Topic: WorldNetDaily
Dubious WorldNetDaily doc Jane Orient of the far-right Association of American Physicans and Surgeons plays both sides of the fearmongering fence -- not only does she fearmonger about vaccines, she fearmongers about the diseases allegedly being brought into the country by unvaccinated people (which could largely be eradicated by, you know, the vaccines she opposes). She does the latter in a June 10 WND article by Bob Unruh:
Border Patrol agents are accustomed to dealing with illegal aliens trying to enter the U.S. And to handling drug dealers, or at least those who haul contraband into the U.S. There even are occasional shootings at the agency’s facilities.
But there’s probably nothing to trigger a surge in adrenaline for one of those federal workers as realizing that the person you just encountered may be infected with tuberculosis, or measles, or chicken pox.
Or Ebola.
It’s an issue that needs a lot more attention than it is getting, according to an expert, the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Jane Orient.
She told WND Monday that things that immigration officers need to know about those coming into the country are whether they have communicable diseases, where they’ve been and who they’ve encountered, where they’re going and who will they encounter, and if they are getting – or should be getting – had medical treatment for various exposures.
“All of these things we really don’t know,” she said. “Deliberately.”
[...]
Orient was concerned.
“The problem is bringing in people who may have a disease you don’t know about. You don’t know where they’ve been, or where they’re going, who they’ve been in contact with,” she said.
Sometimes people are contagious with a communicable disease without showing symptoms, and can transmit a virus.
That, she warned, “can be fatal.”
She cited the Ebola cases found in the United States only a few years ago. Then, one patient just showed up at a Dallas hospital.
In fact, there is no outbreak of Ebola at the southern border -- it's basically impossible since Ebola has an incubation period of 21 days and Africans who turn up on the border have typically been in transit for months before they get there. Further, the case of Ebola involved a man who entered the U.S. legally from Liberia but failed to tell officials of his contact with an Ebola victim before his flight to the U.S.
Unruh also let Orient claim without evidence that "most immigrants may have" latent tuberculosis, failing to mention that Orient, as the managinging editor of the AAPS' Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, published a 2005 article that falsely claimed cases of leprosy in the U.S. have exploded because of immigration. Orient and the AAPS have yet to issue a correction.
Unruh didn't help his credibility by citing a second, even more dubious source: "Kalen McBreen reported at Infowars that 'hundreds' of newcomers today have come from an area in the Congo in Africa to San Antonio, and hundreds more are en route." It tells you someting about the state of journalism at WND that it considers Infowars a credible source.
Needless to say, neither Unruh nor Orient made any mention of vaccines that might help curb any actual disease outbreak they could blame on filthy immigrants.
