US Immigrants Pose TB Threat

WND ^ | 10-22-2006

[blam]

Delhi Raises Dengue Fever Alert

[blam]

Immune alarm 'will help fight TB'

BBC
10-22-2006

There were 8,000 cases of TB in the UK last year

A key part of body's defence against tuberculosis has been identified by an international team of scientists. The study in Science found cells in the body have a receptor on their surface which sends out a signal calling for immune system aid when TB is detected.

The researchers say the aim would be to mimic this rallying cry with a vaccine or immune system therapy to help fight the bacterium.

TB experts welcomed the growing attention being paid to the disease.

They said there were 8,000 people infected with TB in the UK last year, up 10% from 2004.

Around 2.5 million people die from the disease around the world each year.

'A piece of the jigsaw'

Scientists have known for some time that when host cells are invaded by this bacterium, they are able to call up additional immune cells to fight TB and try to limit the damage caused.

The team, including researchers from Imperial College London and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, identified the CCR5 receptor on the host cells which triggers the immune cells' response.

The scientists found that if CCR5 was not present, the bacteria were able to thrive inside host cells, because immune cells did not receive the signal to attack.

Dr Beate Kampmann, from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Clinical Tropical Medicine and the Department of Paediatrics at Imperial College London, who worked on the research, said: "These results describe a novel mechanism whereby Mycobacterium tuberculosis communicates with the human immune system.

"Another piece of this complex jigsaw has been filled in, which will help us to target TB with very specific drugs or vaccines.

The scientists hope that their findings could lead to a new vaccine or immunotherapy being developed which could artificially kick the immune cells into action in the same way as CCR5, boosting the body's ability to fight TB.

Dr Kampmann added: "We can now test potential vaccines or drug candidates for the desired effect, as we understand better how they should act."

A new way of tackling TB is urgently needed.

The existing BCG vaccine does not offer complete protection, and the current treatment for TB involves taking medication for at least six months.

This means many people do not complete the cause, fuelling the development of multi-drug resistant strains of TB.

Professor Peter Davies, head of the TB unit at Liverpool's Cardiothoracic Centre and a member of the campaign group TB Alert, welcomed the research.

He added: "At last we are getting scientific attention in the battle against TB which, as we all recognise, we are losing.

"There are more deaths and more cases each year.

"We desperately need new vaccines, diagnostics and drugs."

[Fawn]

But they work so cheap.....lets bring more in...and let them pick all the vegetables.--what's a little of e-coli once in a while?...and while you're at it....raise my insurances and taxes some more. Create some new ones too!

[sheana]

Not only Tb but other diseases as well. Hubby (recently retired firefighter) knew of 2 cases of Leprosy in the illegal immigrant town he was stationed at.

[raybbr]

ping

[raybbr]

The states with the highest numbers of multi-drug resistant cases in the last decade were New York, California, Texas and Florida, according to the CDC – states with the highest populations of new immigrants.

Another of Bush's open-door policy legacies.

With the "new America" comes new challenges that we, the non-elites, will simply just have to bear.

We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.

Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.

For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.

As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico.

George Bush from a campaign speech in Miami, August 2000.

You can read the speech here.

Here is an excerpt of a good critique of that speech:

In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on. My Bush Epiphany By Lawrence Auster

The Path to National Suicide by Lawrence Auster (1990)

An essay on multi-culturalism and immigration.

Click the Pic!!!!

How can we account for this remarkable silence? The answer, as I will try to show, is that when the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was being considered in Congress, the demographic impact of the bill was misunderstood and downplayed by its sponsors. As a result, the subject of population change was never seriously examined. The lawmakers’ stated intention was that the Act should not radically transform America’s ethnic character; indeed, it was taken for granted by liberals such as Robert Kennedy that it was in the nation’s interest to avoid such a change. But the dramatic ethnic transformation that has actually occurred as a result of the 1965 Act has insensibly led to acceptance of that transformation in the form of a new, multicultural vision of American society. Dominating the media and the schools, ritualistically echoed by every politician, enforced in every public institution, this orthodoxy now forbids public criticism of the new path the country has taken. “We are a nation of immigrants,” we tell ourselves— and the subject is closed. The consequences of this code of silence are bizarre. One can listen to statesmen and philosophers agonize over the multitudinous causes of our decline, and not hear a single word about the massive immigration from the Third World and the resulting social divisions. Opponents of population growth, whose crusade began in the 1960s out of a concern about the growth rate among resident Americans and its effects on the environment and the quality of life, now studiously ignore the question of immigration, which accounts for fully half of our population growth.

This curious inhibition stems, of course, from a paralyzing fear of the charge of “racism.” The very manner in which the issue is framed—as a matter of equal rights and the blessings of diversity on one side, versus “racism” on the other—tends to cut off all rational discourse on the subject. One can only wonder what would happen if the proponents of open immigration allowed the issue to be discussed, not as a moralistic dichotomy, but in terms of its real consequences. Instead of saying: “We believe in the equal and unlimited right of all people to immigrate to the U.S. and enrich our land with their diversity,” what if they said: “We believe in an immigration policy which must result in a staggering increase in our population, a revolution in our culture and way of life, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Hispanic and Caribbean and Asian peoples.” Such frankness would open up an honest debate between those who favor a radical change in America’s ethnic and cultural identity and those who think this nation should preserve its way of life and its predominant, European-American character. That is the actual choice—as distinct from the theoretical choice between “equality” and “racism”—that our nation faces. But the tyranny of silence has prevented the American people from freely making that choice.

[LucyT]

Thanks, blam. Pinging RR, WCG, SJ.

[Gritty]

Illegal aliens will kill us all.

But at least we'll eat cheap lettuce in the TB sanatorium!

[janetgreen]

There is another form of TB concerning U.S. health officials. It is called "multi-drug resistant." It responds to more treatments but can cost up to $250,000 and take two years to cure.

Just a minor detail to the elites, who are always protected from horrors like this.

If facts about diseases like this drug-resistant form of TB don't catch the attention of Americans, nothing will.

[pabianice]

"Screech! Racism!"

[TomGuy]

Do an FR Keyword search on 'diseases'.

TB is only part of the it. There are others coming in via the mass migration.

E.coli in spinach (and possibly lettuce) is only a small part.

A couple of weeks ago, a day care in the Fort Smith, AR area had an outbreak of e.coli.

Last week a day care in FL had an outbreak of salmonella.

We only see bits and pieces in the news.

Emergency rooms and doctors' offices are becoming the worst places to be for contracting these diseases.

[VOA]

We only see bits and pieces in the news.

And we can't expect the MSM to "connect the dots" to let the US public
know the real extent of the problem.

And the MSM wonders why they are in a death spiral.

[VOA]

Just a minor detail to the elites, who are always protected from horrors like this.

The elites should have been with me one evening a couple of years ago
when I got off a Santa Monica Big Blue Bus at an early stop.

I'd love to see the sqirming of an elitist forced to stay on the bus with
some poor fellow (OK, I profiled him as a likely illegal) with
continuous, deep hacking coughing that just about shook the bus.

Maybe not even TB...but I was getting off the bus before he coughed
up some lung tissue.

[janetgreen]

(OK, I profiled him as a likely illegal) with continuous, deep hacking coughing

Same reason, along with seeing kids with runny noses running all over the place, that I stopped going to Target and places like it.

The "elitists" and their families will never be subjected to situations like this, and they don't care a bit that we are forced to.

[VOA]

I'm sure my action on that bus would be called "racist" or "xenophobic"
by Ivy League professors that have never ridden a bus...
but I suppose I was a little sensitive to the problem as I'd recently seen
a documentary of two US doctors that had been forced to cobble together a
cocktail of donated US pharmaceuticals in order to treat resistant cases
of TB in South America.

I felt sorry for the rider. But if there's one place in the USA where an
illegal can get medical treatment (even better than any I could afford)...
it's Los Angeles.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Yet more evidence of the truth of the statement; "Our Diversity is Our Strength!"

[NRA2BFree]

There is another form of TB concerning U.S. health officials. It is called "multi-drug resistant." It responds to more treatments but can cost up to $250,000 and take two years to cure. This is the strain increasingly common throughout the world – rising more than 50 percent from about 273,000 in 2000 to 425,000 in 2004, according to a study published in August in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

NM has been treating a woman from Mexico (illegal) with this strain of TB. It has already cost the state of NM taxpayers over $250,000 and that was for one year of treatment. Had NM doctors turned her away, she would have died because she could not find this care in Mexico.

Let's just face it, the American taxpayer can't afford to carry the entire world on our backs, in spite of what that bunch of idiots in DC think. It's time they are given a reality check. I would be willing to bet that none of them have a clue about what's going on in the real world, but they can probably tell you what every play is about, who is staring at the opera, who is attending a party and all other social events that take place in DC. It's time they were kicked out of their ivory towers so they could join us in a taste of reality.

[Smokin' Joe]

Infectious disease ping....

Thanks, blam, LucyT!

[null and void]

Fixed your typo:

But at least we'll eat cheap lettuce spinach in the TB sanatorium!