Leprosy

As Lawrence Donnes writes in the NYT:

And there’s Lou Dobbs on CNN, helping racist tract-writers to peddle made-up statistics about immigrants and leprosy. (Did the country suddenly have 7,000 cases in three years? No, only a few hundred. But it sure sounds scarier.)

...Many people are surprised to learn that leprosy still exists. It is entrenched in parts of the third world, and people with it suffer greatly — often in secret, because their shame is so profound. But leprosy is nothing but a bacterial infection that has been curable for more than 50 years. It is very hard to catch — 95 percent of humans have a natural immunity. Patients are no longer infectious after one treatment, and those who are cured need not fear a relapse.

While the disease has greatly abated around the world, the social side-effects — abuse, discrimination, exile — have not gone away. People with leprosy face obstacles that people with cancer or AIDS do not. Their disease has been feared for millennia. It is in the Bible, linked to sin and uncleanliness and imbedded in the language, as a metaphor for anything loathsome or untouchable.

And he adds, later, "the blundering Mr. Dobbs, who invited a furor by defending grossly exaggerated leprosy statistics — “If we reported it, it’s a fact,” he said."

It's no surprise, I suppose, that people like Dobbs leap into the depths of the Bible for their fearmongering, into the collective memory of bellringing outcasts and screams of "unclean!"

But we've moved beyond those days of killing doves and sprinkling blood on people's ears and toes to "cleanse" them of leprosy - now we actually cure them. And I hope we've moved beyond being scared by Lou Dobbs screaming "Lepers! Unclean!" on Fox News, whether he's got his numbers right or not.