Posted on 05/19/2007 4:43:13 PM PDT by bd476
Cow tests for TB
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 05/19/2007 02:58:48 AM EDT
Saturday, May 19, 2007
MONTPELIER (AP) — Agriculture officials are investigating whether a cow from a Northeast Kingdom farm contracted bovine tuberculosis, but it could be two months before tests are complete, officials said Friday.
Two tests on the 6-year-old Holstein have indicated it was carrying tuberculosis but state Veterinarian Kerry Rood said it was unlikely the more comprehensive tests would prove the disease. The animal initially was tested so it could be exported to Canada.
Despite confidence that the testing ultimately will show no presence of TB, the farm where the cow was first tested May 7 has been quarantined. That means livestock cannot move onto or off the farm, until the final tests are completed.
"My office routinely does additional testing on responders with no animals ultimately proven to have the disease," Rood said Friday at a Montpelier news conference.
Rood and other officials refused to identify the farm where the cow originated.
Vermont has not had a confirmed case of TB in cattle since 1979, when the state was declared free of the disease.
The farm where the suspect case originated is still able to ship milk for human consumption. The pasteurization process of milk would kill any TB bacteria, said Deputy State Epidemiologist Susan Schoenfeld.
"She has not been confirmed to have the tuberculosis agent at this time so the risk to humans is very minimal," said Rood.
Schoenfeld said that even if the cow were ultimately shown to have TB, there was little chance the people working around the animal could contract the ailment, which usually settles in the lungs.
"We really don't expect this to be positive. Even if it was, however, there isn't a risk to the general public from this cow," Schoenfeld said.
Cattle that are shipped across state lines are routinely tested for TB. Rood said about 1 percent of all tests conducted come back positive for the disease. But additional tests clear the animal.
Rood said the initial tests on 89 head of cattle on the Northeast Kingdom farm returned two positives. One cow had a positive result for presence of the disease in a follow-up test. That cow is going to be put down so further tests can be conducted on its carcass.
Even though false positives are routine, if rare, officials from the Agency of Agriculture and Department of Health held a news conference Friday to discuss the issue after a news report surfaced about the case.
"It's become public information in a way that could cause a lot of concern," Schoenfeld said. "I think there's plenty of possibilities of people having unfounded concerns or being afraid of the disease and the impact."
What a relief that Agricultural officials caught this before the cow was exported to Canada. It sure wouldn't be neighborly of us to export bovine tuberculosis out of the USA.
Besides, pasteurization will kill the TB bacteria, if somehow they miss a Holstein or two.
Bovine TB is communicable to humans, and one of the reservoirs of the disease among large parts of the population, when keeping a small herd, or even just one cow, for family dietary needs in the years before the early part of the twentieth century.
A LOT of cows were ill with tuberculosis then. It was controlled by simply destroying cattle in the early years of the New Deal. Also about the time pasteurization became a common part of the processing of “fresh” milk.
Thanks for the brief history, alloysteel. It's amazing that our farming ancestors survived back in those days before pasteurization.
I hope that medical science can find a way to permanently eradicate TB.
Building a border fence would help.
To keep the cows out???
TB can go human-to-human too, you know.
Tuberculosis is not an isolated problem. See:
Immigration Department Failed To Check On Immigrants With TB, Report Says
Also see:
Beaverton workers treated for tuberculosis exposure ^Posted by AuntB
On News/Activism ^ 04/10/2007 11:52:55 AM PDT · 20 replies · 636+ views
Beaverton Valley Times (Or) ^ | Apr. 10, 2007 | Valley Times
Man with tuberculosis jailed for not wearing mask [Russian immigrant now in Arizona] ^
Posted by aculeus
On News/Activism ^ 04/03/2007 5:44:27 PM PDT · 23 replies · 645+ views
CN N.com ^ | April 3, 2007 | Unsigned
Tuberculosis a global threat that we here must fight, too ^
Posted by SJackson
On News/Activism ^ 03/18/2007 9:57:15 AM PDT · 6 replies · 255+ views
Capital Times ^ | March 16, 2007 | Dr. Thomas Schlenker
To control and beyond: moving towards eliminating the global tuberculosis threat (World 1/3 have TB) ^
Posted by neverdem
On News/Activism ^ 01/24/2007 10:26:55 PM PST · 10 replies · 328+ views
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health ^ | 2004 | Timothy F Brewer and S Jody Heymann
Thanks for the ping!
“To keep the cows out???”
It wouldn’t work, cows can jump over the moon. A fence would be no barrier to them.
We need to fine the farmers who milk the illegal cows...
Not really. You’d need a ceiling, too.
Illegal aliens threaten
U.S. medical system
Docs journal reports hospitals being closed, previously vanquished diseases being spread
Posted: March 13, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
WorldNetDaily.com
Cristobal Silverio emigrated illegally from Mexico to Stockton, Calif., in 1997 to work as a fruit picker.
He brought with him his wife, Felipa, and three children, 19, 12 and 8 – all illegals. When Felipa gave birth to her fourth child, daughter Flor, the family had what is referred to as an “anchor baby” – an American citizen by birth who provided the entire Silverio clan a ticket to remain in the U.S. permanently.
But Flor was born premature, spent three months in the neonatal incubator and cost the San Joaquin Hospital more than $300,000. Meanwhile, oldest daughter Lourdes married an illegal alien gave birth to a daughter, too. Her name is Esmeralda. And Felipa had yet another child, Cristian.
The two Silverio anchor babies generate $1,000 per month in public welfare funding for the family. Flor gets $600 a month for asthma. Healthy Cristian gets $400. While the Silverios earned $18,000 last year picking fruit, they picked up another $12,000 for their two “anchor babies.”
snip
the increasing number of illegal aliens coming into the United States is forcing the closure of hospitals, spreading previously vanquished diseases and threatening to destroy America’s prized health-care system, says a report in the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
snip
“Anchor babies,” the author writes, “born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.”
In addition, the report says, “many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.”
While politicians often mention there are 43 million without health insurance in this country, the report estimates that at least 25 percent of those are illegal immigrants. The figure could be as high as 50 percent.
Not being insured does not mean they don’t get medical care.
Under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985, hospitals are obligated to treat the uninsured without reimbursement.
snip
“American hospitals welcome ‘anchor babies,’” says the report. “Illegal alien women come to the hospital in labor and drop their little anchors, each of whom pulls its illegal alien mother, father, and siblings into permanent residency simply by being born within our borders. Anchor babies are citizens, and instantly qualify for public welfare aid: Between 300,000 and 350,000 anchor babies annually become citizens because of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.”
Among the organizations directing illegal aliens into America’s medical systems, according to the report, are the Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration Policy, Practice, and Pro Bono, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, the National Council of La Raza, George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the Migration Policy Institute, the National Network for Immigration and Refugee Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Because drug addiction and alcoholism are classified as diseases and disabilities, the fiscal toll on the health-care system rises.
When Linda Torres was arrested in Bakersfield, Calif., with about $8,500 in small bills in a sack, the police originally thought it was stolen money, explained the report. It was her Social Security lump sum for her disability — heroin addiction.
“Today, legal immigrants must demonstrate that they are free of communicable diseases and drug addiction to qualify for lawful permanent residency green cards,” writes Cosman, a medical lawyer, who formerly taught medical students at the City University of New York. “Illegal aliens simply cross our borders medically unexamined, hiding in their bodies any number of communicable diseases.”
Many illegals entering this country have tuberculosis, according to the report.
“That disease had largely disappeared from America, thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as isoniazid and rifampin,” says the report. “TB’s swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60 percent of those infected because of new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis. Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico. This Mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to at least two major anti-tubercular drugs. Ordinary TB usually is cured in six months with four drugs that cost about $2,000. MDR-TB takes 24 months with many expensive drugs that cost around $250,000 with toxic side effects. Each illegal with MDR-TB coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later.
TB was virtually absent in Virginia until in 2002, when it spiked a 17 percent increase, but Prince William County, just south of Washington, D.C., had a much larger rise of 188 percent. Public health officials blamed immigrants. In 2001 the Indiana School of Medicine studied an outbreak of MDR-TB, and traced it to Mexican illegal aliens. The Queens, New York, health department attributed 81 percent of new TB cases in 2001 to immigrants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ascribed 42 percent of all new TB cases to ‘foreign born’ people who have up to eight times higher incidences apparently, 66 percent of all TB cases coming to America originate in Mexico, the Philippines and Vietnam.”
Costly Drug-resistant TB Hits Calif. Illegals
NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
An alarming number of aliens in California are infected with a multidrug-resistant form of tuberculosis – and treating them could deliver a serious financial blow to the state’s public health system.
Treatment for the tuberculosis known as MDR-TB is “very expensive, ranging from $200,000 to $1.2 million per person over an 18-to-24-month time period,” Dr. Reuben Granich, a lead investigator for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a June 7 press conference.
Dr. Granich studied 38,291 reported cases of tuberculosis in California from 1994 to 2003, and found that 407 were classified as drug-resistant – mostly in patients from Mexico or the Philippines.
Of patients with MDR-TV, 84 percent were “foreign born,” Dr. Granich said, and they were twice as likely to “transmit the disease to others” than other TV patients.
Dr. Granich’s research did not designate the “foreign born” patients as illegal aliens, but most of them had been in the U.S. less than five years when they were diagnosed.
Under federal law, states must provide emergency medical care to patients regardless of their citizenship or finances. California and the three other states that border Mexico are still owed more than $200 million for the treatment and transport of illegal aliens.
Drug-resistant TB could “threaten the efficacy of TB control efforts,” according to Dr. Granich’s study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It notes that cases were increasingly turning up in rural or small-scale health facilities with limited resources.
“Our findings are of concern.”
TB cases in the U.S. increased 20 percent in the last two decades, and almost 15,000 cases were reported last year – the majority in foreign-born patients.
HOSPITAL TO THE WORLD WELCOMES ILLEGALS & CONTAGIOUS DISEASES
Topic: Diseases Biohazards illegal immigration
Dr. Madeleine Cosman, Ph.D., ESQ
April 26, 2005
Many illegals who skulk across our borders have tuberculosis (TB). That disease had disappeared from America thanks to excellent hygiene and powerful modern drugs such as Isoniazid and Rifampin. TB’s swift, deadly return now is lethal for about 60% of those infected. The culprit is the new Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB).Until recently MDR-TB was endemic to Mexico.
The mycobacterium tuberculosis is resistant to at least two major TB drugs. Ordinary TB usually is cured in six months with four drugs (that cost about $2000). MDR-TB takes 24 months with many expensive drugs with toxic side effects (that cost around $250,000). Each Illegal Alien with MDR-TB coughs and infects numerous people who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later, like a time bomb.
“Legal immigrants over the age of 15 must have a chest x-ray upon entry to check for tuberculosis “.[36][37]
Illegal aliens are not screened in this manner. According to Dr. Lee Reichman, “Unless Americans are willing to adopt suffocatingly draconian immigration policies, the likelihood is that with globalization TB will again become epidemic here, in the same way that HIV moved from Africa to take root throughout the world. Suffering does not localize. When we engage with the world, we engage, inescapably and absolutely, with the world’s infections. And the most devastating infection in the world is not Ebola or Lyme disease, West Nile virus or even HIV, but tuberculosis.”[38]
“One individual in central California, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was responsible for infecting at least 56 other people before he was incarcerated for forced treatment earlier this year. In 1996, the John Hopkins Center for Tuberculosis Research estimated it cost $13,000 to treat each case of TB. That means it cost U.S. taxpayers $741,000 in 1996 dollars to stem the epidemic caused by a single illegal immigrant. About 53 percent of the people diagnosed in the United States each year with TB are born outside the U.S. In the Los Angeles area, 80 percent of people infected with TB are foreign-born, with Mexico leading the way, followed by the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China.”[32]
Dr. Madelein Cosman concurs, but points out that other diseases are also an issue, “many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue fever, and Chagas disease,”[39]
Just spreading the plagues Americans won't.
Bush Swallows.
It makes me sick and angry to think about it!
We need to isolate Rosie O’Donnell
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