Selfishness

The lawyer who knowingly exposed airplane passengers to a virulent strain of T.B. hopes his victims will forgive him. He just wanted to get back home to the U.S., he said. Well, tough s**t!! Now those poor people will have to undergo tests for years to come and their whole lives will be changed for the worse because of his selfishness.

Imagine this man...knowing his T.B. was extremely dangerous because it is drug resistant...knowing the Center of Disease Control had told him not to board a plane...knowing his actions could cause death or misery to possibly a couple of hundred people...choosing to ignore the rights of all of those people and deliberately exposing them to his disease.

He apparently was advised not to fly to Europe but chose to do so. Then he was told definitely not to fly back to the States but he chose to ignore that, too. He happens to be a personal injury lawyer so he can expect to have many of these people sue his ass.

We've seen people with AIDS keep their condition a secret and continue to have unprotected sex but this is the first time I've ever heard of someone with a contageous illness deliberately putting so many people at risk. The AIDS person was given jail time and so should this man. Because he and his father are both lawyers I doubt he'll spend a minute in jail, though.

We're bound to see more dangerous illnesses brought to our country because there are more world travellers. My fear has always been that they'd bring these diseases here unknowingly, becoming infected but not experiencing signs of sickness until they were already here. But in this case we have a well educated man selfish enough to consider his wishes more important than the lives of others.

What's really awful is that we shouldn't be surprised because we see it every day in every way.