JAPANESE OUTBREAK

As everyone should know by now, in the summer of 1996 Japan had the world’s largest E.coli outbreak, affecting almost 10,000 people, mostly school children, with at least 11 confirmed deaths. It appears that the outbreak began in May, Rainer Mueller first uncovered the story on June 19 via his on-line clipping service.

He contacted the Japanese embassy in Washington, DC several times to offer his assistance regarding the outbreak, which, even by middle June, was the largest E.coli outbreak ever recorded. For whatever reason, the Japanese government did not return any of his telephone calls.

As with methods in this country, when the government doesn’t respond, Rainer contacted the media, and in this case, the Japanese media. Almost immediately Tokyo Broadcasting contacted him and within a week, this Japanese media giant sent a reporter and cameraman to his home in Oceanside, CA to film and interview Rainer along with Roni Rudolph, who also lost a child to E.coli in Southern California. The interview appeared in Japan ten days later, on a show, which is similar in format to the well known American TV program, "60 Minutes." Rainer received a copy of the program but since everything is in Japanese, he is looking for a translator. But after watching the video, Rainer felt it was the best expose he had ever seen done on E.coli. The reporter interviewed not only Rainer, but leading E.coli researchers in this country and Japan as well. Also shown were the overcrowded hospitals with their E.coli victims.

Some of Rainer’s interview then later appeared on Tokyo Broadcasting’s equivalent of our "Today" show.

Rainer was also contacted by doctors in Sakai, Japan where over 6,000 people were affected by the E.coli outbreak. The medical community had discovered Rainer’s page on the Internet World Wide Web. They confirmed to Rainer that the strain of E.coli was O157, and Rainer assisted them by giving them the name of American and Canadian pharmaceutical manufacturers leading the fight against this disease. Rainer was also contacted by reporters for Japanese newspapers who discovered his web page, and he did email interviews with them.

News came that people from Sakai were be treated much like lepers in other parts of Japan. Hotel reservations were canceled for people from Sakai. And in several reported incidents, residents of Sakai were beaten when discovered in other parts of Japan.

For reasons which were later determined to be a embarrassment to the Japanese government, the Japanese people were given erroneous information as to what was causing their continuing outbreaks. For some strange reason, the American media did not pick up the story of this huge outbreak until it had infected 8,000 people in one of the most modern countries on the planet! Extremely little was reported in the American print, television, or radio media regarding the Japanese epidemic. Especially strange when you take into consideration how much information (and how fast!) you get when there's an Ebola outbreak in the darkest recesses of equatorial Africa. . .

But then all of a sudden it hit with a bang.

Rainer analyzed the amount of beef exported to Japan, and discovered that Japan imports 46% of its beef from the Unites States, and 48% of its beef from Australia. Going back through press reports into 1993, he found that Australia had reported only E.coli O111 cases, whereas the United States cases were almost exclusively E.coli O157, the same that had been found in Japan. He postulated that maybe it was American beef that was causing the problem in Japan.

As part of its diplomacy, the Japanese government requested editors of Japanese newspapers not to mention beef in any way as a probable cause of the E.coli outbreak. Since the outbreak at first appeared to affect mostly school children, the Japanese school lunch program was suspected as the cause. The first blame was passed to the lowly eel, a staple in the Japanese diet. But no contaminated eel could be found. Next, radishes were blamed, which caused a collapse of the Japanese radish market, but again, no contaminated radishes were ever found.

Under mounting pressure from its citizens, the Japanese government, after three months of apparent stonewalling, was forced to admit that E.coli O157 had been found in organ meat imported from the United States. The Japanese government even went so far and asked for assistance from our CDC (the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA). But when they got involved, the American researchers complained privately about the lack of cooperation with the Japanese government.

Today the outbreak is almost history in Japan, but the Japanese people have lost more faith in their government. Beef consumption has declined dramatically in Japan, affecting both the Australian and the American beef markets. The Japanese people are some of the most meticulous people on the face of the earth, but they love to eat their meat raw or rare. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned from this?