Militarizing Disease

Pat Farnack describes how disease becomes a crime. Besdies some historical background, she also provides some subjective comments on seeing sick people, providing a look into how fear and anxiety overcome us when faced with the threat of disease.

Farnack writes:

Over two hundred years ago, a bounty hunter knocked on a young woman's door in the wild and rural Kingdom of Hawaii. She was suspected of having leprosy and without further comment, she was carried off to the island of Molokai where she remained until her death.

Sadly, she didn't had a contagious form of the disease, yet she was forced to live out her final days in exile. That's one of many stories told by John Tayman in his new book "The Colony" about what happens when " a government
militarizes a disease."

Tayman sat up and took notice when, in October, President Bush discussed a possible quarantine should the avian flu take root here on our shores. The level of fear is beginning to boil, as four people have died in Turkey and two dozen or so in Asia and there is growing concern that the bird flu may begin to spread from bird to human, and then human to human in America, too.