HEALTH AND POLITICS-Human beings are both compassionate and rational creatures, and to deny either compassion or reason is to therefore deny our own humanity. Ditto for our inherent need to recognize our own capability for err, to forgive ourselves and others for erring, and to demand we all learn and improve our lives after we acknowledge humanity's inherent flaws. Infectious disease, however, has no such sense of humanity and forgiveness.
The tale of the late Louis Zamperini's amazing life of hardship, courage and forgiveness is one of both a great American and a man who found rebirth in his own ability to forgive. The willingness of Pope Francis to acknowledge and beg the forgiveness of Catholic clergy sex abuse victims is both overdue yet also inspiring.
Even in the war-ravaged Middle East, the issues of forgiveness have been raised with the horrific kidnapping and murder of three Israeli youths, followed by the equally horrific kidnapping and murder of a Palestinian teenager. I doubt that I am the only Jew who favors the extension of Israeli policy to include public demolition of any guilty Jewish parties' homes to discourage any further atrocities--because both Palestinian and Israeli innocents are just that--innocent.
But closer to home, we have a problem with both the need to forgive and the need to act, because while we MUST as caring human beings (and especially as caring Americans) recognize and forgive the acts of desperate Central American families who were willing to have their children make the perilous trek north to the United States, we must also recognize that tuberculosis and other infectious diseases have no such sense of humanity.
We cannot, as reasoning humans, ignore the risk of heretofore nonexistent infectious diseases in the U.S., and we cannot ignore our need to protect ourselves and our children against infections that are now considered so tropical and exotic that we are vulnerable to the ravages of those diseases in the modern Western world.
Infectious disease isn't a pretty or politically-correct business to deal with. As with economics, it's cold, rational to the extreme, and without any sense of compassion. The only logical or compassionate way to prevent the spread of infectious disease is to recognize infectious disease as a heartless enemy and stop the enemy cold.
For example, the American HIV epidemic had to be slowed not just by reaching out to homosexual victims, but to demand that the "bathhouse behavior" of those with up to hundreds of sex partners a year had to end this practice in order to save valuable lives. In Africa, the recognition that millions of deaths can be avoided by condom usage and encouraging widespread male circumcision as population-saving measures are similarly challenging but necessary.
Forgiveness might or might not be helpful for an American President who was willing to do or say anything to Latinos to get re-elected (and who likely, if accidentally, encouraged this sudden surge of Central American children to our borders), but who has yet to even visit the border despite the pleas of both Republican and Democratic elected leaders.
Yet forgiveness does appear timely and essential to those innocent Central American children and other refugees who have fled from their nightmarish countries of origin, and who apparently arrived here with the collusion and/or ineptitude of Mexican governmental and military leaders.
And while it also appears that many of our nation's illegal immigration problems would be resolved with a few cultural and political changes to our immediate neighbor to the south, the need to confront both the calamities in Central America is no less than our need to protect our OWN children from the strains of resistant tuberculosis and other exotic diseases (ranging from leprosy to deep fungal diseases) that these refugees potentially and unintentionally might bring.
Lawyers, doctors and social workers are vital to attend to the refugees' needs, and the additional need to return as many of the refugees as possible back to their families abroad exists not just for THESE children but for OUR children. Sending the wrong message of "come over here and we'll take care of you" is just as self-defeating as not paying for and attending to these children's needs.
Equally self-defeating, however, is our failure to confront the willingness and inability of Mexico's military to allow this influx of children through their nation (which is NOT behaving as a sovereign and modern nation ought), as well as our failure to not keep these refugees within detention centers and prevent the spread of infectious disease.
And while we're on the subject of forgiveness, it is the responsibility for our President--who claims we should get past politics and fix this--to acknowledge his own role in creating this crisis, as well as recognize those Republican AND Democratic leaders who are coming up with local funding and resources to house and take care of these refugees.
If the President truly wishes to get past party politics, and really focus on both action and forgiveness, he needs to adhere to the factual narrative that conservatives are just as concerned about the health and welfare of these children as liberals. Furthermore, he needs to promote the factual narrative that liberals are just as concerned as conservatives that there are very real health risks that will face Americans if this crisis is addressed in a political--and not a medical--manner.
The need to pay for the medical, food and other needs of these refugees is as critical a need as that of determining where this money will come from. Other priorities will have to be put on hold to come up with the necessary funding, and the governments of origin of these refugees should be brought to bear as well.
Scabies and head lice are common diseases that the refugees have--but these diseases always occur with large groups of clustered patients. They are troublesome but easily fixable.
Yet the bigger problem MUST NOT be forgotten, which is tuberculosis and other serious contagious and systemic diseases from which we used to screen European and other immigrants during the Ellis Island era. Our new refugees must not only be taken care of, but also not allowed to leave their centers of detention for fear of any infectious disease outbreak in an otherwise unprepared America. Whether the President is to blame or not, this will cost money.
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Much of the reason we MUST not only steer clear of dragging on about our "broken" immigration policy but to enforce the policy we now have (even if it's altered) is to prevent the introduction and dissemination of dangerous and potentially life-threatening infectious diseases to our nation. This fact is true for all nations, and it's based not on what form of compassion is best for newcomers but rather on how to keep our citizens alive and healthy.
Prevention and treatment of infectious disease knows only ONE form of compassion: stop the spread, prevent avoidable outbreaks, and aggressively treat and sequester any infected and/or exposed patients. The rights of an individual has virtually no standing compared to the rights of a greater society, and at times individuals will lose their civil rights in order to save the lives of the greater regional population.
That hard reality is not politics as usual--it's hard, mandatory medical practice that's been done for millennia.
Because while human beings must confront their own errors and must confront their need to forgive, micro-organisms that cause potentially fatal infections have no such higher reason or compassion. WE must forgive, but infectious disease never forgives.
(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected] . He also does regular commentary on the Mark Isler Radio Show on AM 870. Dr. Alpern is a dermatologist with offices in Anaheim, Huntington Beach and Temecula--the views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 56
Pub: Jul 11, 2014