“We’re allowing into this country now thousands, maybe millions, of people who have not been screened” for diseases like tuberculosis, explained Dr. Jane Orient, “who are going to locations that are unknown. … Public health affects everybody and we’re not doing anybody a favor by closing our eyes to devastating diseases.”
By Dave Gahary
Signs of the collapse of our nation are all around us, from the crumbling infrastructure, to the drug-infested ghettoes in once-magnificent cities, to ever-expanding homeless camps taking over parks and sidewalks. Now, another sign of America’s breakdown is apparent: European diseases not seen since the 14th century are appearing on our shores.
An opinion piece in The Hill by Dr. Mark Siegel, “Is a Dark Ages disease the new American plague threat?” details the brewing disaster. Although “typhus, a disease carried by fleas that feed on rats, which in turn feed on the garbage and sewage” is already present in homeless encampments across the country, Siegel believes “that homeless areas are at risk for the re-emergence of another deadly ancient disease—leprosy.” Leprosy is a long-term bacterial infection that can lead to damage to eyes, nerves, respiratory tract, and skin.
Although over two-thirds of the more than 200,000 new cases of leprosy reported in the world each year are in India, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that between 100 and 200 new cases of leprosy are reported annually in the U.S. Siegel cites a just-released study that found that 187 leprosy patients treated at the same clinic from 1973 to 2018 were mostly Mexicans. The disease is also known to Central and South Americans, popping up more than 20,000 times a year. Siegel writes, “There is certainly the possibility of sporadic cases of leprosy continuing to be brought across our southern border undetected.”
Siegel goes on to say that “it seems only a matter of time before leprosy could take hold among the homeless population in an area such as Los Angeles County, with close to 60,000 homeless people and 75% of those lacking even temporary shelter or adequate hygiene and medical treatment. All of those factors make a perfect cauldron for a contagious disease that is transmitted by nasal droplets and respiratory secretions with close repeated contact.”
To look into this matter further, American Free Press conducted an exclusive interview with Tucson, Ariz.-based Dr. Jane Orient, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, founded in 1943 to fight for private medicine. Dr. Orient, an internist in practice since 1974, was coincidentally in Los Angeles at the time of this interview on Sept. 17.
AFP asked if we should be worried about Siegel’s article.
“I think that we should,” she began, “although I think maybe leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, is one of the lesser worries. I think tuberculosis [TB] is a much greater worry, because leprosy is reputedly not all that contagious and there is an antibiotic treatment for it.”
TB, another bacterial infection spread through the air by coughing, sneezing, speaking, and spitting, typically affects the lungs, and if left untreated will kill around 50% of those affected. So, it’s not just the “zero sanitation” homeless camps Dr. Orient is worried about.
“We’re allowing into this country now thousands, maybe millions, of people who have not been screened,” she explained, “who are going to locations that are unknown. Of the ones that we know about, maybe 20% of them in some places have latent TB; they are not contagious right now, but this could break down at any time when their resistance is lowered, and they could be coughing up TB germs on the bus, in the school, in the church, wherever they are. What we really need is a way of following these people and doing periodic checks.”
“Everybody should be worried about this,” she explained, “because these people are being sent across the United States.”
Dr. Orient feels this issue has been politicized. “I have heard that some people who work in these border areas are even being forbidden to talk about the diseases that they’re seeing, under pain of losing their job. … There is a lot of fear about being accused of being politically incorrect,” she said. “Even a physician who talks about this can be criticized, or ignored, or subject to worse things.”
“Actually, public health affects everybody—everybody,” she warned, “and we’re not doing anybody a favor by closing our eyes to devastating diseases that could break out in a community, that we really do not have the public health resources or the medical resources or the knowledge or even the ability to treat at any level.”
Dave Gahary, a former submariner in the U.S. Navy, prevailed in a suit brought by the New York Stock Exchange in an attempt to silence him. Dave is the producer of an upcoming full-length feature film about the attack on the USS Liberty. See erasingtheliberty.com for more information and to get the new book on which the movie will be based, Erasing the Liberty.
