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in 1996 more than a dozen children in seattle washington were seriously ill and fighting for their lives all gripped by
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a mysterious illness when one of the children died officials feared more deaths would follow
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and medical detectives frantically searched for the cause [Music] terry and kelly beverly both worked in
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the computer industry and have two children a son michael and a daughter bettina
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after a leisurely day of playing in the woods michael complained of pain in his stomach later he had uncontrolled
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diarrhea when his diarrhea contained blood his parents became alarmed he was just laying on the couch
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just still having bloody diapers every every 30 minutes and just very painful and
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it was just just changing him just heart looking at his little body it was turning itself inside out
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the beverly's took michael to a hospital emergency room where doctors discovered
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that his blood count had dropped to dangerous levels his kidneys were failing and life-threatening clots were
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forming in his blood acute bloody diarrhea and otherwise healthy child is an important medical
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problem and physicians here and elsewhere work that up very aggressively take that very
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seriously michael's stool sample was sent to the laboratory for testing doctors were alarmed when they found a
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potentially deadly pathogen known as e coli o157 it's a bacteria usually found in the
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intestines of both humans and animals when an individual becomes infected there is no cure
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e coli o157 infects more than 20 000 people each year killing 500 of them in 1993
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four people died after eating e coli tainted hamburgers from the jack-in-the-box fast food chain
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fully cooking hamburgers can kill the e coli bacteria but these burgers had not been fully cooked
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when i found out it was the strain of e coli and i asked him if it was the same strain
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that affected the kids in jack in a box he said yes michael has the same strain and i said oh my god
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when he call il-157 is in a widely disseminated vehicle out for out in the population for
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general consumption it's like a serial murderer is potentially loose in the population
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was one of the children infected with e coli 0-157 from an undercooked hamburger
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purchased at the jack-in-the-box restaurant she was in a coma for six weeks the e coli produces cytotoxins which
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kill other cells breaking through the endothelial layer of the intestines spilling poisons into the bloodstream
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that complication is called hemolytic uremic syndrome although brienne kiner eventually came
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out of her coma most of her major organs were damaged and she'll need a kidney
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transplant when she's older michael beverly also developed hemolytic uremic syndrome which can cause brain
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damage kidney damage sepsis and death doctors immediately placed michael on kidney dialysis to cleanse his body of
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toxins hemolytic uremic syndrome is life-threatening of all the kinds of diarrheas a child an otherwise healthy
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child is can get in north america almost none will cause a death or could cause a death
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except for this one that's why this one is so uh fearsome once it gets into a
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person the kidney specialist came in and he said it's very serious and he might
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not pull through the night it's up to his little body and then that's when i
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just broke down i came out and i started crying immediately i just i said this is
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it as michael beverly lay near death in a seattle hospital medical investigators were still trying
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to figure out how he came into contact with this deadly pathogen [Music] as two and a half year old michael
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beverly lay unconscious and near death in a seattle hospital 12 more children were admitted to local hospitals all
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diagnosed with the same deadly pathogen e coli o157 since there is no cure for e coli o157
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investigators needed to find the source of the outbreak before even more people were infected
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my biggest concern was that the cases we were seeing every other day were just the very beginning of a much
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larger outbreak medical investigators suspected that food was the probable source
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but the e coli might have been in one food source or many dr mansour samadpur's job was to see if
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he could identify the exact strain of e coli that infected the children to find out he turned to something
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usually used for criminal investigations dna testing when we say e coli 157 it's a very large
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clan very large family or tribe in the e coli species when we do genetic fingerprinting we can
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go to the individuals in that family so instead of saying that some you know someone with the last name of smith
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killed someone else we can say that john smith with social security number of such and such living in such and such
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place committed to crime like human beings a pathogen like e coli has its own genetic fingerprint
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using what is called micro restriction fingerprinting the e coli samples were placed in a buffer of restriction
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enzymes which break the cells open then the dna strands are cut into smaller pieces making them easier to
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analyze the fragments are placed into a gel with a dye and after a process called
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electrophoresis the genetic profile appears similar to a barcode the results indicated that all of the e
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coli strains were the same in other words all of the sick individuals had been infected from the same source
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we had nine patients that had e coli o157s in them with the same genetic fingerprint definitely that that shows
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that you have a growing outbreak e coli o157 has a long incubation period five to seven days far longer than most
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food-borne illnesses dr russ alexander's job was to figure out what was causing the outbreak the
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standard method is to employ what's called a case control study investigators questioned all of the
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patients families to find out what the victims had consumed five to seven days before first developing symptoms
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they also compared those answers to what others in the same family consumed who were not infected
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our early thinking was that this was probably a meat sauce because that's what mostly is what it is so we
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are looking for everything they've eaten and what kind of restaurants they've
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been to what kind of fast food restaurants in particular but the initial interviews did not reveal any
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one food item that all had consumed there was something in common with these individuals that made these individuals
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ill on the other hand the preliminary interview did not produce any obvious sources of infection
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but when investigators looked more carefully over their initial results they found a clue
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one of the sick children was a vegetarian we had this one case that was a clear-cut case it was a
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vegetarian family and there was no chance of any meat in this particular instance so we
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quickly realized we were into something else this time another more detailed questionnaire was designed with meat
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excluded as the possible cause the new questionnaire centered on fruits vegetables dairy products and related
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food sources not until we had gotten enough cases uh coming in with this uh extended
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questionnaire that we began to see something else that was in terms of the source
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by the end of the week we were already pretty sure that there was that there was one thing that
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was standing out the second set of interviews revealed that the victims had all consumed
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apple juice but with hundreds of brands on the market investigators feared it would be
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difficult to find out which one when seattle health officials discovered that apple juice was consumed by the e
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coli patients they needed to find out which brand and there were hundreds of brands on the market
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but their next clue came from an unexpected source in denver colorado doctors were treating a desperately ill
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16 month old girl named anna gimistad anna also had an e coli 0157 infection and her parents told doctors that they
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had been in seattle just one week earlier the gimmick dads recalled feeding anna
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some apple juice a brand she preferred because of the bright rainbow colors on the label
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odwalla the beverly family also recall feeding their son michael the same brand from a
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neighborhood coffee shop this one particular sunday i went up and stood in line and you know to order our drinks and
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i saw them prepare it and i last went you use old walla for the kids and they go well yeah
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so i'm like oh further investigation revealed that the other victims also consumed odwala apple
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juice five to seven days before developing symptoms the odwalla company manufactures and
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distributes juice products in seven states and british columbia it's a brand known for its freshness
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most fruit juices are pasteurized which means they're heated to a temperature
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high enough to kill any bacteria but odwalla juice was not pasteurized the company believed that pasteurization
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hurt the taste of their juice the company's mission statement read if it's not fresh squeezed then it's not
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odwalla just nine days after the outbreak health officials asked the odwalla company to
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voluntarily remove their product from store shelves the company complied even though there was no conclusive proof
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that odwalla was the source of the outbreak as you know immediately upon hearing of the
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possibility of consumer health risks we recall our products contain apple juice our primary concerns for the
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health and welfare of our consumers the news that the source may have been apple juice
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was little relief to the gimmistad family in evans colorado sixteen-month-old anna was taking a turn
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for the worse like some of the other victims anna developed hemolytic uremic syndrome a
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complication of the e coli infection that produces toxins that shut down the kidneys
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less than two weeks after anagemist had consumed the odwalla apple juice she died
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for the beverly's news of anna gimistad's death was terrifying just knowing that there was a 16 month
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old that died i was very that just to me i knew he was i thought he was going to
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die to be frank i said this is it he's going to die and although investigators discovered
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that all of the affected individuals had consumed o'dwalla juice there was no
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proof that the juice was the source of the outbreak the proof if there was any would be in the juice itself
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thousands of bottles of odwalla juice were tested for e coli 0157 but the deadly pathogen could not be found
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medical investigators were starting to wonder whether they were ever going to find scientific proof that the apple
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juice was the source of the outbreak all of the e coli victims remember drinking odwalla apple juice shortly
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before getting sick but investigators couldn't find the e coli bacteria in any of the odwalla
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juice bottles they tested but on november 4 1996 at the odwala distribution center
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investigators found one bottle of apple juice that tested positive for e coli o157
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the question now was whether the bottle contained the same strain that caused the death of anna gimistad and infected
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michael beverly and the other children to find out investigators turned once again to dna
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testing the dna profile on the left is the e coli strain from michael beverly on the right
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the dna profile of the e coli found in the bottle of odwalla apple juice the profiles were identical
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scientific proof that the odwalla juice was the source being able to identify the same genetic
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strain of e coli in a bottle of unopened odwalla juice given that an estimated 40
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thousand of these bottles it's not finding a needle in a haystack it's finding a needle out of about a
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hundred haystacks spread across most of western united states the label revealed the juice had been
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bottled on october 7 1996 three weeks before the outbreak company records identified the orchard
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whose apples were used to make the juice that day dr sarah cody an epidemic intelligence
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officer with the california department of health went to the orchard to investigate
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we were wandering in the orchard and what we noticed was along the edge of the orchard there were a number of uh
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deer prints in the sand and near the deer prince were deer droppings a potential source of e coli
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o157 dr cody wondered whether some of the apples had fallen to the ground had come
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into contact with the deer droppings and then were picked up and sent to the juice processing plant
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dr cody collected samples which were sent to the lab for testing the e coli from the deer droppings was
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then sent for dna testing but it did not match the e coli strain that infected the 13 children
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it's possible that there could have been one deer or a number of deer that were
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shedding one strain or more than one strain so perhaps we just isolated the wrong strain or perhaps we got the wrong
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deer perhaps we've got the wrong orchard the odwalla company says that it's
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against their policy to purchase apples that were picked up from the ground even
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though oddballah claimed to have documents signed documents from their suppliers that they did not use ground
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apples or apples from the ground we found that it's virtually impossible to verify that or to enforce it
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especially when workers are paid by the bin in 1996 the u.s army considered serving
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odewala juice to military personnel but after an inspection of the odwalla processing plant military investigators
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stated that odwalla's plant sanitation program does not adequately assure product wholesomeness for military
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consumers the army rated the bacteria levels in the juice as too high a copy of the us army report found its
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way into the hands of the attorney representing the victims of the e coli outbreak
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william marler adwala was trying to sell adwala jews to the u.s army no not as a
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bacteriological weapon but the amount of bacteria that were that was in the finished product samples were in the
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millions where any possible responsible company would have had it in the the tens
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the united states attorney general's office took the unprecedented step of indicting odwalla in a criminal
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prosecution the charge delivering adulterated food products for interstate commerce
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and when we find a company that has knowingly placed contaminated food into the stream of commerce we're going to
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prosecute that company and we're going to put the individuals in jail and that's a very strong lesson and it's
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one that that the people that manufacture food in this country ought to take to heart
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in july of 1998 odwala pleaded guilty and was fined one and a half million dollars the largest penalty ever imposed
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in a food poisoning case odwala products are now pasteurized and carry warning labels
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but for the family of 16 month old and against dad that was too little too late there's no amount of monetary penalty or
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jail time that is ever going to bring back little anna or make the other dozen or so children that
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were severely injured whole again so from that standpoint i don't think that there
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was a possible settlement that would have been satisfactory e coli 0157 can cause serious diseases
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there's other food borne pathogens out there that can cause serious diseases
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we have the technology to prevent many of these problems this the consumption of unpasteurized apple
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juice in the 1996 outbreak was a dramatic example of how a safe effective technology was not
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employed to the detriment of children in the northwest the families of the victims filed suit
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against odwalla and settled with the company before going to trial the terms of that settlement were not
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disclosed michael beverly now appears to be in good health but he and the other children still face the possibility of
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future medical complications from their e coli 0157 infection what was it that almost killed
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michael it was e coli it was the effects of e coli toxin in his body eating up his his system
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that's what almost killed him unfortunately i see it a little different i see it i see it as what
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almost killed him was a company's negligence and irresponsibility and this shouldn't have happened
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the smoking gun in this case was the science it was what the forensics gave us odwalla had no wiggle room
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it was conclusive it was a matter of scientific principle that ode wallace product had e coli o157 h7 in it and
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that that was the same exact bacteria which was in the victims [Music] [Music] [Applause]
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[Music] you