the sexual health of 101 cities -- looking at reports of gonorrhea, syphillis and chlamydia to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as county data on HIV mortality rates -- and Kansas City finished an extremely sorry 82nd place (and under the heading "taking your chances") with a D- grade. Ouch. Even worse, Las Vegas ranked as a safer city to get laid in than KC. Remember, you can look up (and submit) infected people on STDCarriers.com

  May 26, 2009

• The curious case of the cookie dough recall

  By now, most people have heard that Nestle has "voluntarily" recalled its Toll House cookie dough. (A full list of the recalled Toll House products is available on the FDA's Web site.) So far 65 people has suffered illness, 70 percent of them under 19 years old and two in Missouri. The strain of E. coli the CDC believes is in the cookie dough is a particularly bad one called 0157:H7. It especially affects the very young and elderly and can cause "acute bloody diarrhea" for 5 to 10 days and in ra

  June 22, 2009

• Light summer reading. Well, maybe light is not the right word

  Although obesity is nothing new in America, there have been recent attempts to look at the epidemic (that's the CDC's description) with a fresh focus. Yes, we're too fat and have heart attacks and diabetes because we eat too much, but why do we eat so much more than other countries?More specifically, why have we become so fat in only 20 years? The average adult weighs nearly 20 pounds more than his or her '70s counterpart. The number of overweight children has doubled and the number of overweigh

  July 14, 2009

• Go Jump in a Lake

  July 23, 2009

• Forecast Missouri 2050: Brutal temperatures and torrential rains

  ​In July 1995, temperatures in Chicago sizzled above 90 degrees for seven straight days and hospitals were overrun with so many patients overwhelmed by heat-induced conditions that emergency rooms at 23 facilities had to shut their doors. More than 700 people died that week because of the scorching weather, according to the Center for Disease Control, and hundreds of other fatalities scattered the rest of the Midwest.Get ready, Kansas City, because that type of disaster could become all too

  July 29, 2009