Cal Thomas: MDR-TB Spreading in US

[Jenny AU-92 0]

Link to Opinion Column

If anyone needs another reason to oppose illegal immigration, to which the Bush Administration continues to turn a blind eye, how about the spread of a deadly communicable disease?

According to an essay in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, a form of tuberculosis that has shown itself resistant to several drugs has invaded California and is present primarily in the state's "foreign-born" population, a politically correct euphemism for illegal aliens.

Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), writes that treatment for multidrug-resistant TB, called MDR-TB, is expensive, costing between $200,000 and $1.2 million per person over a period of 18 to 24 months.

The CDC's Web page says TB was in decline in the United States, but that it increased between 1985 and 1992. Nearly 15,000 cases of TB were diagnosed last year, with California reporting the largest number of cases. Although the total number of TB cases has declined in recent years, the study says the drug-resistant cases "did not significantly change over the study period," causing concern among medical professionals.

[...]

Granich, who works for a federal agency and might be expected not to disagree with the Bush Administration's line on illegal immigrants, cannot tiptoe around the obvious. He writes that those illegals found to have drug-resistant TB were mostly (84 percent) "foreign born" and were twice as likely to transmit the disease to others.

The study did not characterize the "foreign born" patients as illegal aliens, but what other conclusion is to be reached when the study specifies that most of them came from Mexico or the Philippines and were in the U.S. less than five years when their infection was discovered?

In 1993, 29 percent of TB cases in the U.S. were diagnosed among the "foreign born." Last year that figure had risen to 53 percent. The disease isn't coming by wire transfer, but by human carriers coming across our borders.

Granich says the presence of this highly communicable disease, which is transmitted through the air mainly by coughing and sneezing, does not warrant the closing of the borders.

If the threat of terrorism and a contagious disease like TB is not sufficient to get the government to stop harassing native-born Americans at airports and begin concentrating on shutting down the flow of illegal aliens across our borders, what is?

Do politicians so crave the votes of people who break our laws and the approval of Mexican President Vicente Fox that they are willing to jeopardize the health and welfare of the legally residing citizens of this country?

More of us seem interested in seeing that the laws are obeyed, even if government officials who are sworn to enforce them will not. In addition to the recent efforts by members of the "Minutemen Project," who stationed themselves along the Arizona-Mexico border and reduced the flow of illegals to a trickle, the police chief of New Ipswich, N.H., has come up with a novel idea.

W. Garrett Chamberlain, 36, is arresting illegal Mexican aliens on charges of trespassing. Chamberlain told The Washington Post, "I'm just saying: 'Wait a minute. We're on heightened alert and it's post-9/11, and I'm going to let an illegal immigrant who I don't know from Adam just walk away? . If I find you are in my country illegally, I'm not going to worry about political correctness. I will detain you."

Let's put Chief Chamberlain in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.

Illegal immigration is a political, social and medical issue that could come back to bite Republicans in the 2006 elections and in 2008 if they don't get a grip on it.

[Piglet 0]

Oh, teriffic. It's airborne. Couldn't they at least have the courtesy to have a disease where you have to have sex with them to catch it?

[Tiger Al 0]

Oh, teriffic.  It's airborne.  Couldn't they at least have the courtesy to have a disease where you have to have sex with them to catch it?

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[Jenny AU-92 0]

I just heard on CBS radio news on the way back from lunch that some young woman who was working in a hospital in NY has this MDR-TB, and they have NO clue how or by whom she was exposed - could be thousands of people exposed now, with a 60 day incubation period.

Make (very funny) jokes, but this is serious. Maybe we should do like the country of Angola - if you try to enter their country without proof that you have a current yellow fever vaccine, they will inoculate you right there in the airport. I personally saw it happen. Odds are good that since they will use a previously used needle, you will get Hepititis or AIDS from the needle, but you sure as hell won't get yellow fever...

[AURaptor 1,128]

This is where those elected to office, regardless of party affiliation, take the blame for this. GOVERNMENT is failing its citizens, and the POLITICIANS are shirking their responsibility of working FOR the people.