This was a headline this morning that bears attention.
AP – An Atlanta attorney quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to his fellow plane passengers in an interview aired Friday, and insisted he was told he wasn’t contagious or a threat to anyone.
I have a few comments on this subject.
Mr. Speaker’s apology that he did not mean to harm anyone is about as bogus as the man’s father denying he had anything to do with his son acquiring the multi-drug resistant TB.
There are a few serious health issues that come in to play with this event.
1) The attorney was clearly aware of the dangers of traveling with multi-drug resistant TB. After all, his step-father is a CDC microbiologist who studies rare forms of TB. If anyone would have a little more knowledge than the average person on this disease, it would certainly be this gentleman who recklessly risked and may perhaps have exposed countless numbers of people throughout the world. Even if he did not have this knowledge, he very well should have, given how contagious it is, the fact that he is personal injury attorney, and the fact that the CDC warned him and demanded he restrict his travel.
2) The attorney’s itinerary to his wedding is suspect. Most people travel to and from one location on a round-trip airfare. However, in this case, this attorney traveled to more than four different destinations from Paris to Prague to the Greek Islands, then Montreal and back into the United States. That is certainly a suspicious way to make one’s re-entry back into the U.S. It begs the question if he wasn’t actually hiding from someone or trying to conceal his illness.
3) The fact that Mr. Speaker was able to travel so freely to so many countries while knowingly possessing a potentially lethal and contagious illness draws serious criticism to our handling of the war on terrorism. Mr. Speaker is a white male. This situation begs the question of racial profiling in travel. If Mr. Speaker was anything but a white male, we could most surely have ascertained that he would have been detained in some country somewhere, saving us from a potential nasty outcome.
Further, as a citizen who has travelled into U.S. through the Champlain, N.Y. immigration checkpoint, I again question the U.S. use of racial profiling to contain problematic individuals. I question Mr. Speaker’s motive and seriously believe he knew what he was doing while trying to evade the authorities (sneaking back into the U.S. irresponsibly). The Champlain, N.Y. port is notoriously an easy entrance back into the U.S., especially if you fall into a certain profile. Shame on the U.S. government again for putting the public at risk.
4) This situation marks numerous flaws in CDC’s ability to contain disease. In fact, it has been argued that drug resistant strain of “HIV” (human mutated form of SIV or whatever you want to call it) may actually have originated in some laboratory. It is indeed remarkable that the CDC’s own kin would have travelled and exposed people throughout the world. It is remarkable that the CDC microbiologist would have taken such measures to not protect or notify the public let alone prevent his son from travel. Indeed, I would argue he is an accomplice in this gross negligence of public health. I would even suggest that even despite how potentially benign (if it bears out to be the case) this multi-drug resistant form of TB may be, it calls to questions people’s self-interest and the CDC’s own lack of responsibility in saying what they mean and doing what they say.
5) I am certain that an event like this will recur. We can already mark the itinerary of the airline steward from S.F. (or wherever he was from, Montreal, who knows?) that has been deemed in retrospective studies to be the principal vector of HIV in the Western Hemisphere, especially the United States. Where was the CDC? Where was Reagan when mass quarantine should have initially occurred? This in my opinion is an example of a serious public health problem that lies within our own government.
I say to the CDC and Mr. Speaker, “I beg your pardon!” I don’t think that anyone should have to forgive Mr. Speaker for his careless, senseless, reckless stubborn, and willing behavior in potentially spreading a disease that numerous health professionals throughout the world spend hours each day trying to contain through basic preventive health measures. As a physician, I am seriously taken aback by this selfish and senseless act on the part of the Speaker family.
In some states, this behavior would result in jail time. For Mr. Speaker, I think it is time for more than just a medical quarantine.