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With ten dead in Iraq today and five Britons kidnapped, I was looking for some good news to write about. I didn't find it. And in what seems like a page out of a science-fiction novel, I found this: U.S. Isolates Traveler Infected with Super-TB.
The United States has isolated a man who may have exposed fellow passengers on two transatlantic flights to a strain of tuberculosis that is extremely hard to treat, officials said on Tuesday.It was the first time the federal government has issued such an isolation order since at least 1963, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said authorities were trying to notify passengers who traveled aboard Air France 385 from Atlanta to Paris on May 13 and back to the United States from Prague on Czech Air Flight 0104 on May 24.
It caught my attention immediately because while flipping channels this weekend, I happened upon the tv premiere of the movie Pandemic on the Hallmark Channel. It was about the quarantining of passengers arriving at LAX from Australia after a young man died en route. They suspected he had bird flu, but whatever he had, there was no vaccine.
The cast was unusual: Faye Dunaway as Governor of California, Eric Roberts as Mayor of Los Angeles.
Somewhat predictably, one selfish passenger had business he thought so important he managed to sneak out in a baggage truck and proceed to infect others in the city. A drug kingpin being extradited back to America to face the death penalty is also on board the flight and escapes. He mysteriously doesn't get the disease . Yet he kidnaps someone from the Center for Disease Control to find out what the closest vaccine is and manages to hijack the trucks bringing it into LA. Then (of course) he sells the vaccine on the streets as if it were heroin. Did I mention the redneck who thinks the quarrantine is a Government plot to subvert the Constitution and decides with his buddies to engage in a little vigiliantism? Or the crooked criminal defense lawyer or the FBI agent not afraid to pull a Jack Bauer?
Despite the highly implausible plot and cast of characters, the film raises real questions about the role of Government in the event of a threat of mass disease. As I watched, I tried to envision the progression of circumstances in real life: a passenger infected with a deadly contagious disease for which there is no cure or vaccine, a quarantine of an entire flight, a city's population panicking, rioting and looting to get whatever supplies are available, martial law...and then what?
Today it's just one flight and one passenger. But how many did he infect before he "voluntarily entered a medical isolation facility in New York City?" What if you had been next to him and the Government now knocks on your door to involuntarily commit you to an isolation facility for testing? Are quarantines the answer? Is there another way?
And the corollary: Is our Government doing enough and the right kinds of things to protect us from biological threats?
Pandemic will air again this weekend.
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Hi Jeralyn
What my resignation letter would look like:
http://freewayblogger.blogspot.....ymore.html
And you know that the Federal government is totally unprepared, don’t you?
Cough, cough,…
Frankly, as the population of the world is spiraling out of control, a little pandemic now and again is inevitable.
Although one would like something a little quicker, TB will probably sweep across the nation and world. Super, mid-grade or regular, it’s about time some of this virus known as humanity gets knocked off.
There’s time and place for quarantines, and other public health measures to protect a population, but who can trust these guys?
The BushCo administration’s War on Science is seriously endangering our health.
Hi, Jeralyn. Welcome to the lake and by the way I love your blog. This AM after reading about 10 more American soldiers dying on Memorial Day I put on CNN to hear the latest and only heard about Rosie. Somehow I guess Rosie and Elisabeth’s spat wasn’t enough so now the TB scare,
I know I’ve read things about a resistant strain of TB. Is this an even MORE resistant strain? Are we going to return to the days of TB sanitariums?
This scares me as I come from a family of weak lungs. I had a serious lung disease at age 7 that put me in the hospital for over two weeks. I was later informed that the treatment had only been developed a few years prior to my birth. I figure if I’d been born 10 years earlier, I’d have been just another case of “consumption.”
As it is, my mother had TB (amongst about a half dozen other lung diseases). Her treatment then (late ’60s) was bed rest and semi-isolation at home with her own china and silver kept seperate from the rest of the family.
If that guy kissed a chicken were fucked.
Jeralyn, I’m less worried about Super-TB or H5N1 virus than I am our government.
Either illness makes a fabulous pretext for the suspension of our rights. And what timing, too, given that Bush made himself absolute ruler within the last couple of weeks, assuming a natural catastrophe of unspecified nature.
Bush has contributed to the deaths of many individuals both here and abroad, far more than Super-TB or H5N1 combined to date; I shudder to think what he could do with unfettered power.
Elliott @ 5
The sad thing is, this administration is so totally lacking in credibility that you gotta know there will be folks who suspect that such a quarentine would be misused and therfore try to evade it.
I remember my grandfather talking about a quarentine in the neighborhood he grew up in.
It was enforced simply by a notice onthe door. Public Health officials came to make sure you had food and such and doctors made housecalls back then. For everything else, you had to rely on your friends and relatives (banking for instance) and there were rules that essentially said that items could go into the house, but not come out.
This is back in the days when most folks burned their own trash.
My point is, quarentine worked mostly on the honor system. It’s not like they padlocked you in your house and boarded up the windows.
Around the turn of the Century in NYC there was a great epidemic of (I forget what) and people in the slums who could not afford to stay home from work and observe the quarentine were rounded up and taken, like prisoners, to an island in the middle of the East River called Ward’s Island.
The old quarentine hospitals are gone, though a few ruins remain and the most modern building was converted to a psychiatric hospital. But back during the heyday of that epidemic Ward’s Island had hospital wards, Houses for the staff (so they would not spread contagion back into their home neighborhoods) and all the infrastructure of a small town.
It was a germ specific concentration camp.
Just something to think about.
There was movie with Cuba Gooding, Jr. in it one time about some deadly disease and a quarentine hospital and how enemies of the state where “mistakenly” sent to the hospital where they were certain to contract the disease.
I don’t know if there is enough residual faith left that our government deals with us with any honesty for an honor based quarentine system to work. Problem is, I don’t trust this government with a forced quarentine systemat all.
See what happens when a government loses all credibilty? It cannot govern.
Rayne, I couldn’t agree more. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. You would think that the countries that he visited would also be concerned and maybe they will be but googling just doesn’t show that yet.
Yes, XDR-TB is very, very bad news.
CDC is still mostly staffed by people who know what they’re doing, as opposed to the cronyism that has infested many other federal agencies. That’s the good news. The worrisome news is that other than Canada’s brush with SARS a few years ago, the industrialized world hasn’t dealt with a major outbreak of this serious an airborne illness in quite some time. Something like this would expose a lot of the problems with the US health care “system.” Top-flight public health experts we have. A cohesive system where it’s easy for hospitals to communicate and, where necessary, share information, not so much.
Rayne @ 9
See, that’s just what I mean. We are more afraid of how Shrub would exploit such a situation than we are of some serious disease.
How sad it that?
Hey Jeralyn-
Here is the US’s first case of XTB:
Day to Day, April 2, 2007
Robert Daniels is being held in a detention ward at an Arizona hospital because he is infected with a deadly strain of tuberculosis. Daniels refused to comply with voluntary quarantine rules.
As i recall this guy claims he didnt know the extent of his quarantine.
I believe I will frame looseheadprop’s closing line:
See what happens when a government loses all credibilty? It cannot govern.
WOW, that really says it all.
Bush Co tried to rev up a big panic on bird flu last year, but got overtaken by Iraq, Foley, other Republican and Bush Co ineptitude events.
Sorry to sound all tin-foil-hat about this, but these guys only have one thing that has worked for them in 6 years, and that is creating fear in the electorate.
looseheadprop @ 10
PELOSI 2007
A recent case from San Francisco - note that this was related to a person who evidently died of the disease last year.
OT but of interest:
Intriguing. Saying that someone “voluntarily entered a medical isolation facility” after a federal isolation order is a bit like saying someone “voluntarily entered prison” after being convicted of a felony and sentenced to jail time.
The article doesn’t point this out, but TB is VERY hard to transmit. Close, long-term contacts are usually at high risk when someone tests positive, but casual contacts usually aren’t. When someone tests positive for garden-variety TB, we usually check other household members, and that’s about it. Also, most people who get infected, and go on to test postive, will never show symptoms of the disease. The biggest risk is to people with compromised immune systems and people who already have some other type of lung disease. (Some doctors will not even treat patients who test positive but have no symptoms and no signs of the disease on chest X-ray.)
So when are they going to let this guy go? After a year and a half of therapy?
Here’s another depressing thought: If you take ANY group of people from an international plane flight, odds are that a few will test postive for TB, and the standard test won’t distinguish regular TB for the multi-drug resistant strain. So what’s the plan for the people on the plane who test positive, especially if they have no symptoms of the disease and no findings on chest X-ray?
SARS
A Toronto hospital’s experience with SARS in 2003.
Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders dealt with a bio warfare theme. Clancy went once over the legal issues, and had his hero president do what was necessary to save lives, leaving himself open to impeachment should the People and Congress decide he had over reacted. In that book, enough was done to dodge the bullet. One might also think though a situation where the bullet is less easy to dodge.
Thing is, eventually we are going to get an undodgable bullet. Antibiotics have given us a half century pretty much epidemic free. We have over used antibiotics now to the point that a return to ‘normal’ is likely. The bugs are catching up with the technology. The people might well fear the government more than an epidemic, having not seen what a true epidemic can do in our life times.
In Phoenix AZ we have a man who is locked up in a hospital room with this TB and is not allowed to watch tv, read newspapers, no telephone, because he refused quaranteen. So, this man was not the first. This man in Phoenix happend a few months ago. so, it is happening!!!!
if those of us who fear the continuing metastasis of fascism here in the USofA would be heard, we’d say that if a newer, more frightening pretext were thought to be called for in order to tighten even further the liberty of the people, this one is gonna be a dooZZZY!
cuz the complaint that the threat to human well-being will be seen to be far more compelling than the threat to the freedom to travel, or of association, for that matter…
then you got the issue of what do you do to typhoid mary if you catch her?
./
Beware of Directive 51 like I posted about the other day.
This is my last word on this subject. Hope everyone wakes up and smells the coffee before we lose our country.
One of the problems with TB is that the people most likely to be infected (the poor or immigrants) are also most likely to not take antibiotics correctly without supervision. Then they end up with a drug-resistant version that they can (and will) spread.
I understand this is the nightmare of every communicable-disease spec*alist.
bilbo in az @ 23
yeah, i heard about that…
me?
i got a repaired heart…don’t need to be exposed to super-tb…i’d really rather not, thanks…
looseheadprop @ 13
Yeah, and I’m the bird flu freak, just ask my kids. They’re required to wash their hands as soon as they come back from the golf course (goose poop on fairways), no golf balls or shoes or anything else allowed in the house, antiviral sprays for shoes, etc.
But I know what I’m doing — and I have absolutely no confidence that Shrub does.
Need I say “Katrina”?
Antibiotic resistent TB has been in the U.S. for quite a few years. What is really alarming is that there is a directive from the WH that W can declare an emergency based upon his own authority.
My above comment about the first case does seem to be incorrect. ;|
Pubmed
The U.S. data indicated that 74 TB cases reported during 1993-2004 met the case definition for XDR TB
bilbo in az @ 23
After the bad press coverage, they reportedly gave him back his TV and cellphone, and he can now receive books from family members. No writing materials or his laptop for some reason.
George A. @ 25
brotha, a pandemic is precisely the kind of catastrophe for which the Directive was drafted to be applied…
how much you wanna bet wilson (edith) would have cancelled the election of ‘20 if the flu of ‘18-19 had happened a year later?
.
The major depository for multi-drug resistant TB is, I believe, the prisons of Russia and the former Soviet Union, where it is quite common. The man in Arizona was Russian-born who returned to the U.S. after an extended visit.
This is a very serious problem that will get worse (not might). This country, or probably every country, is not prepared to deal with it.
I foresee a time when several problems (weather, biology, social order, food) converge at once. All the more reason to get the grown-ups to grow up and develop strategies based on the humane practice of good reason and compassion and understanding the very BIG picture of social needs.
FWIW, shrub lists “Pandemic flu” as one his national priority policy areas on the WH website
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/pandemicflu/
.. ‘course he also lists Katrina reconstruction and veteran’s welfare as priority areas….
Bush would usurp anything if he thought it would help him in the polls.
I expect to see the administration’s plan to defeat cosmic rays next.
Hmmmmmm….Wolf B. is about to scare the bejeebus out of us…he just used the words “loss of civil liberties”…and “quarantine”….
pandemonium: pandemic encomium
The government apparently admits that they knew about him before he boarded the plane, but he also decided that his personal business was more important. They didn’t know until after the test results came back that it was highly contagious.
Whoops.
I do this often…..imagine Gore is president and this situation occurs. Not only would there be a plan already in place to deal with the danger, but the best and the brightest would be working on a solution.
But, alas, we have Bush.
punaise @ 37
I thought that was a party for Butterstick
You could get exposed to at any time on any subway or bus for the past decade or more. It is not new. Perhaps this particular strain is different, but it is not new. This is diversion and perhaps more.
If only airplane guy had taken a bottle of mouthwash with 3.5 ounces of liquid in it, then they coulda got him.
solai @ 39
I nominate Harriet for Bug Czar
Well, considering the news, it sounds like Baghdad is the real problem today, (much more deadly than TB)!!!
Blub @ 31
I really wish a good investigative reporter would cover this particular case. What little I’ve read about this particular patient implies (but does not outright state) that he was a complete asshole to health professionals, and he was deprived of his television and reading material for punitive reasons. (I do NOT agree with this standpoint, btw.)
This issue could also have a lot to do with trying to push the immigration bill.
I’ve read about it and I am concerned. Someone here said it was more or less standard. But, we’re talking about Bush so nothing can get ignored. I’m waiting for a post on this subject by one of our brilliant hosts. (That wasn’t too subtle was it?)
smapdi @ 42
LOL
I’m choking on pepperjack cheese here…
What’s 122?
That’s the number of troops Clusterfuck has butchered so far this month. The record is 141- so he has a ways to go.
Clusterfuck said that the goal of the surge is to reduce violence- implying that we could measure it’s effectiveness in terms of deaths- the less deaths- the better the surge.
Now he says that- to the contrary- the better the surge is doing the MORE deaths there will be cause the “TERRORISTS” will see that we are winning and fight back harder…
It is becoming perfectly clear that he doesn’t have the faintest fuckin idea what he is tryin to accomplish- or what’s happening as a result of his actions- or how to evaluate ANYTHING- he just flaps his fuckin gums and farts in our general direction.
No wonder the goopers told him recently that someone else will need to speak about Iraq as he has zero credibility with anyone.
How pitiful is that?
I was just listening to Amy…piece on this new doc film, War Made Easy
i’m a vet, usaf, ‘64-68, with a stint in Vietnam. as i listened to it, it made my blood still. i wanna return my “I’m A Murkin” Card…it’s just damning.
.
Btw: the SCROTUS today restricted the right of people to sue for damages under the civil rights act when damages were incurred more than 180 days before the suit was brought.
izzis a great fucking, goddam cunchry or WHAT!
LS @ 46
you’ve been watching Lou Dobbs! ;)
wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 50
it gets a bit soggy when left to stew in its juices
Elliott @ 51
They’ve been flirting with this idea, including the antibiotic resistant TB, entering this country by virtue of infected illegal aliens for awhile. Now that the bill looks iffy, they’re going to make a big deal about this.
OK- Now I’m really pissed. Clusterfuck’s ethanol program was pure politics to get the farm vote- Ethanol doesn’t work- but now THIS:
MEXICO CITY - Mexican farmers are setting ablaze fields of blue agave, the cactus-like plant used to make the fiery spirit tequila, and resowing the land with corn as soaring U.S. ethanol demand pushes up prices.
The switch to corn will contribute to an expected scarcity of agave in coming years, with officials predicting that farmers will plant between 25 percent and 35 percent less agave this year to turn the land over to corn
That motherfucker is causing the price of my 100% agave margaritas to skyrocket- this is fuckin WAR!!!
rwcole @ 54
Damn!
Frank Probst @ 20
Typical isolation orders are until the person has shown response to treatment and is no longer infectious to others. This typically takes about 2 months of therapy, although it depends on how extensive the disease is.
That said, public health officials can mandate further orders of detention if the person refuses to take therapy. TB is unique in having the detention trump card, primarily because transmission is airborne.
Regarding your question about how to deal with passengers who test positive, but are unable to distinguish if the XDR TB was what infected them - they would be placed on close follow-up and offered preventative treatment. That is not ideal to be sure, but TB diagnostics stink and are basically from the 1950’s.
Hope that helps.
looseheadprop @ 10
Elliott @ 5
Well said, and that’s exactly the problem. Because when a quarantine is needed, it is /needed/. But there is no capacity to handle a real serious disease outbreak anymore, anyway. We just don’t have the beds, the drugs, the distribution system for food and drugs, etc… The system is running at capacity, or even slightly over and can’t ramp up.
rwcole @ 54
WTF!
Wolf: “Civil liberties suspended”, “CDC taking drastic actions”
Story coming up on CNN.
The HHS started a five week flu leader planning blog. I posted about that as well as the huge problem of having neglected to include professional nurses in planning - anywhere and on any level. The FluWiki is the most comprehensive source for pandemic planning that I’ve found. Moreover, only a few dollars have dribbled into the hands of community-based first responders for training, and most are not equipped and supplied to take care of large numbers of patients. So if those patients even get to the emergency departments of hospitals, because there is so little capacity in the hospital systems, there is no room at the inn to accommodate them. Posted about that, too.
Having been involved in trauma services, emergency care from the hospital side, and general community emergency - preparedness training (even learning how to auto-inject huge suckers of needles into my own thigh in the case of a nerve agent attack), I know just how badly we are - total unpreparedness in each and every aspect of pandemic, natural disasters, bioterrorism, chemical or nuclear attack catastrophes.
The sole person who prepared is Bush - by issuing his take over the country dictator Directive 51 (which would make a good movie title) order. (Posted about that, too)
Here’s a link to an April 6 Democracy Now! segment on the Arizona patient, Robert Daniels, including audio of an interview with Daniels.
Oh, for god’s sake. THIS is how they protect us??? They call the sick guy and say ‘don’t fly commercial’??
Tell me again why people think the republican party is better at protecting us than the dems. Over and over they prove that they are totally incapable of protecting America and yet have the audicity to claim the dems are weak. IMO, the repubs are too busy raiding the treasury to waste time actually governing. Where’s the profit in that?
This is one of the dumbest stories and coverage I’ve seen in a long time. I’m getting some popcorn. What a crock. Shiny object - that is all this is.
LS @ 59
LS, I dropped those channels a while back, my! the world looks a lot different without that noise. It’s a shame, a real 24 hour news channel is a public service.
but I sure don’t miss The Dobbsian World View, for starters…
So where’s the prez today? Takin a well deserved vacation at the Pig Ranch?
I dont see the complicity of BIG PHARMA as a shiny object. The press and pres can make it into one, but the medical/biological problem remains.
Big Pharma = More new drugs = more drug resistance
Big Oil = Climate change = more new-to-us diseases
Elliott @ 64
I can’t stand any of them either. I do keep an eye on what’s going on, but it all sounds like faux news to me. That is why that new documentary upthread called, “War Made Easy”, is so unbelievably amazing. www.warmadeeasy.com. This is the URL, but not the link, sorry.
What a waste.
sniff.
I think his JAR will go down again on this news.
LS @ 63
the biggest problem with the missile defense system izzat it cant tell the dangerous bright- shiny-objects from the distracting ones…there’s just so many of ‘em, the defense system, which is limited, basically just shuts down in frustration–keeping the powder dry?
that, by way of a metaphor…
it seems to me that, in terms of REAL dangers to the sovereignty of the people, the occupation of iraq is far more likely to be chaff meant to distract than the threats of pandemic or threats posed by GMOs to the food stocks…’
.
Remember when the anthrax “scare” occured? Bush said that every citizen would have Cipro. I wonder how that’s going?
Laura releasin a new country western song:
Porkin the Prez at the Ol Pig Ranch
rwcole @ 65
He’s in GA the state that I presently reside to talk about immigration. He’s trying to help Chambliss I guess or just talking to small time folk.
Frank Probst @ 45
He may very well have been, but I think his bigger problem was his jailer… Sheriff Joe… who tries to cultivate a national image as the toughest sheriff in the country.. chain gangs and all. Sheriff Joe said of the TB guy that he was locked up in solitary for 9 months because that’s what’s done to ALL Joe’s victims in the prison hospital ward to prevent malingering, and they had no procedure for quarantine situations and so just followed the normal rules. That explanation seems really weak to me, but that’s what Sheriff Joe said in his presser when the story broke in mid April. He said that he would order that the situation be rectified…
solai @ 62
See Chinois’s comment at 12 for an accurate depiction of CDC staff and politics.
They probably could have detained this person prior to her/his flights, but that would definitely would raise the issue of overriding individual civil liberites. There usually needs to be some evidence of patient nonadherence (to treatment, to TB control measures/prevention of spread) before PH officials will detain someone.
Most PH folk are fairly liberal. Most do not invoke detention lightly. Not to mention that detaining a patient is very expensive to do. But that loops back to Chinois’s comment (at 12) about the health care system infrastructure.
And ag-business keeps getting FDA approval to keep giving the newest and dwindling number of effective antibiotics to animals. There is no better way to create super-germs; and business gets a few more cents per pound profit and the pols get their campaign bribes and we get fucked. There is another piece in WaPo today about more MRSA in the community.
JPL @ 72
Oh, well then he’s in the same location as the airplane guy. Maybe he IS the airplane guy?
And there are idiots out there who want to deny medical care to “illegal aliens”, as if their germs will respect anyone’s citizenship or immigration status.
solai @ 62
Let’s see: Cat Stevens is on the Do Not Fly list, but not this guy.
“In Georgia”
Well I guess the lil fucker has ta be somewhere- it was just yer day in the barrel.
Thanks everyone for your comments. I have to say, watching that stupid movie really made me worry more about this.
I also think that knowing Bush is in charge lessens my confidence. I agree with the poster above who said if Al Gore had been elected, there’d be a workable plan in place.
I also worry that our National Guard, if we need them, are mostly in Iraq.
More BS from the VP:
LINK
Jeralyn @ 80
The thing is, the news really does ramp this stuff up and try to scare everybody. A pandemic could happen.
AZ Matt @ 81
Probably just trying to hide the name of the DC Madam.
allan_in_upstate @ 78
you know they don’t want The Peace Train coming ’round here.
They oughta quarantine people afflicted with gooperism- before they give it to someone else.
JPL @ 83
Oh come now, Darth doesn’t need comfort women… his own bile provides him with sufficient entertainment
Blub @ 86
Maybe we’re not talking about Darth. He’s married right?
Jeralyn @ 80
well, at least there’s a silver liing:
when they do come back, and if they have to be deployed to enforce a national quarantine, they won’t have as many scruples against opening fire (not that, if May, ‘70, is recalled, it was REAL high to begin with) to enforce the public health…
‘
AZ Matt @ 81
Incredible. More from the story:
I’m glad that WaPo is tenaciously pursuing this story. Not.
rwcole @ 85
it’s a genetically transmitted disease I think
But my dear, I am a countryclub republican…I have my own airplane, wouldn’t think of flying in one of those overcrowded, foul-smelling, Oxygen defficient, contaminated commercial flights…Not for a billion bucks….
allan_in_upstate @ 89
that is remarkable!
sheesh
Rayne @ 9
Is this maybe the reason that there doesn’t seem to be any real rush to the exits in the administration?
I mean, maybe Rove’s math tells him that a public health emergency coupled with soldiers in the street and the newly adduced powers of the idiot-in-chief trump free elections.
This little gem has been around since 2001:
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/bt/MSEHPA.pdf.
Not to mention that the Defense Department has said its personnel will help out in case of an emergency. In New York City, federal teams are already “in reserve” in One Police Plaza.
While we’re bemoaning the fact that the Democrats sold us out on Iraq, the junta is taking all the necessary steps to moot the elections.
Blub @ 90
i gowt bettah….
Where did the patient go in Europe? They said Paris and Prague but googling only shows the extreme concern to be here. Why is that?
Darth gave up conventional sex years ago- but he never goes ANYWHERE without his inflatable doggie friend Ricky.
Question 1: If they knew about this weeks? ago, why are the “Murican” people just now hearing about it?
Question 2: O.K., who swiped my roll of tin foil? I *really* need it back!
JPL @ 95
If only he had flown on one of those polonium-210 contaminated British Air 767’s,
maybe he would have been cured.
allan_in_upstate @ 98
hrmph. speaking of inexplicable diseases, did they ever figure out who was mailing weaponized anthrax in October 2001? That story conspicuously disappeared without any explanation whatsoever. Brilliant follow-through there by the American free press….
There are geniune threats to public health from contagious disease, and there are potential threats that are magnified all out of proportion in order to make money for people, ie, avian flu. Our family among others made a lot of money off the avian flu scam. Proud? No, but I did invest these profits into my program in Russia. I’m kind of an anomaly, “read into the program” as an MBA but retaining my viewpoint as a humanitarian. The conflict is painful. And they wonder why I drink. You want to scold me go ahead. I am a traitor even to reveal these things.
Matters of life and death are why I work at the children’s hospital in Russia. Today is the birth day and death day of my brother. I am trying to save lives and work for peace. I fear I am one war behind. We do what we can.
In the book, DeLay criticizes Gingrich for, among other things, conducting an affair with a Capitol Hill employee during the 1998 impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. (The woman later became Gingrich’s third wife.) “Yes, I don’t think that Newt could set a high moral standard, a high moral tone, during that moment,” DeLay said. “You can’t do that if you’re keeping secrets about your own a