Man with tuberculosis breaks window, leaves LR quarantine

Man with tuberculosis breaks window, leaves LR quarantine

www.pbcommercial.com

LITTLE ROCK - A man kept in isolation after he was diagnosed with contagious tuberculosis broke a hospital window and fled from his room at a Little Rock hospital.

Franklin Greenwood, 50, was placed in isolation on June 29 after he was seen coughing up blood outside of the city's traffic court and was released by a judge to the state Health Department's custody. He left the hospital on July 1. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Greenwood's disappearance in Wednesday's editions.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Other News Link:

www.foxnews.com...


[edit on 11-7-2007 by UM_Gazz]

A very interesting story to say the least.

I was wondering why if he escaped on July 1 it is only now on the 11th of July that they are finally reporting it?

www.pbcommercial.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This may sound extreme, but with such GROSS disregard for human life, I think this man may be up for incarceration at some type of high-security facility, AND/OR execution, OUTRIGHT. He is giving anyone he comes into contact with essentially a 50/50 chance at a death sentence. Why should we afford him with anything less?

He is a danger to anyone within shouting distance of him, and he refuses to take medication and wear his surgical mask. So they lock him up. Now he breaks out and goes on the run, infecting more innocent people.

It might not be his fault this horrible disease happened to infect him, but they gave him a chance to try and live out whatever manner of normal life he could be afforded. He forfeits such rights by his insane disregard for others.

If I knew I had AIDS and went around having unprotected sex, it is on-par with this sort of CRIME. And that's the bottom line, this is criminal.



EDIT;

I assumed incorrectly that this was THIS man. I was incorrect. However, I am not going to delete the post or edit it, as I still believe this is horrible insofar as this man's uncaring attitude to the hundreds and possibly thousands of INNOCENT people he could end up infecting.



[edit on 7-12-2007 by forsakenwayfarer]

hmmm.....maybe his health insurance company refused to pay his bill???
he couldn't afford the medicine??
whatever....
I mean, I keep hearing people say that having healthcare isn't a right....it's okay if some go without. well....some are going without, so, there's probably a 50/50 chance that someone like this is running around untreated. I guess it's just something that we all are gonna have to learn to live with if we want to preserve our fine capitalistic society!!!

Do we know if he was being "treated"? Or was he just put away to die?

Just wondering!

Why is this coming out now? He could have gone half way around the world by now.

I read that his condition is treatable but deadly if left unchecked.

Wow is all I can say. This is the 2nd case I have heard in recent weeks with people either escaping or walking around knowingly infected.

I wonder why he took off?

Originally posted by DDay

I wonder why he took off?

Selfishness. It's endemic in this day and age.

People have no sense of responsibility to anyone else, and think that their "rights" trump everyone else's.

He no doubt thought that he had a "right" to be free and who cares if he makes anyone else sick? It's their problem, right?

If he was being detained because he's a danger to the public, and he escaped, then I agree with forsakenwayfarer to a degree: he should be put in an actual jail or prison cell, in quarantine of course. If someone with HIV knowingly has unprotected sex with someone else, and doesn't notify them of the risk, and the sex partner contracts HIV, that can be prosecuted for attempted murder (or is it manslaughter?). This is the same, and he ought to be prosecuted for it.

This is scary, I never knew that TB was this big of an issue today with all the modern medical and science advances since the late 1800s.

Like Forsaken I too feel that he should be kept in a secure facility until he is treated or dies. Unlike Andrew Speaker they said that his form can be treated so all he has to do is take his medication and then he can go home.

Interesting. Very interesting, on this post. The question is why did it take this long to put out a public health bulliten for that?
As far as him breaking out, that I can understand, as the quarantien proceedures is that he is locked in a room, no visitors, well non that is not covered in protective suits, no human contact, and you are stuck in that room with out even being allowed to go out. Level 4 quarantine, for an undetermined amount of time. And the next question would be who would pay for the treatment and keeping of him there. If he could not pay for such, then they would bill him and take him to court even though he was ordered by the state to be there. Also the question is how humane was the treatment there, or did they treat him like a pariah and not like a human being. I know that is a bit harsh, but those questions need to be asked.

Originally posted by DDay
I read that his condition is treatable but deadly if left unchecked.

To be honest, I could care less about this moron. However, i do have great concern for everybody he is coming into contact. Also, I am wondering why the delay in reporting this

A little teeny tiny question here. Does anyone remember when the old USSR put people in mental institutions as a means of controlling dissent? For their good, and the good of society, people were sent to mental institutions both there and in other nations on the say so of a judge.

Now we flash forward to today. Not as many people fear the mentally ill as in bygone days, and there has come about a lot of treatments for the mentally ill, so that is no longer such a good way to cage people you don't want to out right kill as you may want them for something else later.

But, we have a new threat, one that even here on ATS will garner no understanding and sympathy. T B . Let's build up a health care scare that the minute police/courts use it, there is justification to cut that person off from ALL contact for the rest of their life.

And this guy was "seen by ?? outside of a traffic court coughing up blood" and then presumably forced to go somewhere and be diagnosed. And then locked up for life by a judge.

Now me, I see that as a bit of practice for a new way to put people into a gulag. If this guy had TB at all, then it is a healthcare failure in this day and age, and he has done nothing to be imprisoned for. Because if you won't close the borders to Mexico, where the rate of TB is known to be a lot higher, then what right is there to lock up a citizen over it?

And the other case of this super TB, was a relatively upper middle class person with connections to the CDC, and he is "found" to be OK for society, once the scare is put in the public mind. But guest number two is some guy from outside of a traffic court. Let's see how the media responds this time?

And if this is just ignored by most people, then a couple more times, to be sure it works like they want, and nobody will ever question it again. Presto! a brand new way to get rid of unwanted people, never to have them even seen by relatives, as that would be to dangerous. And since it's a healthcare problem, you don't have all that pesky problem with courts, and reporting, and best of all, IT'S FOR YOUR SAFETY. (Now where have I heard that before????)

Interesting that people has no clue that among us is infected people waking and living everyday.

But lets get outrage at such a blatant disregard of life by this fellow human that happen to be sick.

We really need to get those concentration camps going, god forbid I see a suspicious sick person passing me by.

I find very interesting that the article also points out that he was released by a Judge to the health department.

I can not read more on the article because the link is not showing it.

But I wonder if he was in custody or was arrested after been seen coughing blood.

This trouble me, unless he was under custody for some other crimes and that is why he escape from isolation at the hospital.

NGC2736

Thanks for getting to the point I was trying to make faster than I did.

I wonder if he was put under arrest after found coughing blood and forced by judge to the health department.

Originally posted by NGC2736
Let's build up a health care scare that the minute police/courts use it, there is justification to cut that person off from ALL contact for the rest of their life.

lot higher, then what right is there to lock up a citizen over it?

Public safety and health. TB is a respiratory illness and is spread by that route. You cannot have someone wandering about that will infect more people.

The fact sheet on tuberculosis cases in this nation from 2006 tells that this disease is well and alive among us.

www.lungusa.org...

I still want to know if he was put under arrest or in custody inmediately.

I wish they would have specifically stated which strain of Tuberculosis the guy has. Tuberculosis can not only be found in the lungs, but in other areas of the body as well including the genital tract and circulatory system. TB is caused by one of several Mycobacteria and treatments can vary depending on which strain he was infected with, how long he had his diagnosis, and which mycobacteria is responsible for the primary infection. Most strains of TB do well with medication such as Isoniazid or Rifampicin, but there is the possibility that it can become drug resistant to multiple treatments and then it becomes much harder to deal with. This could help the general public in that area know how to protect themselves and what symptoms to look out for should they come in contact with him.

TB is an aerobic bacterium that relies on oxygen to oxidize substrates like sugar in order to metabolize energy, which accounts for its long latency period and why a diagnosis often occurs when it reaches disease proportions. In other words, he could have had an infection of TB Bacilli for a long while before actually seeing symptoms of it, and this is why it is essential that they find him. I don’t think physicians would be so worried had he escaped with the bacterium in a latent period, because transmission can only occur when the bacterium is in an active state. Someone already mentioned that he was noticed coughing up blood, which is one of the symptoms of an active state Pulmonary TB infection (the transmittable kind). Extrapulmonary infections have been known about for a long time and they generally are confined to the central nervous system and the lymphatic system, so symptoms vary considerably from a pulmonary infection. However, most strains of extrapulmonary TB infections are not transmittable, and I believe this is why they are trying to locate him as it appears he has Active Pulmonary Tuberculosis. Not only is he putting himself at risk, but he is putting anyone suffering from an immunosuppressive disease at risk like those with HIV/AIDS or any such affliction.

I have a hunch he was under arrest and NOT being treated. They do that, you know.

I'd run off too-

And why is this story coming out now? Didnt it happen a couple of weeks ago?

Is there a picture of him? Where is he from? Where is he bound to be?
Who's at risk?
Should we know what a person with Tuberculosis looks like? Something like Chertoff???

Originally posted by dgtempe
I have a hunch he was under arrest and NOT being treated. They do that, you know.

I'd run off too-

Exactly, that is what I will love to find out, perhaps we may never really know the real issue behind him been in the running.

But if he was kept illegally or by force under arrest he may come forward and tell his story on the news.

Unless he was actually arrested for something else when it was found that he was sick.

You see, the whole thing looks a tad strange. I live in Arkansas, and I have not heard a word about this on TV, which I watch at least once a day for the weather if nothing else.

mrwupy is not too far from my location, and I wonder if it was news there?

But the point is that a health scare can be used. Remember HIV? It was for a time the boogyman, but it got too many high profile people to be a valuable tool for jailing people. Now we have a good candidate.

I'm not saying that this case is one of someone being railroaded to a hospital prison, or that the guy should not have some responsibility for the spread, if it occurs. I'm just saying that if it really was this serious, then the story should have been bigger.

And if TB was that much of a danger, at least this strain, then we are all at risk when the government refuses to act on closing the border to Mexico. In other words, if this is so scary that you can lock this guy up, then are you not putting everyone at risk by ignoring illegals to cross from Mexico, where it has been reportedly a major health concern for years?

A decade ago, when I worked with the homeless population in New Orleans, TB was making a comeback, but not much was made of in the media.

We tested our nightly visitors with the aid of medical students.

Now, we have a drug resistant strain of TB that is making inroads into the community and those affected seem to not understand or care about the consequences of a major outbreak.

I can recall in my early youth that TB sanitariums were still in existence.

I somehow think that Americans just don't get it anymore when it comes to the medical threats that the rest of the world live with every day.

Despite having a very healthy population, we still have those who will make an icon out of that murdering thieving scum bucket in Cuba for having a socialized medical system.

But, if we have a TB epidemic in this country because the most irresponsible among us are the first to become infected, it's going to be hell to pay and nothing not even Hillary Clinton and her socialist pipe dreams will be able to help us.