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Bellingham Boy Fighting Flesh-Eating Bacteria SEATTLE, Wash. -- What started as a 'fat lip' from a fall, now has a local 6 year old Jake Finkbonner fighting to survive. The boy has necrotizing faciitis, a bacteria that is attacking his face. His family says the bacteria was consuming him before their eyes. The infection is so aggressive, antibiotics aren't enough. He’s had three surgeries so far to try to save his life. Jake’s father, Donny, (says)......all of us are praying for him, and we’re just in God’s hands.” Jake’s mother, Elsa says, “he didn’t have any facial features that were...

Using genetic sequences from more than 3,600 strains of bacteria, scientists were able to see that it took only four steps to create the unusual microbe that spreads rapidly and destroys the body's soft tissue. Their report was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Necrotizing fasciitis is caused by several types of bacteria, most commonly group A Streptococcus. (See images of Streptococcus and other microbes in the "Small, Small World" photo gallery.) An international group of researchers sequenced the genomes of group A strep bacteria in samples that had been collected from as early as...

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "poison" as "a substance that is capable of causing the illness or death of a living organism when introduced or absorbed." The legal definition of the term is "any product or substance that can harm someone if it is used in the wrong way, by the wrong person, or in the wrong amount." The medical condition of poisoning is even broader: It can be caused by substances that are not even legally required to carry the label "poison." Therefore, can food become poisonous? Of course it can if it is infected, tampered with or altered...

A Nacogdoches man was in critical but stable condition after three surgeries aimed at saving him from a flesh-eating bacteria that infected him during a swim off the coast of Galveston County. Steve Gilpatrick, 58, was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis, a tissue-destroying disease caused by a bacterium called Vibrio vulnificus, when he took ill three days after swimming during a July 8 fishing trip at Crystal Beach. Gilpatrick's physician, Dr. David Herndon, the chief of burn services and professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said Tuesday the situation is life-threatening because the infection spread...