Man with TB is locked up in Arizona

lefty · **Posted:** Thu Apr 05, 2007 10:02 am

Quote:

Man with TB is locked up in Arizona, leading to a civil liberties debate
April 4, 2007 - PHOENIX (AP) - Behind the county hospital's tall cinderblock walls, a 27-year-old tuberculosis patient sits in a jail cell equipped with a ventilation system that keeps germs from escaping.

Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime. Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable.

County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors' instructions to wear a mask in public.

"I'm being treated worse than an inmate," Daniels said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press last month. "I'm all alone. Four walls. Even the door to my room has been locked. I haven't seen my reflection in months."

Though Daniels' confinement is extremely rare, health experts say it is a situation that U.S. public health officials may have to confront more and more because of the spread of drug-resistant TB and the emergence of diseases such as SARS and avian flu in this increasingly interconnected world.

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/story?secti ... id=5181736

So, what do you think? Should he be imprisioned because he has a contageous disease? What about his constitutional freedom of "life, LIBERTY..."? I find it disturbing, personally.

DO.g's · **Joined:** Thu Mar 24, 2005 6:19 pm **Posts:** 2533

You know that's a tough one. I want to vote for Freedom of Rights, but it seems there is a matter of values and duty- or ethics. Situation is a "Caught on the horns of a dilemma" here. If you are the one who's sick then you would feel your rights to liberty are impinged. But from the well person's perspective, you are a walking time bomb and may kill me. The fear is similar to guessing "where's the terrorist" (as in "where's waldo"). At the very least, I wouldn't object to wearing a mask when out in public, if I was the sick one. Then the argument of the needs of the many. Think about how they fight diseases in animals, and think this type of holocaust solution. We're expendible anyway, as war and car deaths exemplify, so I guess the greater good is the weight on the scale.

Tough question. I'm going to have to think about it for a day.

DO.g's · **Joined:** Thu Mar 24, 2005 6:19 pm **Posts:** 2533

Voted #3, but I would have voted for the greater good based on severity of disease. As much as life is sacred, If I was the cause of someone elses death, knowingly, from near or afar, then I would have to vote no to my survival. Our species is too important to hold accountable for my actions.

If only Bush and other leaders would think like they expect us to behave. If it was them, they'd drag us down with them, since they have no ethics and base their trust on each other on not trusting each other. BTW they are dragging us down with them, so why should we care!

The poor always get it right. They have to be the ones to accept sacrifice and compromise, not our diplomatic overseers.

Catherine · **Posted:** Sat Apr 07, 2007 9:20 pm

I voted the third one...because if we give up one freedom in the cause of what the government likes to talk about as being for the "public good," especially under the Bush regime, we might as well start carving chunks out of the Constitution. I DO think that voluntarily isolating oneself from the public is a personal responsibility in cases like this. Being quarantined in one's home isn't a bad idea, either, but to be housed the same way a criminal is because you have a disease is just downright wrong.

What happened to the TB sanitoriums that used to be prevalent in this country? There those suffering from TB weren't treated like criminals back when the disease was pretty widely spread...I think it was called consumption. They were housed in comfortable rooms, infirmaries, or "cottages" that would've been similar to today's nursing homes or assisted living centers.

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/126/3/237

http://www.lindapages.com/nurses/nurses ... ulosis.htm

There was one not far from my home in the town of Black Mountain, NC.

Many years ago, all teachers in my state had to get a TB test every year before school started.

Can Bush and Cheney be arrested for being public nuisances and dangerous to the well-being of the people of the nation? How about Karl Rove?

dori · **Posted:** Sun Apr 08, 2007 3:21 am

I voted for the third choice.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/06/142246

Quote:

Today, Daniels has been forced to live in a hospital cell in complete isolation. His only visitors are medical staff. Sheriff's deputies have taken away his television, radio, phone and computer. He is under 24-hour surveillance and the light in his room is never turned off, even at night. His only contact to the outside world is a pay-phone. Daniels recently described his ordeal in a phone interview with the Arizona radio station KJZZ.

This man is being treated worse than people who willingly commit heinous crimes, yet his crime is that he is sick. I can see people wanting him to behave in a way that will not endanger others, but to put him in solitary confinement, take away his television, radio, phone and computer, and never turn the lights off is hideous. What has happened to America, that we love to torture people now?

Story is at link.

Man with TB is locked up in Arizona

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