It seems like a joke: poppy seeds laced with opioids.

In fact, it was a story arc Sitcom Seinfeld. But for some it was a tragedy.

People have died after drinking tea created from unwashed poppy seeds.

And after eating lemon poppy seed bread or an every little thing bagel, moms were reportedly separated from their newborns since the women failed drug tests.

Poppy seeds come from the plant produces opium and from which narcotics comparable to morphine and codeine are obtained. During harvest and processing, the seeds may turn into coated with the opium liquid.

Members of the House of Representatives and Senate have Legislative proposals “To prohibit the distribution and sale of contaminated poppy seeds in order to prevent harm, addiction and further deaths caused by poppy seeds contaminated with morphine.” The bill was one in all several on the agenda September 10 Hearing within the House of Representatives.

The day before the hearing The Marshall Project And Discover reported on a girl who ate a salad with poppy seed dressing before giving birth, tested positive for opiates within the hospital, was reported to child protective services, and saw her baby taken into protective custody. It was nearly two weeks before she was allowed to bring her baby home, the story goes.

“It's not an urban legend: Consuming poppy seeds can cause guests to test positive for codeine on a urinalysis,” the Defense Department said warned the military personnel in 2023.

The US Anti-Doping Agency issued one a protracted time ago similar warning to athletes.

The Center for Science within the Public Interest, a watchdog group, applied to the FDA in 2021 to limit the opiate content of poppy seeds. In May, after greater than three years of no response, it got here sued the agency Force motion.

“So far, the FDA has been negligent in protecting consumers,” said Steve Hacala, whose son died after consuming poppy seed tea and who has partnered with CSPI.

The lawsuit was placed on hold in July after the FDA said it might reply to the group's petition by the tip of February 2025.

The FDA didn’t reply to questions on this text. The agency generally doesn’t comment on litigation, said spokeswoman Courtney Rhodes.

A Study 2021 The study, co-authored by CSPI staff, found greater than 100 reports to poison control centers between 2000 and 2018 that resulted from intentional misuse or misuse of poppy seeds, said CSPI scientist Eva Greenthal, one in all the study's authors.

Only rarely will baked goods or other foods containing washed poppy seeds trigger positive drug tests, said doctors who’ve studied the issue.

It is “extremely doubtful” that the “relatively insignificant” amount of morphine in a bagel or similar would cause harm to anyone, said Irving Haber, a health care provider who has done so written about poppiesmakes a speciality of pain medicine and has signed the CSPI petition to the FDA.

On the opposite hand, tea created from large quantities of unwashed poppy seeds could lead on to addiction and overdose, doctors said. The risk increases if the person drinking the brew also uses other opioids, comparable to prescription painkillers.

Benjamin Lai, a health care provider who runs an opioid program on the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said he treated a patient who developed a long-term opioid addiction from consuming poppy seed tea. The patient, a person in his 30s, found it in a health food store and felt it might help him chill out and get well from understanding on the gym. After just a few months, he tried to quit and commenced experiencing withdrawal symptoms, Lai said.

Another patient, an elderly woman, developed withdrawal symptoms under similar circumstances but responded well to treatment, Lai said.

Some web sites tout poppy seed tea as having health advantages. And some sellers “may use specific terms such as 'raw,' 'unprocessed,' or 'unwashed' to signal that their products contain higher concentrations of opiates than properly processed seeds,” the CSPI lawsuit says.

Steve Hacala's son, Stephen Hacala, a music teacher, suffered from anxiety and insomnia, for which poppy seed tea is touted as a natural treatment, the lawsuit says. In 2016, at age 24, he ordered a bag of poppy seeds online, rinsed it with water and drank the conditioner. He died of morphine poisoning.

The only source of morphine present in Stephen's home where he died was commercially available poppy seeds, an Arkansas State Crime Lab forensic pathologist said in a letter to the daddy. The coroner wrote that Poppy was “very likely” answerable for Stephen’s death.

Steve Hacala estimated that the quantity of poppy seeds present in a 1-liter plastic water bottle at his son's home could have produced greater than 10 times a fatal dose.

Steve Hacala and his wife Betty have funded CSPI's efforts to bring attention to the issue. (KFF Health News Editor David Rousseau is on the CSPI Board.)

The lawsuit also cited moms who, like those in The Marshall Project and Reveal's investigation, violated rules protecting newborns. For example, although Jamie Silakowski didn’t use opioids during her pregnancy, she was initially prevented from leaving the hospital along with her baby, the lawsuit says.

Child protective services employees visited her home unannounced, interviewed her other children and questioned teachers at her school, she said in an interview.

During her maternity leave, she needed to undergo a drug test, Silakowski said. “Peeing in front of someone like I was a criminal – that was just shameful.”

Even members of the family questioned her and there was nothing she could do to clear the doubts, she said. “Relationships have been torn apart,” she said.

Tim Hortons' parent company, Restaurant Brands International, which also owns Burger King and Popeyes, didn’t reply to questions from KFF Health News.

In July, The Washington Post reported that Trader Joe's was stocking every little thing but bagel seasoning banned and confiscated in South Korea since it comprises poppy seeds. Trader Joe's didn’t reply to inquiries about this text. The spice is obtainable on the market on the corporate's website.

The USA Drug Enforcement Administration says unwashed poppy seeds will be fatal when used alone or together with other medications. While poppy seeds are exempt from drug control under the Controlled Substances Act, opium contamination within the seeds isn’t, the agency said. The Justice Department has taken criminal motion over the sale of unwashed poppy seeds.

Meanwhile, laws to manage poppy contamination has not gained much traction.

The Senate bill introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has two co-sponsors.

The House bill, introduced by Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), has none. Although it was on the agenda, it was not raised on the recent hearing.

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

How did the highest managers and board members react?

There was loads of leadership turmoil at OpenAI. The disagreements escalated in November 2023 when the corporate's board briefly fired its CEO Sam Altman. He got his job back in lower than every week, after which three board members resigned. The outgoing directors were advocates constructing stronger guardrails and promoting regulation to guard humanity from possible harm attributable to AI.

More than a dozen senior employees have resigned Since then, several other co-founders and executives have been answerable for overseeing OpenAI's security policies and practices. At least two of them have joined Anthropic, a competitor founded by a former OpenAI executive answerable for AI security. This is what among the departing executives say Altman has pushed the corporate to bring products to market ahead of schedule.

Security”has taken a back seat to shiny products” said Jan Leike, former head of OpenAI's security teamwho left in May 2024.

Why should the structure of OpenAI change?

OpenAI's wealthy investors cannot own shares within the organization or receive a seat on the board under the prevailing nonprofit governance structure. This is because OpenAI is registered as a non-profit organization whose purpose is to learn society and never private interests. To date, all investment rounds, including a reported total, have been accomplished $13 billion from Microsoftwere channeled through a for-profit subsidiary owned by the nonprofit organization.

The current structure allows OpenAI to just accept money from private investors in return for a future portion of its profits. However, these investors don’t receive a voting seat on the board and their profits are “capped”. According to previously published information, these are the unique investors of OpenAI You cannot earn greater than 100 times the cash they supply. The goal of it Hybrid governance The model is to balance profits with OpenAI's security-focused mission.

Converting to a for-profit company would allow its investors to amass ownership shares in OpenAI and not face a cap on their potential profits. Later, OpenAI could also go public and lift capital on the stock exchange.

Altman is reportedly attempting to purchase one personally 7% equity stake in OpenAIsaid a Bloomberg article that cited unnamed sources.

This Agreement shouldn’t be permitted for officers of non-profit organizations. in keeping with BoardSourcean association of nonprofit board members and executives. Instead, the association explains, nonprofits must “reinvest surpluses back into the organization and its tax-free purpose.”

What form of company could OpenAI turn into?

The Washington Post and other media outlets, citing unnamed sources, have reported that OpenAI has turn into a “Non-profit corporation” – a business that goals to learn society and generate profits.

Examples of corporations This status, generally known as B Corps., includes the outdoor clothing and equipment company Patagonia and the eyewear manufacturer Warby Parker.

It is more typical that a for-profit company – not a non-profit organization — will turn into a charitable corporation, in keeping with B Lab, a network that sets standards and offers certifications for B Corps. This is unusual for a non-profit organization, as non-profit governance already requires that these groups profit society.

The boards of directors of corporations with this legal form are free to have in mind the interests of society, the environment and other people who usually are not shareholders that shouldn’t be vital. The board should decide to make profits its top priority and sacrifice its performance status to please its investors. This is the net craft market Etsy did it in 2017, so two years after he became one listed company.

In my view, any try to convert a nonprofit organization right into a nonprofit corporation is a transparent departure from specializing in the nonprofit's mission. And there may be a risk that it’s going to turn into a non-profit entity Just be a trick to disguise a shift to concentrate on revenue growth and investor profits.

Many legal scholars and other experts predict that OpenAI will do that is not going to completely abandon its hybrid ownership model as a consequence of legal restrictions on the transfer of charitable assets into private hands.

But I believe OpenAI has a possible workaround: It could attempt to dilute the nonprofit's control by making it a minority shareholder in a brand new for-profit structure. This would effectively eliminate the nonprofit board's power to carry the corporation accountable. Such a move may lead to this an investigation by the responsible public prosecutor's office and possibly the Internal Revenue Service.

What could occur if OpenAI becomes a for-profit company?

There is so much at stake for society.

The potential harm that AI could cause is far-reaching, and a few of it’s already evident, similar to misleading political campaigns and bias in healthcare.

If OpenAI, an industry leader, focuses more on making profits than ensuring the security of AI, I consider these dangers could turn into even worse. Geoffrey Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024 for his research on artificial intelligence, has done this warned that AI could worsen inequality by replacing “many everyday jobs.” He believes there may be a 50% probability “that we will have to face the problem of AI trying to take over humanity.”

And even when OpenAI retained board members who made security a top priority, the members of the brand new company board would only be their very own common denominators Commitment to protecting the interests of the corporate's shareholderswho would expect a profit. While such expectations are common on a for-profit board, they represent a conflict of interest on a nonprofit board, where the mission must come first and board members cannot derive financial profit from the organization's work.

The deal would undoubtedly please OpenAI's investors. But would it not be good for society? The purpose of nonprofit control of a for-profit subsidiary is to be certain that the profit doesn’t interfere with the nonprofit's mission. Without guardrails to be certain that the board is attempting to limit the harm to humanity attributable to AI, there can be little reason to stop the corporate from maximizing profits, whilst its chatbots and other AI products endanger society.

Regardless of what OpenAI does, most artificial intelligence corporations are already for-profit corporations. In my view, the one option to address the potential harm is thru higher industry standards and regulations which begin to take shape.

The governor of California vetoed such a bill in September 2024 on the grounds that it will slow innovation – but I consider that a slowdown is precisely what is required given the hazards AI already poses to society.

FREMONT – A large Fremont site that was formerly home to a Fry's Electronics store has been purchased by a Southeastern real estate investment group for greater than $30 million.

Documents filed with the Alameda County Recorder's Office on June 17 show that the Sterling Organization, through an affiliated company, paid $35.7 million to buy the location of a former Fry's Electronics store in Fremont.

The Florida-based Sterling Organization is a non-public equity real estate firm that sometimes teams up with large investors to purchase properties nationwide, based on information on the corporate's website.

The former Fry's store on the recently sold property was designed with an electricity theme and was a tribute to the 1893 World's Fair, including a Tesla coil in the shop. From time to time, electrical lightning was simulated at an exhibition.

The seller was an organization called Wardenclyffe LP. Coincidentally, the Wardenclyffe Tower, positioned in upstate New York, was an experimental radio transmission tower designed and built by Nikola Tesla.

Wardenclyffe LP is an affiliate of Quality Real Estate and Quality's managing director, Richard Singer. For several years, Quality Real Estate was positioned at the identical East Brokaw location where Fry's Electronics had its headquarters and a Mayan-style store in north San Jose.

It was not immediately clear from land records whether a number of members of Fry's family were involved within the sale of the Fremont property.

The Fry's store in Fremont closed its doors in 2021, together with quite a few other Fry's retail stores, in a sudden implosion and closure of Fry's operations.

What is definite is that Wardenclyffe purchased the property in 2000, which was the last time the property was purchased. In the 2000 transaction, the customer and seller drafted the deeds in such a way as to hide the worth.

The estimated value of the Fremont property was roughly $26 million in early 2023. The old store remains to be on the property.