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Both were new additions this year to list, as was Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, who placed fourth.
Get the full story: Forbes.com
Six weeks after Jack Mahoney was born prematurely on Feb. 3, 2011, the neonatal staff at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., noticed that his heart rate slowed slightly when he ate. They figured he was having difficulty feeding, and they added a thickener to help.
When Jack was discharged, his parents were given the thickener, SimplyThick, to mix into his formula. Two weeks later, Jack was back in the hospital, with a swollen belly and in inconsolable pain. By then, most of his small intestine had stopped working. He died soon after, at 66 days old.
A month later, the Food and Drug Administration issued a caution that SimplyThick should not be fed to premature infants because it may cause necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, a life-threatening condition that damages intestinal tissue.
Catherine Saint Louis speaks about using SimplyThick in premature infants.
Experts do not know how the product may be linked to the condition, but Jack is not the only child to die after receiving SimplyThick. An F.D.A. investigation of 84 cases, published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 2012, found a “distinct illness pattern” in 22 instances that suggested a possible link between SimplyThick and NEC. Seven deaths were cited; 14 infants required surgery.
Last September, after more adverse events were reported, the F.D.A. warned that the thickener should not be given to any infants. But the fact that SimplyThick was widely used at all in neonatal intensive care units has spawned a spate of lawsuits and raised questions about regulatory oversight of food additives for infants.
SimplyThick is made from xanthan gum, a widely-used food additive on the F.D.A.’s list of substances “generally recognized as safe.” SimplyThick is classified as a food and the F.D.A. did not assess it for safety.
John Holahan, president of SimplyThick, which is based in St. Louis, acknowledged that the company marketed the product to speech language pathologists who in turn recommended it to infants. The patent touted its effectiveness in breast milk.
However, Mr. Holahan said, “There was no need to conduct studies, as the use of thickeners overall was already well established. In addition, the safety of xanthan gum was already well established.”
Since 2001, SimplyThick has been widely used by adults with swallowing difficulties. A liquid thickened to about the consistency of honey allows the drinker more time to close his airway and prevent aspiration.
Doctors in newborn intensive care units often ask non-physician colleagues like speech pathologists to determine whether an infant has a swallowing problem. And those auxiliary feeding specialists often recommended SimplyThick for neonates with swallowing troubles or acid reflux.
The thickener became popular because it was easy to mix, could be used with breast milk, and maintained its consistency, unlike alternatives like rice cereal.
“It was word of mouth, then neonatologists got used to using it. It became adopted,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a neonatologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. “At any given time, several babies in our nursery — and in any neonatal unit — would be on it.”
But in early 2011, Dr. Benson Silverman, the director of the F.D.A.’s infant formula section, was alerted to an online forum where doctors had reported 15 cases of NEC among infants given SimplyThick. The agency issued its first warning about its use in babies that May. “We can only do something with the information we are provided with,” he said. “If information is not provided, how would we know?”
Most infants who took SimplyThick did not fall ill, and NEC is not uncommon in premature infants. But most who develop NEC do so while still in the hospital. Some premature infants given SimplyThick developed NEC later than usual, a few after they went home, a pattern the F.D.A. found unusually worrisome.
Even now it is not known how the thickener might have contributed to the infant deaths. One possibility is that xanthan gum itself is not suitable for the fragile digestive systems of newborns. The intestines of premature babies are “much more likely to have bacterial overgrowth” than adults’, said Dr. Jeffrey Pietz, the chief of newborn medicine at Children’s Hospital Central California in Madera.
“You try not to put anything in a baby’s intestine that’s not natural.” If you do, he added, “you’ve got to have a good reason.”
A second possibility is that batches of the thickener were contaminated with harmful bacteria. In late May 2011, the F.D.A. inspected the plants that make SimplyThick and found violations at one in Stone Mountain, Ga., including a failure to “thermally process” the product to destroy bacteria of a “public health significance.”
The company, Thermo Pac, voluntarily withdrew certain batches. But it appears some children may have ingested potentially contaminated batches.
The parents of Jaden Santos, a preemie who died of NEC while on SimplyThick, still have unused packets of recalled lots, according to their lawyer, Joe Taraska.
The authors of the F.D.A. report theorized that the infants’ intestinal membranes could have been damaged by bacteria breaking down the xanthan gum into too many toxic byproducts.
Dr. Qing Yang, a neonatologist at Wake Forest University, is a co-author of a case series in the Journal of Perinatology about three premature infants who took SimplyThick, developed NEC and were treated. The paper speculates that NEC was “most likely caused by the stimulation of the immature gut by xanthan gum.”
Dr. Yang said she only belatedly realized “there’s a lack of data” on xanthan gum’s use in preemies. “The lesson I learned is not to be totally dependent on the speech pathologist.”
Julie Mueller’s daughter Addison was born full-term and given SimplyThick after a swallow test showed she was at risk of choking. It was recommended by a speech pathologist at the hospital.
Less than a month later, Addison was dead with multiple holes in her small intestine. “It was a nightmare,” said Ms. Mueller, who has filed a lawsuit against SimplyThick. “I was astounded how a hospital and manufacturer was gearing this toward newborns when they never had to prove it would be safe for them. Basically we just did a research trial for the manufacturer.”
WASHINGTON -- The federal deficit will drop to less than $1 trillion for the first time in five years, but massive spending cuts that have improved the budget outlook are also slowing the economy, according to a report released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget office.
The nonpartisan arbiter of federal budgets said the combination of new tax revenue from the "fiscal cliff" deal as well as looming cuts that kick in March 1 will push the deficit down to $845 billion for fiscal 2013. Deficits have topped $1 trillion in recent years.
The projections will fuel the coming budget debates, which started Tuesday as President Obama was calling on Congress to steer around the coming budget cuts.
The budget office said the cuts will contribute to an economy that lags in 2013. The unemployment rate likely will remain above 7.5% through the year. It predicted that the gross domestic product will be well below its potential, growing by just 1.4%, more than half a percentage point slower than would happen if the spending cuts were averted.
At the same time, the nation's debt load is expected to fluctuate but ultimately rise to record levels this decade, largely because of increased spending on healthcare and the federal safety net for older Americans with the aging of the baby boom population.
Additionally, the outlook shows how difficult it will be for House Republicans to accomplish their goal of balancing the budget in 10 years with potentially deep austerity measures.
Even though revenue is rising and spending is decreasing, the overall budget outlook remains stark. By the end of the decade, public debt is set to rise to 77% of GDP, a decade of highs on par with debt levels in World War II.
"The projected path of the federal budget remains a significant concern," the CBO wrote.
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Lisa.mascaro@latimes.com
Twitter: @LisaMascaroinDC
NEW ORLEANS—
Sunday's close Super Bowl contest between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers failed to beat last year's game in total viewers, CBS Corp said on Monday.
An average of 108.41 million viewers tuned in, compared with 111.3 million a year ago when the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots on NBC. CBS said it was the third-most-watched program in television history, behind last year's Super Bowl and 2011's match-up between thePittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers, which garnered 111 million viewers.
CBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether a 35-minute partial electrical blackout in the third quarter of the game affected ratings. Advertisers paid $4 million on average for a 30-second spot during the game.
Late Sunday, CBS said in a statement that "all commercial commitments during the broadcast are being honored."
Commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters on Monday an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the disruption. He said there was no indication that Beyonce's halftime show had anything to do with the outage.
CBS said earlier on Monday that the telecast earned an average overnight household rating of 48.1 in Nielsen's metered markets, up 1 percent compared with last year's Super Bowl. CBS said the rating excludes the blackout, which occurred just after the start of the second half, between 8:45 p.m. and 9:15 p.m. Nielsen's "metered markets" represent the top 56 U.S. TV markets.
The highest-rated period during Sunday's Super Bowl occurred from 10:30 p.m. to 10:47 p.m., when the game came down to the wire and the Ravens were able to hold off a furious second-half comeback by the 49ers to win 34-31. CBS said that over those 17 minutes, an average of 113.92 million viewers were tuned in.
The Super Bowl, which determines the NFL champion for the 2012 season, is broadcast live in more than 180 countries and in more than 30 different languages. The commercials during the game regularly net a record amount of ad revenue for the network that broadcasts the game in a given year.
Analysts said stand-out commercials included Chrysler's Jeep ad featuring a patriotic salute to U.S. troops and narration by Oprah Winfrey, an Oreo ad asking viewers to vote cookie or creme, and a scantily clad male Calvin Klein model.
Bluefin labs, a firm that tracks social media activity, said viewers produced 30.6 million social media comments, up from 12.5 million last year. The most talked about ad on social media was the Dodge Ram Trucks "Farmer" commercial, followed by Taco Bell's "Viva Young" spot featuring senior citizens behaving badly, Bluefin said.
The Super Bowl also gives the network that airs it an unprecedented promotional platform for its other programming, with the time slot immediately after the game among the most coveted in television. This year CBS chose to showcase its new crime drama "Elementary," a post-modern take on "Sherlock Holmes," in that time slot.
Just under 21 million viewers stuck around after the game to watch "Elementary," making it the lowest-rated post Super Bowl show in 10 years. Part of the blame for the weak rating can be cast on the game's 35-minutes blackout, which pushed "Elementary's" start time to after 11 p.m. on the East Coast.
Last year, NBC's "The Voice" scored 37.6 million viewers in the post-Super Bowl slot. ABC's airing of "Alias" in 2003 garnered only 17.3 million viewers.
"Elementary" averages around 10 million viewers during its normal airings.
Apple (AAPL) may be about to make up for delivering a disappointingly low resolution for its first-generation iPad mini display. BrightWire reports that supply chain sources have told Chinese website My Drivers that the next-generation iPad mini will indeed feature a 7.9-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, or 324 pixels per inch. For comparison, consider that the original iPad mini delivered a resolution of just 163 pixels per inch, less than both the Amazon (AMZN) Kindle Fire HD and the Google (GOOG) Nexus 7, which both featured displays with resolutions of 216 pixels per inch. BrightWire’s report also backs up earlier rumors we’ve heard about Apple choosing AU Optronics to make an HD Retina display for its next-generation iPad mini.
[More from BGR: iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak now available for download, compatible with iPhone 5 and iPad mini]
This article was originally published on BGR.com
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NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – The National Football League was still working with New Orleans officials on Monday to determine what caused the power outage at Sunday’s Super Bowl at the Superdome, so far dismissing any connection with the Beyonce halftime show.
With a record U.S. television audience watching along with viewers in 180 countries, about half the stadium lights went dark early in the second half of the game, in which the Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters on Monday an investigation was under way to determine the cause of the 35-minute disruption but one possible explanation had already been eliminated.
“There’s no indication at all that this was caused by the halftime show,” Goodell said. “I know that’s out there, that Beyonce’s halftime show had something to do with it. That is not the case from anything we have at this point.”
Entergy Corp, the utility providing power to the Superdome, said its distribution and transmission feeders were serving the Superdome at all times.
Early indications were that the outage resulted from an abnormality in the Superdome’s power system but it was too early to speculate on what went wrong, said Doug Thornton, senior vice president of the Superdome’s management company, SMG.
A piece of equipment designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system where the Superdome equipment intersects with Entergy’s feed into the building, triggering an automatic cut in power, SMG and Entergy said in a joint statement.
There was never any concern the power could not be restored, but it took time because of the size of the stadium and the complexities of the power system, Thornton said.
“We had people in place that could quickly work to restore power. We had experts on site, as we normally do when we have big events like this, our electrician, our electrical consultants were there and we were able to quickly work on that,” Thornton said.
“There were no injuries, people remained calm, we had a pre-programmed announcement that was actually played. These are things that we actually drilled for.”
None of the players or coaches said the stoppage had any impact on the game, and Goodell said the power problem would not adversely affect future bids by New Orleans to stage the Super Bowl, the United States’ most-watched sports event.
“I fully expect that we will be back here for Super Bowls,” Goodell said. “I hope we will be back. We want to be back … I don’t think this will have any impact at all on what I think will be remembered for one of the greatest Super Bowl weeks.”
(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Dale Hudson)
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When Kyle Potvin learned she had breast cancer at the age of 41, she tracked the details of her illness and treatment in a journal. But when it came to grappling with issues of mortality, fear and hope, she found that her best outlet was poetry.
How I feared chemo, afraid
It would change me.
It did.
Something dissolved inside me.
Tears began a slow drip;
I cried at the news story
Of a lost boy found in the woods …
At the surprising beauty
Of a bright leaf falling
Like the last strand of hair from my head
Ms. Potvin, now 47 and living in Derry, N.H., recently published “Sound Travels on Water” (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about her experience with cancer. And she has organized the Prickly Pear Poetry Project, a series of workshops for cancer patients.
“The creative process can be really healing,” Ms. Potvin said in an interview. “Loss, mortality and even hopefulness were on my mind, and I found that through writing poetry I was able to express some of those concepts in a way that helped me process what I was thinking.”
In April, the National Association for Poetry Therapy, whose members include both medical doctors and therapists, is to hold a conference in Chicago with sessions on using poetry to manage pain and to help adolescents cope with bullying. And this spring, Tasora Books will publish “The Cancer Poetry Project 2,” an anthology of poems written by patients and their loved ones.
Dr. Rafael Campo, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, says he uses poetry in his practice, offering therapy groups and including poems with the medical forms and educational materials he gives his patients.
“It’s always striking to me how they want to talk about the poems the next time we meet and not the other stuff I give them,” he said. “It’s such a visceral mode of expression. When our bodies betray us in such a profound way, it can be all the more powerful for patients to really use the rhythms of poetry to make sense of what is happening in their bodies.”
On return visits, Dr. Campo’s patients often begin by discussing a poem he gave them — for example, “At the Cancer Clinic,” by Ted Kooser, from his collection “Delights & Shadows” (Copper Canyon Press, 2004), about a nurse holding the door for a slow-moving patient.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.
In Ms. Potvin’s case, poems related to her illness were often spurred by mundane moments, like seeing a neighbor out for a nightly walk. Here is “Tumor”:
My neighbor walks
For miles each night.
A mantra drives her, I imagine
As my boys’ chant did
The summer of my own illness:
“Push, Mommy, push.”
Urging me to wind my sore feet
Winch-like on a rented bike
To inch us home.
I couldn’t stop;
Couldn’t leave us
Miles from the end.
Karin Miller, 48, of Minneapolis, turned to poetry 15 years ago when her husband developed testicular cancer at the same time she was pregnant with their first child.
Her husband has since recovered, and Ms. Miller has reviewed thousands of poems by cancer patients and their loved ones to create the “Cancer Poetry Project” anthologies. One poem is “Hymn to a Lost Breast,” by Bonnie Maurer.
Oh let it fly
let it fling
let it flip like a pancake in the air
let it sing: what is the song
of one breast flapping?
Another is “Barn Wish” by Kim Knedler Hewett.
I sit where you can’t see me
Listening to the rustle of papers and pills in the other room,
Wondering if you can hear them.
Let’s go back to the barn, I whisper.
Let’s turn on the TV and watch the Bengals lose.
Let’s eat Bill’s Doughnuts and drink Pepsi.
Anything but this.
Ms. Miller has asked many of her poets to explain why they find poetry healing. “They say it’s the thing that lets them get to the core of how they are feeling,” she said. “It’s the simplicity of poetry, the bare bones of it, that helps them deal with their fears.”
Have you written a poem about cancer? Please share them with us in the comments section below.
The lawsuit against the McGraw-Hill Cos unit focuses on its ratings in 2007 of various U.S. collateralized debt obligations (CDO), S&P said.
It would be the first federal enforcement action against a credit rating agency over alleged illegal behavior tied to the financial crisis.
"A DOJ lawsuit would be entirely without factual or legal merit," S&P said in a statement. "The DOJ would be wrong in contending that S&P ratings were motivated by commercial considerations and not issued in good faith."
The Justice Department was not immediately available for comment.
Several state attorneys general are expected to join the case, The Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The expected charges follow the breakdown of talks between the department and S&P, the newspaper said, citing the people.
In afternoon trading, McGraw-Hill shares were down $2.39, or 4.1 percent, at $55.95.
S&P and its main rivals, Moody's Corp's Moody's Investors Service and Fimalac SA's Fitch Ratings, have long faced criticism from investors, politicians and regulators for assigning high ratings to thousands of subprime and other mortgage securities that quickly turned sour.
The rating agencies are paid by issuers for ratings, a standard industry practice that has nonetheless raised concern about potential conflicts of interest.
In January 2011, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission called the agencies "essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction" and "key enablers of the financial meltdown."
McGraw-Hill had acknowledged last July that the Justice Department and SEC were probing potential violations by S&P tied to its ratings of structured products, and that it was in talks to try to avert a lawsuit.
The New York-based company had previously disclosed an SEC probe into its ratings of a $1.6 billion CDO known as Delphinus CDO 2007-1. It was not immediately clear whether that CDO is a focus of the potential lawsuits.
Last July, Mizuho Financial Group Inc agreed to a $127.5 million settlement to resolve SEC allegations that a U.S. unit obtained false credit ratings for Delphinus.
In a variety of lawsuits brought by investors, S&P has maintained that its ratings constitute opinions protected by the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Last August, a Manhattan federal judge refused to dismiss one such case, brought by Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, King County in Washington state, and other investors against S&P, Moody's and Morgan Stanley over losses in Cheyne, a structured investment vehicle.
Cheyne went bankrupt in August 2007. A trial is scheduled to begin on May 6, court records show.
In its statement, S&P said it "deeply regrets" how its CDO ratings failed to anticipate the fast-deteriorating mortgage market conditions, and that it has since spent $400 million to help bolster the quality of its ratings.
A 39-year-old Carpentersville man was pronounced dead this morning after he was involved in a three vehicle crash on the Tri-State Tollway this morning, Illinois State Police said.
The accident happened at 6:47 a.m. on the Tri-StateTollway (I-294) at mile marker 24 3/4 near Lake-Cook Road in Lake County, Illinois State police officials said.
The vehicles included a Chrysler Sebring, a tow truck and a taxi, said State Police Sgt. Tim Moore.
The accident began as the tow truck and the Chrysler Sebring were traveling east on the tollway in Deerfield, Moore said.
As the two vehicles were driving, the Sebring struck the rear of the two truck which then caused the two vehicles to pull over to the shoulder of the roadway, said Moore.
After the tow truck driver got out of his truck and was standing on the shoulder speaking to the driver of the Sebring, a taxi struck the tow truck driver. The vehicle then struck the back of the Chrysler, Moore said. In additition to the taxi driver the vehicle was carrying a passenger, Moore said.
The driver of the Chrysler, who was inside his vehicle, was pronounced dead, Moore said. The tow truck driver, who had been struck by the taxi, did not sustain life-threatening injuries, Moore said.
There were a total of three transports made to Advocate Luthern General Hospital in Park Ridge all with non-lifethreatening injuries. Police initially said there had been four people taken to hospitals for treatment.
Chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking
NEW DELHI/JAKARTA (Reuters) – Research in Motion Ltd must chart a tough course in its two key emerging markets of India and Indonesia: quickly launch cheaper handsets to woo lower-end subscribers while restoring its tattered brand among the countries’ status-conscious.
The company, which is rebranding itself BlackBerry after its best-known smartphone, has won millions of followers in these two Asian countries, mostly by selling cheaper handsets and offering service packages as low as $ 2 a month. So it’s unlikely that the Z10 model introduced last week, which operators in India expect to sell for around $ 750, will appeal to the users it must reach if it is to build market share.
“It’s clear that not only are India and Indonesia among the largest markets but in terms of future smartphone growth, they’re amongst the ones with the most potential,” said Melissa Chau, senior research manager at technology research group IDC in Singapore. “But the two devices that have been launched are not well aligned to the needs of these two markets.”
While the company does not break down its sales by country, data from IDC shows that Indonesia was BlackBerry’s biggest market outside the United States and Britain last year, while India was ninth.
ABI Research said that BlackBerry accounted for nearly half of Indonesia’s smartphone shipments in 2012. Compare this with a global share of just 5.3 percent. In India, the world’s second-largest mobile phone market, BlackBerry ranks third after Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Nokia.
In both countries, young people are drawn by low-cost handsets allowing them to communicate for free on the BlackBerry Messaging Service (BBM). Almost all carriers offer services for the device. Indonesia’s XL Axiata Tbk PT, for example, saw a 45 percent jump in BlackBerry subscribers last financial year after offering packages for as little as 20 cents per day.
But this picture is changing rapidly.
The rise of messaging services such as WhatsApp that are not confined to any single operating system and the proliferation of cheap Android devices have diluted the BlackBerry’s appeal.
Mickey Nayoan, a 32-year old product designer in Jakarta, swapped his BlackBerry for a Samsung phone six months ago and isn’t missing it.
“I survived without BlackBerry because there’s WhatsApp,” he said. “More and more people use it and so I don’t need BBM anymore.”
At the same time, higher-end users have deserted what is increasingly seen as a low-end brand.
“When they came up with the cheaper versions, that took the allure off the brand for many Indonesians who are very status-conscious,” said Ong Hock Chuan, a Jakarta-based communications consultant.
ANDROID MAKES INROADS
While BlackBerry remained the number one smartphone brand in Indonesia in the second quarter of last year, the most recent period for which rankings were available, Android overtook it as the most popular operating system, according to IDC.
IDC said when it released the data last September that this was partly because of delays in the launch of the BlackBerry 10. The Z10 is likely to launch in the second half of February in India and in late March in Indonesia.
Data from StatCounter, a website which estimates mobile web traffic, shows BlackBerry’s share in Indonesia falling from about 20 percent in 2011 to about 5 percent last year.
On the other hand, carriers and users say, glitches with BlackBerry services and a perception that the brand has lost some of its luster mean that it will be hard to sell the Z10 and a keyboard model, the Q10, even to better-off users.
“It really depends on how BlackBerry 10 performs. If it can fix problems of previous BlackBerry (services) it could succeed in the market,” said Hasnul Suhaimi, CEO of Indonesia’s XL Axiata. But for now, he said, “it will just be about people swapping out existing devices.”
To reverse this, BlackBerry must announce cheaper devices quickly, analysts say. BlackBerry launched handsets designed on its old platform for just such users in India and Indonesia last year.
“The Z10… is obviously a high-end product and India is not a market at that price point,” said Anshul Gupta, an industry analyst at technology advisory firm Gartner in Mumbai. “We don’t know exactly what will be coming here, but I would expect them to launch different models in India which would give them more traction.”
(Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Mumbai and Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore; Writing by Jeremy Wagstaff; Editing by Emily Kaiser)
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