It's hard to know what local news reaches the national news, but surely the most recent two things that have the town in a tizzy must have reached you all by now.

1. The 40,000 people who went to get a colonoscopy (or other procedure) and came away exposed to Hepatitis or HIV.

To save money, this busy endoscopy center decided to get more than one patient's worth of medicine out of one-use vials and while they were at it, re-use syringes when dipping into those vials.

For example, patient A has hepatitis. They inject anesthetic into him from a vial and throw out the needle, but use the same syringe to draw other medicine out of another vial to inject in that same patient. Some of his blood might get into that vial. There is still some medicine left in the vial, so they draw some out into a new syringe/needle to inject into patient B, so now he's exposed to the hepatitis. If there is any left in the vial, they pour it together with the dregs in other vials and inject it into even more patients.

The health department noticed several cases of hepatitis C showing up and tracked it down to patients who had procedures at that clinic on July 25 and September 21 of 2007. One clue to what was going on was that the clinic purchased a lot fewer one-use medicine vials than the number of treated patients.

While they were at it, they also didn't use good technique in washing the colonoscopy equipment between patients, but you can use your imagination on that one.

It is too soon for people to have HIV symptoms show up, but apparently this unsafe method has been in use since 2004, so 40,000 people received letters to go get tested for diseases, because even though the cases they know about can be tied to just those two days, the health department doesn't know what was special about those dates since the bad practices have been going so long.

What I found odd was that one man who has been diagnosed with hepatitis C told the newspaper that he was told by the doctors of the endoscopy center that he had come down with the disease, and they he had apparently caught it on Sept 21 at their facility, but they didn't know how, since they had passed a health dept inspection. He didn't realize how serious it all was until this recent publicity, now he feels like it's a death sentence. Strange that those doctors didn't do something about their practices at that time.

Several lawyers have taken out full and half page newspaper ads looking for people to join in the class-action lawsuits, and the TV news is warning that maybe 100,000 people could be exposed because the 40,000 have families and co-workers they could have spread the diseases to.

2. The Ricin Scare
A reclusive 57 year old guy living in an Extended Stay suite went to the hospital with respiratory symptoms and lapsed into a coma.

A couple weeks later "family members" (the newspaper put it in quotes) called the Extended Stay office and told them he had pets who were probably not being taken care of. Sure enough, when the Humane Society came and got them, two cats and a dog were locked in there. The cats recovered, but the dog was too far gone from lack of water and food, so had to be put to sleep.

The Extended Stay people started eviction proceedings and in the process of cleaning out the unit found four guns so they called the cops.

At some point, a "family member" (the newspaper put it in quotes) was in the unit and found a terrorist handbook tabbed to the part about making and using Ricin (deadly poison, amount the size of a pinhead will kill an adult) and vials with powder in them that he took to the office, and that is what turned out to be ricin, so Homeland Security and everyone else in the police and fire department and even some National Guard troops were called out to blockade off the area and so forth.

Meanwhile, the loner is still in a coma in the hospital, and they don't know if the ricin caused it, but they say that if it doesn't kill you right away, if there's nothing else wrong with you, you'll recover.

The relatives are from Riverton, Utah, near Salt Lake City, and this loner guy lived with them for awhile because he had nowhere else to go, and then he moved to Las Vegas.

What impressed me was that the 'authorities' told the news media that possessing guns does not make a person a terrorist, nor does possession of a terrorist handbook or making ricin - maybe he just wanted to make it see if he could, they said. I thought that showed a lot of restraint on their part.