Then,you missed discussions about illegal aliens and communicable disease here. It's a horrific problem - with the length of incubation for TB being years, we have yet to see the devastation that will occur in this nation because of unchecked illegals swarming here.
A virulent TB is being spread through the prison systems in America because of illegals...TB was wiped out in this country before we were born. Now it's back because of unchecked illegal immigration. The illegal alien children allowed into the public school systems have had no vaccines - that would be fine if the vaccines here were failsafe, but recently there have been eruptions of mumps and measles among those vaccinated...How'd that happen? Illegals!
Some facts: Every legal immigrant before 1924 was examined for infectious diseases upon arrival and tested for tuberculosis. Anyone infected was shipped back to the old country. That was powerful incentive for each newcomer to make heroic efforts to appear healthy.Today, immigrants must demonstrate that they are free of communicable diseases and drug addiction to qualify for lawful permanent residency green cards.
Illegal aliens simply cross our borders medically unexamined, hiding in their bodies any number of communicable diseases. Many illegals who cross our borders have tuberculosis. That disease had largely disappeared from America, thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin. TB's swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60 percent of those infected because of new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDRTB). Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico. This M is resistant to at least two major antitubercular drugs. Ordinary TB usually is cured in six months with four drugs that cost about $2,000. MDR-TB takes 24 months with many expensive drugs that cost around $250,000,with toxic side effects. Each illegal with MDR-TB coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later.
TB was virtually absent in Virginia until in 2002, when it spiked a 17 percent increase, but Prince William County, just south of Washington, D.C., had a much larger rise of 188 percent. Public health officials blamed immigrants. In 2001 the Indiana School of Medicine studied an outbreak of MDR-TB, and traced it to Mexican illegal aliens. The Queens, New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001 to immigrants.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ascribed 42 percent of all new TB cases to ?foreign born? people who have up to eight times higher incidence. Apparently, 66 percent of all TB cases coming to America originate in Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Virulent TB outbreaks afflicted schoolteachers and children in Michigan, adults and children in Texas, and policemen in Minnesota. Recently TB erupted in Portland, Maine, and Del Rey Beach, Florida.
Chagas disease, also called American trypanosomiasis or kissing bug disease is transmitted by the reduviid bug, which prefers to bite the lips and face. The protozoan parasite that it carries, , infects 18 million people annually in Latin America and causes 50,000 deaths. This disease also infiltrates America?s blood supply. Chagas affects blood transfusions and transplanted organs. No cure exists. Hundreds of blood recipients may be silently infected. After 10 to 20 years, up to 30 percent will die when their hearts or intestines, enlarged and weakened by Chagas, burst. Three people in 2001 received Chagas-infected organ transplants.Two died. Leprosy, a scourge in Biblical days and in medieval Europe, so horribly destroys flesh and faces it was called the disease of the soul. Lepers quarantined in leprosaria sounded noisemakers when they ventured out to warn people to stay far away. Leprosy, Hansen's disease, was so rare in America that in 40 years only 900 people were afflicted. Suddenly, in the past three years America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy. Leprosy now is endemic to northeastern states because illegal aliens and other immigrants brought leprosy from India, Brazil, the Caribbean, and Mexico.
Dengue fever is exceptionally rare in America, though common in Ecuador, Peru, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Mexico. Recently there was a virulent outbreak of dengue fever in Webb County, Texas, which borders Mexico. Though dengue is usually not a fatal disease, dengue hemorrhagic fever routinely kills.
Polio was eradicated from America, but now reappears in illegal immigrants, as do intestinal parasites. Malaria was obliterated, but now is re-emerging in Texas. About 4,000 children under age five annually in America develop fever, red eyes, strawberry tongue, and acute inflammation of their coronary arteries and other blood vessels because of the infectious malady called Kawasaki disease. Many suffer heart attacks and sudden death. Hepatitis A, B, and C, are resurging. Asians number 4 percent of Americans, but account for more than half of Hepatitis B cases. Why inoculate American newborns for Hepatitis B when most infected persons areAsians?
Tough medicine could end the cataclysm in American medicine. I suggest the acronym CRAG for four critical actions to reclaim America's EDs; to restore medicine?s proud scientific excellence and profitability; and to protect Americans against bacterial, viral, parasitic, and fungal infectious diseases that illegal aliens carry across our borders. Prevent illegal entry with fences, high-tech security devices, and troops re-deployed from Germany and South Korea. Deport illegal aliens. Homeland Security?s Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a division of Detention and Removal dedicated to deportation. It is hobbled by the powerful Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the Department of Justice court system that consists of the U.S. Immigration Court (USIC) plus an appellate court, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA). The equation EOIR = USIC + BIA usually provides amnesty for the illegal alien, plus another level of appeal against deportation in federal circuit court. Internment and deportation are politically incorrect. But America's inadequate federal border enforcement permits massive daily border penetrations that violate the integrity of our medicine and our national security. |