Heirloom Diseases

If your daughter or granddaughter dies from some forgotten disease like typhoid or she becomes scarred with leprosy, will you face up to the fact that Obama, and former President Bush, are traitors and deserve a traitor's fate?  They laugh at you while you and your loved ones cough, scratch and bleed your way to an ugly grave.---rng

from grandrants.wordpress.com
by stoutcat (no relationship to fepcat)
Friday, August 27th, 2010


You’ve probably heard of heirloom vegetables. You know, they’re the ones that have been preserved by passing seeds down from generation to generation. Heirloom varieties are generally at least 50 years old, but many are 100 years or older.

While heirloom vegetables are actually benign–and frequently very tasty–it seems to me that we are currently witnessing an alarming wave of another type of heirloom: diseases. I started thinking about it when I read this post from Gateway Pundit earlier today, about an outbreak of typhoid (yes typhoid) in California and Nevada. Typhoid, once the scourge of many major cities, was nearly eradicated by the advent of clean water technologies in the early part of the twentieth century. Yet typhoid is back, and it’s not the only heirloom disease we’re seeing in America of late.

We’ve probably all seen the reports in the paper, on blogs, and on the nightly news of outbreaks of bedbugs in places like New York City (replete with video that’ll make you think twice before climbing into bed). But it’s not just there. Those little suckers (ha!) are appearing all over the country. 

You’re no doubt also aware that we’ve been having problems withsalmonella. According to the Food Poison Journal, there have been 12 major outbreaks of salmonella across the country this year, none of which seem to be related to the current egg recall.

Leprosy is another heirloom that was once nearly wiped out in this country. But in northwest Arkansas in 2008, there was an outbreak. Sadly, it’s not just in Arkansas, either.

“…[L]eprosy is clearly here in New York, and our clinic at Bellevue Hospital treats more than 500 identified cases of leprosy. While most are Caribbean, Hispanic and Asian immigrants, in recent years we have identified and reported endemic cases in New York City…
Based on the cases we see at the Bellevue leprosy clinic, there are many additional unidentified cases of leprosy in the tristate area and the mid-Atlantic region.”

Another oldie once thought to be under control, scarlet fever is back this year, as well, and in our nation’s capital.

Tuberculosis, another throwback to yesteryear, is also making a come-back. Once thought to be on track to be completely eradicated by this year, evidence suggests that it will not happen.

The U.S. is unlikely to meet its goal for eliminating tuberculosis (TB) by 2010, primarily because of high rates of latent (dormant) TB infection in certain population subgroups, according to a nationwide survey…
Continuing basic TB control measures, as well as targeted evaluation and appropriate treatment of individuals in high-prevalence groups — including immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and poor people — “are needed to further TB elimination efforts in the United States,” Navin and colleagues maintain.

to finish article