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Not exactly. But it is a tale from the war many states are conducting on those who sell raw milk.

That’s right, there is a dangerous underground of dairy devotees who prefer to drink their milk straight from the cow, sans pasteurization and homogenization – and government is increasingly out to stop them. Some states, in fact, equate the sale of raw milk with the sale of drugs. Consider this from Washington Post reporter Thomas Bartlett:

The issue of selling raw milk is, legally speaking, dicey. To determine exactly how dicey, I call Ted Elkin, deputy director of the Office of Food Protection and Consumer Health Services at the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Elkin is in charge of making sure the state’s dairy laws are enforced.

“So,” I begin carefully, “Maryland’s position on raw milk is . . .?”

“Raw milk is illegal for sale,” Elkin says. “Period.”

“Huh,” I reply.

To help drive this point home, he compares selling raw milk to selling pot.

“Interesting,” I say. At that moment, I am standing in my kitchen with the fridge door open, staring at my gallon of possible contraband.

This seems positively surreal, like some parody of the war on drugs aired on Saturday Night Live.

NCRC also called for legislation to establish a national rescue fund to support low-income borrowers, strengthen consumer laws and eliminate nontraditional, exotic loans and incentives for bad lending practices.

According to housing experts, anywhere from one to three million Americans may lose their homes this year; another 100,000 people in housing-related industries could be fired, and an estimated 100 additional sub-prime mortgage companies may go under. As sub-prime lenders retrench, it will become harder for working-class people to buy a home and, as more people lose their homes, the overall economy could be in danger of a recession.

The boy was infected by his father, a U.S. soldier who was vaccinated in January in preparation for service in Iraq. But his deployment was delayed, and he returned home to Indiana late last month. His son, who suffers from skin lesions known as eczema, then became infected by vaccinia, a virus similar to smallpox and used in the vaccine against it.

The boy is the first person to suffer from the severe infection, known as eczema vaccinatum, since the U.S. military began inoculating troops in 2002. But his condition is so uncommon that U. of C. experts said they could not find reports of any cases in the United States since before 1972, when routine vaccinations for smallpox were halted.

Only seen in photos
“This is something that is new to us,” said Kenneth Alexander, head of pediatric infectious disease at U. of C.

The boy, whose name was not released, was sent to U. of C. from a northwest Indiana hospital March 3 after he developed a severe rash. He didn’t improve after treatment, and by March 7, a dermatologist noticed his lesions resembled those caused by smallpox — something doctors had only seen in photos because the disease was eradicated.

Doctors contacted the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which agreed to fly in a treatment never used on a child, vaccinia immune globulin (VIG). The drug was hand-delivered by U.S. marshals.

The boy’s condition continued to worsen, and last weekend, his lungs and kidneys began to fail. “He was near death,” said Madelyn Kahana, chief of pediatric critical care medicine. Painful skin lesions covered most of his body.

‘He is slowly improving’
The CDC then asked the Food and Drug Administration to grant emergency permission to try ST-246, an experimental drug being developed to fight smallpox. It had been effective in treating mice and monkeys infected with the virus, said U. of C. pediatrician John Marcinak, who is spearheading the boy’s treatment. But it had never been used on a sick person.

That, combined with VIG and another drug, seems to be working. Since he first got the drug March 11, “he is slowly improving,” Marcinak said.

The boy’s mother contracted a milder form of the vaccinia virus from the boy and has been quarantined in the boy’s room but is recovering well, officials said.

She has cried some days but in general has been “very strong and optimistic,” said Surabhi Vora, a U. of C. fellow who has been assisting in the boy’s treatment.

‘Military has to be careful’
Doctors said the father — who has since returned from his deployment at the hospital’s urging — had no idea he should stay away from his son after receiving the vaccine.

Kahana said the “military has to be careful” in making sure soldiers understand the risks and that they stay away from high-risk populations, such as people with eczema.

“They are trying to figure out where the misstep was,” she said of the military. A military spokesman could not be reached Saturday.

The boy has two siblings, but no one else appears to have been infected, doctors said. The hospital has taken extreme precautions in treating the boy — including keeping him in a room where the air only flows inward. Officials say the general public is not at risk because the infection is only transmitted through close physical contact.

Now doctors are just hoping the boy will make a full recovery. Before the infection worsened, the boy was fairly cooperative and talkative, saying “cup, cup, cup” when he was thirsty, Vora recalled. But since then, the boy has been sedated and is on a ventilator.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Thursday an investigation he began last month into the $85 billion student loan industry found numerous arrangements made to benefit schools and lenders over the students.

…

“There is an unholy alliance between banks and institutions of higher education that may often not be in the students’ best interest,” Cuomo said. “The financial arrangements between lenders and these schools are filled with the potential for conflicts of interest. In some cases they may break the law.”

Investigators found that many colleges have established questionable “preferred lender” lists and entered into revenue sharing and other financial arrangements with those lenders.

In the process, students have been denied their choice of lender, or faced difficulty using that lender, hurting their chances of getting better loan terms, the attorney general said.

Passport requests usually shoot up this time of year ahead of the busy spring and summer travel season. But the department has been really swamped since the government in late January started requiring U.S. airline passengers—including children—to show a passport upon their return from Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean.

Passport applications filed between October and March are up 44 percent from the same period a year ago, the department told lawmakers this week. In February alone, applications were up 25 percent.