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Aliens: A Public Health Hazard

Thread ID: 18364 | Posts: 7 | Started: 2005-05-23

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Blond Knight [OP]

2005-05-23 18:47 | User Profile

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Are illegals making U.S. a leper colony?

Leprosy is curable with proper treatment (photo: Columbia News Service)

Leprosy, the contagious skin disease evoking thoughts of biblical and medieval times, is now making its mark in the United States, and many believe the influx of illegal aliens is a main factor.

"Americans should be told that diseases long eradicated in this country – tuberculosis, leprosy, polio, for example – and other extremely contagious diseases have been linked directly to illegals," Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., told the Business Journal of Phoenix. "For example, in 40 years, only 900 persons were afflicted by leprosy in the U.S.; in the past three years, more than 7,000 cases have been presented."

"This emerging crisis exposes the upside-down thinking of federal immigration policy," he continued. "While legal immigrants must undergo health screening prior to entering the U.S., illegal immigrants far more likely to be carrying contagious diseases are crawling under that safeguard and going undetected until they infect extraordinary numbers of American residents."

The number of cases of leprosy, now known as Hansen's disease, among immigrants to the U.S. has more than doubled since 2000, according to a news report from Columbia University.

While the overall figure is small compared to other countries, some researchers fear the trend could lead to the disease spreading to the U.S.-born population.

[B]"It's creeping into the U.S.," Dr. William Levis, head of the New York Hansen's Disease Clinic, told Columbia News Service. "This is a real phenomenon. It's a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody's noticed."

Levis thinks America could be on the verge of an epidemic[/B].

"We just don't know when these epidemics are going to occur," he said. "But we're on the cusp of it here, because we're starting to see endemic cases that we didn't see 25 years ago."

According to Steve Pfeifer, head of statistics and epidemiology at the National Hansen's Disease Program, only about two dozen new cases are found each year in U.S.-born patients, with that number remaining stable for decades.

[B]But Pfeifer suggests many aliens are coming to the U.S. specifically to get treated for their skin condition, due to the short time between many immigrants' entry to the U.S. and their diagnosis with leprosy[/B]. [B] "They're coming to be treated because they get treatment free[/B] and probably get better treatment here," he told Columbia. "Somebody down there diagnoses them and says, 'Hey, you've got leprosy, and your best course of action is probably high-tailing to the U.S.'"

The fear is that since the disease remains contagious until treatment is commenced, a surge of diagnosed-but-untreated patients could mean a spread of leprosy into the population of those born in America.

[B]Pfeifer said he had not issued an official report on the dangerous trend, fearing that anti-immigration groups would become vocal against centers providing free health care for illegals.[/B]

"A lot of our cases are imported," said Dr. Terry Williams, who treats leprosy victims in Houston. "We see patients from everywhere – Africa, the Philippines, China, South America."

Williams confirms that some of his patients came to the U.S. specifically for treatment, telling Columbia, "Certainly we do see some of that. We've had even a couple of patients from Cuba who were put on a boat by Castro just to get them out of the country – they made their way here through Mexico and Central America basically just to get treated. ... We treat them; our job isn't to be immigration police."

But not all experts have such a gloomy outlook.

Dr. Denis Daumerie, head of the World Health Organization's leprosy-elimination program, thinks claims of immigrants causing a spike in U.S. leprosy are overstated.

"There is no risk of an epidemic of leprosy," he told Columbia. "There's absolutely no risk that the few immigrants who are affected by the disease, if they are diagnosed and treated, will spread the disease in the U.S."

Angler

2005-05-24 00:49 | User Profile

Good find, BK. This is a very important issue that doesn't seem to have been getting the attention it deserves, even among folks who are concerned about immigration.

Desertrat

2005-05-24 02:20 | User Profile

It's not just "illegals". These various diseases by and large come in with many from third-world countries--legal as well as illegal.

Another thing of which I've read is the re-appearance of "dirty diseases": Those caused by lack of cleanliness. Ringworm, scabies, impetigo as well as those little nits and lice critters. Some of this began during the Hippie era as kids rebelled against middle-class ideas, including regular bathing. It was exacerbated by the growth of the inner-city "ghetto" areas.

'Rat

madrussian

2005-05-24 03:04 | User Profile

Lice in schools was something unheard of in the Soviet Union. Usually, lice are associated with the times of wars.

Snouter

2005-05-24 06:35 | User Profile

The medical system in the USA cannot handle the burden of the filthy invaders. Not only do the filth bring in third world diseases, they have the invaders have chutzpah to sue our doctors through the liberal courts. The result is that they contribute to putting hospitals out of business and doctors into early retirement because the doctors can't afford the malpractice insurance premiums.

Faust

2005-05-25 08:29 | User Profile

May 21, 2005 Leprosy: Whites To Blame—Or Immigration?

By Peter Brimelow

Among many interesting stories on the astonishingly industrious Modern Tribalist recently was one on leprosy. A new study of the leprosy genome suggests the disease originated in East Africa. India had previously been thought most likely source, partly because of the volume of cases still occurring there, partly because of the antiquity of the Indian written record of leprosy.

This is yet another example of the revolutionary impact of modern genetic science. But of more immediate significance to VDARE.COM readers is who was blamed for the spread of leprosy in the news reports.

National Geographic News: Leprosy Was Spread by Colonialism, Slave Trade [May 12 2005]

BBC News: Slave trade key to leprosy spread [May 13 2005]

(“European colonialism and the slave trade probably played a key role in the spread of leprosy, research suggests.”)

China View [May 13 2005]:

“…the disease may have begun in East Africa…then spread to the other continents in part through European colonialism and later the slave trade.”

In other words, although this ancient disease was rampant throughout Europe and Asia by early medieval times, the study is being used as another occasion to denigrate the whites of Western Europe, solidly fixed in the media mind as the only practitioners of colonialism and slave trading

In fact, of course, slavery in East Africa was basically an Arab affair. And European colonial rule in Africa only happened in the late 1800s, long after leprosy had crossed the Atlantic. Leprosy managed to establish itself all over other parts of the world—it was a big problem in 19th century Norway, for example—without any help from the slave trade. And in any case, the study indicates the disease spread into West Africa, source of most slaves, from the Mediterranean basin.

In reality, the transmission mechanism was probably always travelers trading in any merchandise, rather than masses of slaves, as has also been the case with many other infectious diseases.

If anything, the spread of leprosy should be blamed on an early version of globalism.

The source of this ahistorical slander, sadly, is the press release put out by head of the Pasteur Institute unit responsible for the study, Dr Stewart Cole:

“Europeans and North Africans then spread leprosy to West Africa… Europeans also introduced leprosy to North America.

“‘Colonialism was extremely bad for parts of the world in terms of human health,’ said Cole.”

In other words, the brief period of European rule in the Third World, which triggered a population explosion there because of the introduction of public health disciplines, law, order, technology and capital, creating an improving living standard the post- colonial regimes have been pitifully unable to maintain, was “extremely bad.”

Dr Cole is doubtless a competent scientist. He is clearly a rotten historian and, probably, another tediously self-hating Brit. [Complain to Dr. Cole]

However leprosy spread in the past, the answer to stopping extension in the future is obvious: curtail 3rd World immigration.

This Canadian study from last year showed 70% of the leprosy cases evaluated were amongst immigrants from India, the Philippines, and Viet Nam.

And this very frank story from the Columbia Journalism School website (“Leprosy in America: New Cause for concern,” by Ben Whitford, March 15 2005, in case they take it down) makes it searingly clear that leprosy is being imported to the U.S. by immigrants, some of who deliberately come here for free treatment, and that experts fear it will spread into the native-born population. (“It’s a public health threat. New York is endemic now, and nobody’s noticed”—Dr. William Levis, New York Hansen’s Disease Clinic)

The brutal truth is that immigrants bring disease. That’s why they were screened at Ellis Island and why the post-1965 collapse of America’s borders is such a cause for concern. Leprosy is only one example.

Peter Brimelow is editor of VDARE.COM and author of the much-denounced Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster (Random House - 1995) and The Worm in the Apple (HarperCollins - 2003)

[url]http://www.vdare.com/pb/050521_leprosy.htm[/url]

LA Refugee

2005-06-04 02:28 | User Profile

I had to pick up a load of "pickled steel" in South Central Los Angeles this week. Hadn't been there in a few years- what a jolt! All it lacked was a few zebra painted burros, and it would have been Tiajuana. Street carts everywhere, garbage piled in the streets, and beaners pushing multiple carts of beanlettes everywhere. No whites in sight, and very few angry looking blacks. They all drove like in Mexico too. They all tried to play "chicken" with a long nosed Pete, with a 48' trailor. They misssed me by inches on every turn. What got me the worst though, was the smell- like a very mis-used urinal. The odor hung in the air like a yellow fog! It took a wash job for the truck and changing clothes and a bath for me to get it out of my nose. Coming to your neighborhood soon, folks.