Ebola Man Will be Prosecuted for Having Ebola

If Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man currently fighting Ebola in a Dallas hospital, recovers from his illness, his home country will welcome him home with an arrest warrant.

“He will be prosecuted,” Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberia Airport Authority, told the AP. Liberia plans to charge Duncan with lying on his airport screening questionnaire. The questionnaire asks whether the traveler has had contact with anyone who had Ebola; Duncan checked “no.”

Duncan is believed to have been infected when he helped a sick neighbor into a taxi. Duncan may not have known when he left Liberia that the woman had Ebola – she apparently claimed it was a pregnancy-related illness.

I know Liberia’s in crisis right now, but it doesn’t seem right to arrest people for being sick. Treating illness as a criminal offense seems like the start of a slippery slope we don’t want to go down.

Hold on, my deskmate John keeps coughing. Gotta go make a citizen’s arrest.