XDR TB & Harvard

Extreme/extensive drug-resistant TB, even worse than MDR (multi-drug resistant) TB is now rearing its ugly head around the world. IT is caused in part by taking the wrong drugs and for an incorrect course period. XDR is focused in the HIV community, particularly in Africa, but the HIV community will provide an incubation/creche for XDR worldwide -- as if people with HIV needed another threat to their very existence.

Of all TB cases in the US, 4% are XDR. Not a lot, given that TB is not all that common here, but a worrying number at any rate. XDR is a death sentence -- meaning basically that there is no cure. None. Not even third line drugs, old drugs, rare drugs or last resort drugs. If you have it, you are consigned to a long battle you will lose. Or if you are immuno-compromised, a short, nasty death. What worries me is that people with other conditions, such as asthma, emphysema and severe allergies could also be rounded up in this one, not just HIV victims.

So assuming that this spreads, what to do? First off, the government needs re-instate the control mechanisms of the period before anti-biotics: quarantine, screening and travel restrictions -- can you imagine the bleeding hearts that are already gasping at immigration control facing this one. The ALCU will infarct at the notion that in the public interest people could be involuntarily committed to sanitariums ... to die. It all depends on how it spread. This is not like H1N5 bird flu, this one already exists in a human unfriendly and infectious form. Just how infectious we can't really get a handle on -- nor how the spread might develop, but in South Africa where there are astronomical levels of HIV, the spread has been pretty quick. But globally, the numbers are not frightening ... yet, and in the US total number so of TB infections is the lowest it has been since 1953, when they started keeping statistics on this.

Note, however, the TB rate in foreign-born people in the United States was 8.7 times that of U.S. natives, the CDC said. Most of the foreign-born cases in 2005 involved people from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, India and China. This means shutting down the borders if the problem escalates. Tightly. Europe (where there have been no registered cases so far) will have a harder problem in shutting off the borders ... more fire on the border issue.

Harvard ... those same tolerant people who ousted Larry Summers, are having Khatami who has likened Hezbollah to “a shining sun that illuminates and warms the hearts of all Muslims and supporters of freedom in the world.” True, he was a "reformer" in the context of the mullahs who run the country, and admits the holocaust, but he is no friend of the West. So is it in bad taste to have a committed supporter of terrorist causes speak at Harvard University the day before the 5th anniversary of 9/11? Or is it to show that Harvard has an "open mind" about politics and viewpoints -- so long as your viewpoint matches the orthodox Harvard one. Mitt Romney has refused to spend any state money for security, which has the leftists up in arms. And why should he? Why should a single cent of my tax dollars go to waste to provide Harvard (of all places that could afford it themselves) with security to host a supporter of terrorists? Cambridge.....