The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "germs" ...
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Airport Bacteria
KGTV sampled and tested the airport carpet and tile to find out just what passengers are exposed to in the security screening areas of Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Diego.
Tags: airports; bacteria; security screening; germs;
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Deadly Secrets: The hidden threat of hospital germs
This special report exposed the prevalence of deadly hospital germs passed on to patients by dirty medical equipment and workers who ignore basic precautions such as hand-washing. The report detailed the failure of the health care system to meet its top priority - keeping patients safe. There is no standard way of documenting hospital-acquired infections, and so patients don't know what sort of record their hospital has. These sorts of infections, the most well - known is Staph, are becoming increasingly common.
Tags: doctors; pharmacies; disease
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Unhealthy Hospital
This Chicago Tribune three-day series investigates the "hidden epidemic of life-threatening infections that is contaminating America's hospitals, needlessly killing tens of thousands of patients each year." The Tribune found that in 2000, nearly three-quarters of the deadly hospital-acquired infections were preventable and that serious violations of infection-control standards have been found in nearly three-quarters of the nation's hospitals.
Tags: infections; hospitals; health care; hospital-acquired infections; germs; contamination; infection control
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Dr. Death and His Accomplice
CBS News 60 Minutes tells the story of Dr. Larry Ford, a gynecologist who hired a hitman to kill his business partner and committed suicide after police connected him to the attempted hit. "When police went to search Dr. Ford's home in Irvine, CA, they found guns and explosives buried in his backyard and a cache of biological agents -- including botulism, salmonella, cholera and typhoid -- in his refrigerator. Police found evidence that Dr. Ford had allegedly poisoned women with some of his germs or chemicals, and (60 Minutes) discovered that a number of female acquaintances of his had long-term debilitating symptoms which rendered them legally disabled. Tips poured in to local police that Dr. Ford had military and intelligence connections, and that he had worked for South Africa's apartheid-era bio-warfare program. (60 Minutes) discovered strong evidence linking Dr. Ford to the leader of the South African program, Dr. Wouter Basson, who has been dubbed 'Dr. Death' by the African press, for his mandate to kill blacks and other opponents of the white-ruled government."
Tags: Dr. Larry Ford; Dr. Wouter Basson; Irvine; California; war; South Africa; TAPE; TRANSCRIPT
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Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War
The book takes a look at biological weapons programs around the world, including the United States. The book investigates many aspects of biological warfare including secret bioweapons testing by the CIA, the Pentagon's efforts to make a "superbug," and our efforts to combat biological weapons in the Persian Gulf War. The book attempts to shed some light on the changing global climate the lead to everyone at the Department of Defense being inoculated against Anthrax.
Tags: BOOK; bioterrorism; biological weapons; U.S. government; CIA
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The Germ Front
The American Prospect looks at the threat of biological weapons. "Our public-health system would buckle under a massive epidemic," is one of the main findings, based on a report of the General Accounting Office. The story follows the history of bioterrorism through the centuries, and depicts major developments in the field during the Cold War and in recent decades. The reporter finds that the threat of biological weapons is indisputably growing.
Tags: Biological Weapons Convention; bioweapons; Iran; Iraq; China; anthrax; smallpox; plague; biowarfare; Mideast; Afghanistan; CIA; Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies; Epidemic Intelligence Service; vaccines; medicine; Marburg virus; Ebola; Osama bin Laden
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Germs on the Loose: Bioweapons Tests Tainted Sites Around the Globe
"Every major World War II combatant had a biological weapons program," Choffnes writes, "and many of these countries' field test sites remain reservoirs of disease. Although the programs may have ended, the pathogens they released persist in the test sites' animal, bird, reptile, and insect populations. Unless extreme measures are taken to secure testing grounds, pathogens once released into the environment will adapt to new hosts and spread diseases to new areas...As it becomes harder to obtain pathogenic materials from private and public sources, terrorists or nations seeking to acquire a biological weapons capability might be tempted to obtain pathogen seed stocks from wildlife collections or other environmental sources of pathogenic materials." Story discusses in particular biological weapons testing sites in the U.S., Britain, and the former Soviet Union.
Tags: biological weapons; testing sites; field test; anthrax; bioweapons; disease; Vozrozhdeniye; U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program; Gruinard; U.S. Biological Defense Research Program; Chemical Warfare Service; Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
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Mystery Illness
KENS-TV investigates the astronomical number of people diagnosed with neuromuscular diseases in Huntsville, Texas. KENS-TV discovers that the diseases stem from a secret germ warfare experiment the U.S. government performed at the Huntsville prison in the 1970s.
Tags: TAPE; TRANSCRIPT; Huntsville; Texas; neuromuscular diseases germ warfare; health; prison; death; Lou Gehrig's; Lupus
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BioWar
CBS reports that many Navy ships were part of a secret biological warfare tests conducted in the 1960s. These tests, according to a Pentagon briefing film, were conducted to test the vulnerability of Navy ships to germ warfare attacks. CBS examines the fact that many sailors aboard the ships may have been unaware that they were exposed during these secret germ-warfare experiments.
Tags: VIDEOCLIP; TAPE; TRANSCRIPT germ warfare; U.S. government; U.S. Navy; military; bio war
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Germ Warfare: Weapons of Terror
This one-hour special investigates what the CIA's Director calls "perhaps the most significant threat in the post Cold War world" - bio-terror. In the hour, the defector and former head of Russia's massive bio-warfare program, Ken Alibek, speaks out telling Primetime Live how the Soviets put smallpox, anthrax, tularemia and plague into missile warheads which, until three years ago, were aimed at most large American cities.
Tags: TAPE