[NewRomeTacitus]

There’s no terrorism like that that eats you from inside:

The risk of infection with Chagas disease is directly related to poverty: the blood-sucking triatomine bug which transmits the parasite finds a favourable habitat in crevices in the walls and roofs of poor houses in rural areas and in the peripheral urban slums. The geographical distribution of the human T.cruzi infection extends from Mexico to the south of Argentina. The disease affects 16 - 18 million people and some 100 million, i.e. about 25% of the population of Latin America is at risk of acquiring Chagas disease.

There are two stages of the human disease: the acute stage which appears shortly after the infection and the chronic stage which appears after a silent period that may last several years. The lesions of the chronic phase irreversibly affect internal organs namely the heart, oesophagus and colon and the peripheral nervous system. After several years of an asymptomatic period, 27% of those infected develop cardiac symptoms which may lead to sudden death, 6 % develop digestive damage mainly megaviscera, and 3% will present peripheral nervous involvement.

Just hideous.

[Tamzee]

I believe it's hideous, as are many diseases abroad. I also believe that this article is fear-mongering.

If these diseases are so widespread as to constitute a real danger to our society from immigration, why do we allow Americans to travel to Mexico? Tourists might actually be exposed to these "poor" people working as bus-boys and hotel maids, yeeks!

If anything, this article presents an even stronger argument for Bush's proposal... the more that people are documented as they come across our border, the more likely that illnesses or exposure to such will be screened properly.