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Prompted by the UCLA superbug outbreak, a federal lawmaker is calling on Congress to investigate what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and device makers are doing to prevent further patient deaths and infections. In a letter sent Monday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) said outbreaks related to contaminated medical scopes “have national security ramifications.” (Terhune, 2/23)

Congress should launch an investigation into what the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is doing to prevent additional superbug infections after a deadly outbreak at a Los Angeles hospital linked to tainted medical scopes, a lawmaker said Monday. (2/23)

A senior Food and Drug Administration official voiced reservations about the new method UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center is using to clean medical scopes linked to an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The official also said Monday that the agency will require makers of any new devices to show that they can be cleaned more reliably. In the aftermath of the outbreak at UCLA, which contributed to the deaths of two patients, university officials began sterilizing the instruments, known as duodenoscopes, using a toxic gas. (Willman and Terhune, 2/23)

Seven medical specialty societies, the American Bar Assn. and the American Public Health Assn. on Monday joined forces to declare gun-related injuries, which annually kill an average of 32,000 Americans and harm nearly twice that number, "a public health crisis" that should be studied and solved "free of political influence or restriction." (Healy, 2/23)