Is Your Bathroom Breeding Bioterrorism?

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit


IS YOUR BATHROOM BREEDING BIOTERRORISM?

If it's used by the medically uninsured, yes indeed.

Tom Ridge, Director of Homeland Security, ought to cut the papers to
round up us lousy uninsured walking hazmat sites posthaste.  Perhaps
we can be put to some productive use while we're held in the camps,
pending Victory in the War on Terror.  Okay, granted, Cheney's on the
record saying that this war will outlast his lifetime, so we probably
are talking about formally enslaving the uninsured, excuse me,
granting permanent housing and employment to those without proof of
insurance.  Much like not letting folks without insurance drive the
streets, this would be simply another way in which our government
could balance for us our constitutional freedoms on the one hand and
our social responsibilities on the other.

And, dammit, we'd be doing it for everyone's own good.  I know I'd
feel better knowing that I was incarcerated not just for the safety
of sport-ute driving suburbanites not wanting their botox-retouched
features spoiled by unsightly smallpox lesions but for my own safety
as well -- why, where else would I be likelier to get to try new
experimental medical procedures and vaccines than at, say, Camp
Freedom?

AP via The New York Times - May 30, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioterrorism.html

Uninsured May Spread Bioterror Germs

by the Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Detection and containment of a bioterrorist attack
could be hampered by the fact that 40 million people lack insurance
and might not seek medical treatment, public health experts said
Thursday.

The uninsured sometimes do not seek medical care as quickly as the
insured, so if they have a contagious illness, they would have more
time to spread it before they got to a doctor.

That can be bad enough if the disease is naturally caused. Two public
health experts are calling for steps to ensure it does not magnify
the outbreak if a bioterrorist ever strikes with a contagious germ.

``Their lack of insurance is a known risk to their own health, but it
must now also be recognized as a risk to the nation's health,'' Dr.
Matthew Wynia of the American Medical Association and Lawrence
Gostin, a health law professor at Georgetown University, wrote in the
journal Science.

Delaying care is not the only concern. Some people, such as illegal
aliens who fear their families would be deported, avoid it
altogether.

Wynia and Gostin urged the government to issue a directive that
anyone with symptoms suggesting a contagious illness should seek
medical care -- regardless of their ability to pay or legal standing
-- without fear of consequences.

``An effective national defense against bioterrorism requires that
all potentially infected patients can be at least evaluated without
fear of deportation or other significant social or economic losses,''
they wrote.

Such a directive probably would not help much, responded Dr. D.A. 
Henderson, the government's top bioterrorism health adviser. But the
Bush administration has asked Congress for an additional
$114 million to expand the $1.4 billion community health center
program, which serves the uninsured.

Meanwhile, if someone gets anthrax or smallpox, ``the great majority
are going to be very sick ... and scared enough to go to a
hospital,'' where federal law requires treatment regardless of
ability to pay, Henderson said.

 
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