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1 Infectious Disease ) . B, E. col i strains are the number 
2 one cause of hospital-acquired infections in the United 
3 States. These infections are not gastroenteritis; they 
4 are acute infections, generally uterine, surgical wounds, 
5 pneumonia infections in the respiratory tract, and blood- 
e stream infections — bacteremias. 
7 To give you a sense of this, a recent survey 
3 of gram-negative hospital-acquired infections by Stan, 
9 Martin and Bennett, Journal of Infectious Disease , August 
10 1977 , indicates as follows: Each year in the United 
H States at present, there are 90,000 surgical wound 
12 infections due to E. col i strains, with 2,700 associated 
13 deaths. There are 40,000 nosocomial pneumonia 
14 infections due to E. col i strains, with 10,000 associated 
15 deaths. There are 17,000 bloodstream infections by E. col i 
16 strains, with 4,000 associated deaths. All these patients 
17 are compromised, they are in the hospital, they have been 
18 operated on, they are weak with something else, they are 
19 getting immunosuppression, and that is why they are getting 
20 sick. But of course, in general, that is who gets sick 
21 from infection -- compromised patients. 
22 I should add here that my own concern has always 
23 been, right from the beginning, not the conversion of K 12 
24 through a pathogen, but the transfer of a vast variety of 
25 genetic information into strains which are indigenous in 
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