FDA begins testing aged raw cow’s milk cheese samples nationwide for bird flu
Al Drago/CQ Roll Call
(NEW YORK) — Federal health officials have begun collecting samples of aged raw cow’s milk cheese across the U.S. to test for bird flu, the Food and Drug Administration announced.
Sample collection started at the end of this month and is expected to be completed by the end of March 2025, the FDA said Monday. If needed, the agency said it will extend the collection period.
It comes after the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a federal order earlier this month that raw milk samples nationwide would be collected and shared with the agency to be tested for bird flu.
The FDA said it plans to collect 300 samples of raw cow’s milk cheese that has been aged for at least 60 days from warehouses and distribution centers across the country.
Samples will be tested with a PCR test, which looks for genetic material from the virus, and will be completed within one week of collection, according to the FDA. Samples that indicate the presence of the virus will undergo viability testing.
Viability testing will be done by injecting part of the virus into an embryonated egg and analyzing if it grows or multiplies.
Raw milk cheese is made with unpasteurized milk. In the U.S., cheese can be made from raw milk but must be aged a minimum of 60 days to lessen the risk of any pathogens that may be present, per the FDA.
Samples that test positive for viable virus will be “evaluated on a case-by-case basis,” the FDA said, and the agency may issue actions “such as a recall, follow-up inspection or other possible responses to protect public health.”
The FDA has previously warned of the dangers of drinking raw milk, which does not undergo pasteurization — a process that kills viruses and bacteria. The agency currently considers unpasteurized soft and hard cheeses, as well as other products made from unpasteurized milk, a “high-risk choice.”
Past studies from federal health officials have shown that pasteurization effectively kills the bird flu virus. Nearly all, or 99%, of the commercial milk supply produced on dairy farms in the U.S. follows a national pasteurization program.
Pasteurization has been a practice in the U.S. for more than 100 years and kills harmful bacteria and viruses by heating milk to a specific temperature over time, the FDA notes.
The U.S. has been facing an outbreak of bird flu, or avian influenza, since April, when the first human case was reported.
Almost all confirmed cases have had direct contact with infected cattle or infected livestock. Most bird flu cases in the U.S. have been mild, and patients have typically recovered after receiving antiviral medication.
(WASHINGTON) — During his confirmation hearings two weeks ago to lead the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated several unfounded claims about autism.
Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has made money through books, speeches and lawsuits while sharing vaccine skepticism, refused to say that vaccines don’t cause autism despite many high-quality studies finding no such link.
He stated during the hearing that autism rates have “have gone from 1 in 10,000 … and today in our children, it’s one in 34.” His claims have been repeated by President Donald Trump on Truth Social.
It’s unclear where Kennedy got his 1 in 10,000 statistic. In 2000, approximately 1 in 150 children in the U.S. born in 1992 were diagnosed with autism compared with 2020, during which one in 36 children born in 2012 were diagnosed, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some psychiatrists and autism experts told ABC News it’s important to highlight the rising rates of autism, and that at least Kennedy is putting a spotlight on it.
“On the bright side, I think it is really important to place an emphasis on these very high rates, it’s kind of great putting a spotlight on autism, these increased rates,” Dr. Karen Pierce, a professor in the department of neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego and co-director of the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence, told ABC News. “We need more funding. We need more infrastructure to support everybody who is now recognized as on the spectrum. So, I think that that’s actually a really good thing.”
However, the experts said Kennedy and others are missing important context about why autism rates are increasing. They say reasons may include a combination of widening of the definition of the spectrum and of types of symptoms associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as well as people having children at older ages, better awareness and access to diagnostic testing.
“With the rates increasing, there certainly are valid reasons for that,” Pierce said. “There’s better awareness, and doctors can find autism a lot easier than they could before in the past…. and I think a very big reason is just better record keeping nowadays and easier access to reviewing records.”
What is autism?
ASD is a developmental disability caused by differences in the brain, according to the CDC.
People with ASD often communicate, interact, behave and learn differently, the CDC says. ASD symptoms typically begin before age 3 and can last a lifetime, although symptoms may change over time.
“There can be differences in how one is reading social cues and interpreting them, and then there’s also certain behaviors that we see,” Dr. Anna Krasno, clinical director of the Koegel Autism Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told ABC News.
“So those include a preference for sameness, a difficulty with transitioning, some cognitive and behavioral rigidity,” she continued. “We also see intense interests, so topics that people are super, super into and want to research, repetitive speech and motor movements. And then we also see really significant sensory differences as well.”
ASD is a spectrum, which means symptoms vary by person — some need little support in their daily lives and some may need a great deal of support in performing day-to-day activities. Some may have advanced conversation skills and others may be nonverbal.
Wider recognition, better understanding
Experts told ABC News there is a wider recognition and a better understanding of what is now understood as autism/ASD.
Traits of what is now known as ASD are built on early observations in the 1940s from Austrian-American psychiatrist Dr. Leo Kanner and Austrian physician Dr. Hans Asperger.
A 1943 paper from Kanner described 11 children who presented with “inborn autistic disturbances of affective contact” while Asperger’s 1944 report focused on boys who had marked social difficulties; unusual, circumscribed interests; and good verbal skills.
It was not until 1978 that autism was recognized as a developmental disorder distinct from schizophrenia by the World Health Organization. It was also in the 1970s that psychologists and psychiatrists first came to describe autism as a spectrum.
“When autism was first described, it was new to people understanding that there was a condition that included social communication difficulties and restricted and repetitive behavior, and people primarily only recognized it when it was at its most extreme,” Dr. Jeremy Veenstra-VanderWeele, division director in child and adolescent psychiatry at Columbia University, told ABC News.
“And so, if you go back and read the initial descriptions today, those are kids who we would recognize in the waiting room, recognize in the grocery store, in whom autism would be very obvious and would not require much assessment in order to diagnose,” he continued.
Better diagnostic tools
Experts say another reason for the increase in rates is having better diagnostic tools than what was available decades ago.
There is no single tool used as the basis of an ASD diagnosis. Typically, tools rely on descriptions from parents or caregivers of a child’s development and a professional’s observation of a child’s behavior, according to the CDC.
Currently, the Autism Society encourages all children to be screened for signs of autism by their family pediatrician three times by the age of three — at nine, 18, and 24 or 30 months. If a child shows symptoms of ASD, more rigorous diagnostic testing can be carried out by a specialist including a full neuropsychological exam.
Additionally, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) provides standard criteria for helping diagnose autism.
Under DSM-5, a child meets the criteria if they have deficits in three areas of social communication and interaction and at least two of four types of restricted, repetitive behaviors.
While the first edition of DSM came out in 1952, it was not until the third edition, DSM-3, in which autism was listed under an entirely new “class” of conditions — the Pervasive Developmental Disorders.
Veenstra-VanderWeele said the change in the criteria is another reason why the number of those diagnosed with autism rose. He likened it to changing the definition of what it means to be tall.
“To just use a crude example, if you would define somebody as tall if they were over six-foot-six, and then 30 years later, say that somebody is tall if they’re over five-foot-10, you’d get very, very different numbers, and that’s part of what’s happened here,” he said.
Pierce added that because of limited knowledge and awareness in the past, there may have been many children who were underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed.
“It’s understandable that people wouldn’t even necessarily think that somebody has autism, because nobody knew what really autism was,” she said. “So, you know, large numbers of people were just put in the books as just having special education needs, maybe as a language delay or of having a cognitive impairment.”
Older reproductive age
Some studies have suggested that people who become pregnant at an older age have an increased risk of giving birth to a child with autism.
A 2012 review and meta-analysis of 16 papers from researchers in New York, London, Israel and Sweden found an association between advanced maternal age and the risk of autism.
Advanced paternal age may also be a risk factor. A 2006 study conducted jointly by researchers in New York, London and Israel found that men who were above age 40 were 5.75 times more likely to have a child with ASD compared to men younger than age 30 after controlling for other factors.
However, questions still swirl about whether or not there is a risk from the age of parents, and not all researchers are convinced.
“I know that there is some research looking at maternal and paternal age with regard to autism, and there’s research around environmental causes,” Krasno said. “I think where I always firmly land is that it is inherited, and it is genetic. So, I don’t know the exact correlation between age and diagnostic rate, but we do know that genetics are highly associated with diagnosis.”
Environmental risk factors
Researchers are also divided over whether or not environmental risk factors play a role in causing autism.
The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences says the “clearest evidence” involves events before and during birth, including prenatal exposure to air pollution or pesticides; maternal obesity or diabetes; extreme prematurity; and periods of oxygen deprivation to the brain during birth.
“But these factors alone are unlikely to cause autism. Rather, they appear to increase a child’s likelihood for developing autism when combined with genetic factors,” NIEHS states on its website.
Pierce said from the studies she’s read, evidence suggests autism is a genetic condition. She added the environmental factors may play a role but “to a small degree.”
Myth that vaccines cause autism
The myth that vaccines cause autism was born out of a fraudulent 1998 study, hypothesizing that the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine caused intestinal inflammation, which, in turn, led to the development of autism.
The paper has since been discredited by health experts, retracted from the journal in which it was published, and its primary author, Andrew Wakefield, lost his medical license after an investigation found he had acted “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in conducting his research.
More than a dozen high-quality studies have since found no evidence of a link between childhood vaccines and autism.
However, Kennedy has held fast to this claim, saying during a 2023 interview on Fox News that he believes autism comes from vaccines.
During the HHS confirmation hearings, Kennedy said he was not “anti-vaccine” but “pro-safety.” At the same time, Kennedy repeatedly refused throughout the hearings to say that vaccines were not linked to autism, while still insisting he supports vaccination in general.
Experts told ABC News there is no evidence to suggest a link between vaccines and autism, and perpetuating the myth can be dangerous.
“Once there’s a lie and it’s spread, it doesn’t matter that it’s a lie. Once people hear it, then they believe that it’s true despite all of the Herculean efforts to disprove it and debunk it,” Pierce said. “There’s no evidence for it whatsoever, and there’s actually extremely, as far as scientific evidence is concerned, there’s extremely strong evidence to suggest absolutely not.”
Christopher Banks, president and CEO of the Autism Society of America, said the false claim that vaccines cause autism can divert financial resources from much-needed research.
“Instead of advancing support and therapies, time and funding are wasted disproving a debunked theory,” he said. “This misinformation also fuels stigma, implying that autism is something to be feared rather than understood and supported, leading to discrimination against autistic individuals.”
ABC News’ Dr. Jade Cobern, Cheyenne Haslett and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
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(NEW YORK) — As world leaders mourn the death of former President Jimmy Carter and remark on his political and policy legacy, doctors are remembering his efforts to prevent disease, and his legacy in furthering global public health.
The 39th president spent five decades working to eradicate a parasitic disease, helped organize a major-drug donation program, and made advancements addressing the mental health crisis in the U.S.
Dr. Julie Jacobson, currently a managing partner of the nonprofit Bridges to Development, helped to provide funding for the Carter Center’s work in the Americas, Nigeria and Ethiopia while she worked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for over a decade.
“He was hugely influential, I think particularly for the diseases that most of the world doesn’t appreciate even exist,” Jacobson told ABC News of Jimmy Carter’s work. “He was a true champion for the neglected tropical diseases, which are some of the most common infections of people who live with the least resources. And he found these diseases and then really wanted to do something about them, and used his voice, his influence, his passion, to continue to push forward where others were really not interested.”
Near-eradication of Guinea worm disease
Following his loss to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, Carter founded the Carter Center in 1982, a non-profit organization that “seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health,” according to the Center’s website.
Among the organization’s many efforts, the Carter Center helped spearhead a successful international campaign with the goal of eradicating dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea worm disease, a parasitic infection caused by consuming contaminated drinking water.
Water from ponds or other stagnant bodies of water can contain tiny crustaceans commonly known as water fleas, which in turn can be infected with Guinea worm larvae, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
About one year after infecting a human host, the Guinea worm creates a blister on the skin and emerges from it, which can cause burning pain, fever and swelling, according to the CDC and the World Health Organization.
“Nobody else wanted to take it on,” Jimmy Carter told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during a 2015 interview on “Good Morning America”. “So, I decided to take it on.”
In 1986, Guinea worm disease afflicted 3.5 million people every year in 21 African and Asian countries. Disease incidence has since been reduced by 99.99%, to just 14 “provisional” human cases in 2023, according to the Carter Center.
Jacobson said that success is even more remarkable because there are no vaccines available to prevent Guinea worm disease and no drugs to treat it. Tracking Guinea worm disease, according to Jacobson, involves following possible cases for a year to determine if they are infected, checking to see if infected humans have any infected water sources near them, and monitoring the community as a whole.
“To think that you could eradicate a disease without any tools is really still just a crazy idea, but he did it with perseverance and working with people in the grassroots within communities and putting together teams of people to go and work with people in those communities and empower the communities,” Jacobson said.
The Carter Center says if efforts are successful, Guinea worm disease could become the second human disease in history to be completely eradicated, after smallpox, and the first to be done without the use of a vaccine or medicine.
Carter told ABC News during the 2015 interview that eradicating the disease entirely was his goal: “I think this is going to be a great achievement for, not for me, but for the people that have been afflicted and for the entire world to see diseases like this eradicated.”
Mass drug distribution for river blindness
The Carter Center also works to fight other preventable diseases, including the parasitic infections schistosomiasis and lymphatic filariasis – more commonly known as snail fever and elephantiasis, respectively – as well as trachoma, which is one of the world’s leading causes of preventable blindness. It’s also working with the governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to eliminate lymphatic filariasis and malaria from the island of Hispaniola, which both countries share and which is “the last reservoir in the Caribbean for both diseases,” according to the Carter Center.
Carter and his organization also played a part in organizing a major drug-donation program to help eliminate onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, which is transmitted to human through repeated bites of infected blackflies, according to the CDC.
Pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. had been implementing field studies in Africa which showed that the drug ivermectin was effective at treating river blindness in humans. The Carter Center partnered with Merck to mass-distribute ivermectin, brand name Mectizan, “as much as needed for as long as needed” in Africa and Latin America. To date, the Carter Center has assisted in distributing more than 500 million treatments of Mectizan, according to Merck.
In 1995, Carter negotiated a two-month cease-fire in Sudan to allow health care workers there to more safely help eradicate Guinea worm disease, prevent river blindness, and vaccinate children against polio.
“When we have known solutions, it is ethical to make sure they’re available to the people who need it most,” Dr. Usha Ramakrishnan, chair of the Department of Global Health at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, told ABC News. “And that’s where we were with river blindness. There was a treatment, but improving access to medications, making it affordable, reaching the people they need was very much along the lines of the work [the Carter Center] was doing.”
Addressing mental health
Carter was also committed to tackling mental health issues. During his presidency, he created the Presidential Commission on Mental Health, which recommended a national plan to care for people with chronic mental illness.
Although it was never adopted as policy by the Reagan administration, the plan’s recommended strategies were adopted by some mental health advocacy groups to “make gains in the 1980s,” according to one study.
Carter also signed into law the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, which provided funding to community mental health centers.
After his presidency, Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter continued working to improve access to mental health.
Ramakrishnan said the Carters’ work helped to reduce some of the stigma associated with mental health.
“There continues to be a lot of stigma, but they truly got it out [in] the conversation and mainstreaming mental health as an important aspect of health and well-being,” Ramakrishnan said. “There’s still a lot of challenges, and there are many capable people that they have mentored and trained who are carrying that mantle forward.”
More than 90 norovirus outbreaks were reported during the week of Dec. 5, the most recent week for which data is available, according to the CDC.
CDC data from previous years for the same December week show a maximum of 65 outbreaks reported.
National CDC data reflects what has been reported in state and counties across the country.
In Minnesota, more than 40 outbreaks were reported in December, almost twice the usual number, according to the state Department of Health.
Earlier this month, an event celebrating the top restaurants in Los Angeles left at least 80 people sickened with norovirus, which was linked to raw oysters, the county’s Department of Public Health confirmed to ABC News.
Norovirus is a highly contagious virus that is the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis, which is an inflammation of the inside lining of the gastrointestinal tract.
Although it’s often referred to as the “stomach bug” or “stomach flu,” norovirus illness is not related to influenza.
The most common symptoms are nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea. Patients, however, can also experience fever, headaches and body aches.
According to the federal health agency, every year the virus causes between 19 and 21 million illnesses, 109,000 hospitalizations and 900 deaths.
A person can become infected by having direct contact with someone who is infected and sharing food or utensils with them; touching surfaces or objects contaminated with norovirus and then touching their face or mouth; or consuming contaminated foods or liquids.
Typically, an infected person will develop symptoms between 12 to 48 hours after being infected. However, norovirus typically resolves quickly and, in most healthy adults, lasts one to three days, according to the CDC.
There is no specific medication or antiviral for norovirus, meaning the only treatment available is managing symptoms.
The CDC recommends staying hydrated and drinking liquids that replenish electrolytes, which can be depleted through diarrhea and vomiting.
Although symptoms will resolve in a few days for most people, certain groups are at high risk for severe dehydration including those under age 1, the elderly and the immunocompromised.
Health experts say the best way to prevent getting norovirus is to wash hands with warm soap and water for 20 seconds. Hand sanitizer does not work well against norovirus.
The CDC says people should wash their hands after using the toilet or changing diapers as well as when eating, preparing or handling food.
To prevent contamination from food, make sure fruits and vegetables are washed, and that shellfish is cooked to at least an internal temperature of 145 F.
