Is milk the carrier of Crohns disease?

We hear constant chatter from the regulatory types about the dangers of raw milk and the health hazards of consuming it. But they seem to be strangely uninterested in examining the health risks of consuming conventionally produced and processed milk products, not to mention many other processed foods. The L.A. Times article excerpted below gives a rare glimpse into one of the health hazards of conventional dairy products that we’re mostly not hearing much about. This article is from twelve years ago. One wonders whether any further research has been done since then to follow up on these significant findings. From Thomas H. Maugh II, in the L. A. Times, via Crohns.org:

“If, as some scientists are now convinced, Crohn’s disease is caused by a microorganism, the question becomes: How is it transmitted? The shocking answer, they say, is through that most sacrosanct of beverages–milk. The microorganism under suspicion, Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis, or MAP, is common in U.S. dairy herds, activists argue, and it is not killed by conventional pasteurization.

AIDS in Africa more from medical re-use of needles than sexual transmission

From Nigel Hawkes and Michael Dynes at The Times Online:

“THE African Aids pandemic was caused more by careless use of needles in healthcare than by unsafe sex, a report published today by an international group of scientists says.

They estimate that more than half the cases of Aids in Africa before 1988 were caused by unsterilised needles. The claim, directly challenging the belief that 90 per cent of cases were sexually transmitted, implies that the African Aids pandemic is largely the result of unsafe medical practices and mismanaged vaccination campaigns.

The team says that the evidence was discounted because of “preconceptions about African sexuality and a desire to maintain public trust in healthcare”.