Here's an interesting article from ABC. In Arizona, there's a guy locked up for possibly the rest of his life without a jury trial and without even a defined sentence. His crime? Being stupid while incurable.
Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime. Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable.
County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors' instructions to wear a mask in public.
"I'm being treated worse than an inmate," Daniels said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press last month. "I'm all alone. Four walls. Even the door to my room has been locked. I haven't seen my reflection in months."
Though Daniels' confinement is extremely rare, health experts say it is a situation that U.S. public health officials may have to confront more and more because of the spread of drug-resistant TB and the emergence of diseases such as SARS and avian flu in this increasingly interconnected world.
It isn't as unusal as you might think.
Texas has placed 17 tuberculosis patients into an involuntary quarantine facility this year in San Antonio. Public health authorities in California said they have no TB patients in custody this year, though four were detained there last year.
Upshur's paper noted that New York City forced TB patients into detention following an outbreak in the 1990s, and saw a significant dip in cases.
In the Phoenix area, only one other person has been detained in the past year, said Dr. Robert England, Maricopa County's tuberculosis control officer.
Daniels has been living alone in a four-bed cell in Ward 41, a section of the hospital reserved for sick criminals. He said sheriff's deputies will not let him take a shower he cleans himself with wet wipes and have taken away his television, radio, personal phone and computer. His only visitors are masked medical staff members who come in to give him his medication.
The ventilation system draws out the air and filters it to capture the bacteria-laden droplets he expels when he coughs. The filters are periodically burned.
Daniels said he is taking medication and feeling a lot better. His lawyer would not discuss his prognosis. Daniels plans to ask for his release at a court hearing late this month.
I suppose the analogy, legally speaking, is with mentally ill patients who must be locked up because they are a danger to themselves and the public if they are let loose. Still, Daniels isn't insane, just too dumb to follow simple instructions the first time he is told them. I honestly don't know what to make of this one. Obviously the public should have some measure of protection against being infected with an incurable disease just because some dumbass thinks he's got more rights than other people - but I can also see a whole lot of room for abuse of such power. What do you think? Is locking up incurable and infectious patients the right thing to do or is it just another step towards a police state?
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