re: #55 b.d.

re: #50 Decatur Deb

“Ask the Caribs about immigrants importing diseases.

Never mind…there are no more Caribs.”

slate.com

In 2005, an episode of Lou Dobbs Tonight falsely asserted, “We have some enormous problems with horrendous diseases that are being brought into America by illegal aliens,” including 7,000 cases of leprosy in the past three years. On his radio show, Bill O’Reilly agreed that immigrants were crossing the border with “tuberculosis, syphillis, and leprosy,” and in 2006, Pat Buchanan claimed “illegal aliens” were responsible for bedbug infestations in “26 states.”

ISTM one of my college history classes discussing that syphillis could have been a 15th Century gift from the Caribs to the immigrant Spanish, who in turn took the disease back to Spain, and the western world.

Dunno if that theory has been debunked or not.