Disabled boy not allowed on plane
Disabled boy not allowed on plane
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — A California family not allowed to board a cross-country flight said Tuesday that they believe they were discriminated against because their son has Down syndrome.
Robert Vanderhorst, his wife Joan and 16-year-old son Bede, who is disabled, were booked to fly on an American Airlines flight from Newark to Los Angeles on Sunday when the boy and his parents were not allowed on the plane.
The family from Porterville had upgraded to first class tickets at an airport kiosk, and asked the airline to seat the boy and one of his parents together, Vanderhorst said — a request the airline granted.
When the family was ready to board, they were stopped by airline personnel, told their son was a “security risk” and would not be allowed on the flight. The parents protested, and later were rebooked to fly coach with another airline.
American Airlines spokesman Matt Miller said the disabled boy was agitated and running around the gate area prior to boarding, which his parents dispute. The airplane’s pilot observed the boy, Miller said, and made the call based on his behavior.
“He was not ready to fly, that was our perspective,” Miller said. “We rebooked the family out of concern for the young man’s safety and that of other passengers as well.”
Rep. Ryan praises
President Clinton
ADEL, Iowa (AP) — Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Wednesday held Bill Clinton up as a model of reform and Barack Obama as his opposite, hours before the former president’s speech to the Democratic National Convention.
Campaigning in Iowa, Ryan lauded Clinton administration action on welfare reform and spending reductions — areas where the GOP ticket has aimed some of its sharpest critiques of Obama, the incumbent Democrat.
Clinton, once an Obama critic, has become one of his biggest assets as the president scraps with GOP rival Mitt Romney for re-election. Clinton, whose two terms ended on an economic high note, appears in a television ad where he likens Obama’s agenda to his own.
Void of a single reference to Clinton-era scandals, Ryan’s praise was a way to paint Obama as a failure on the GOP ticket’s terms.
“Under President Clinton we got welfare reform,” Ryan told an audience outside a small-town courthouse west of Des Moines. “President Obama is rolling back welfare reform. President Clinton worked with Republicans in Congress to have a budget agreement to cut spending. President Obama, a gusher of new spending.”
Inmate sex-change ruling praised
BOSTON (AP) — A ruling ordering Massachusetts prison officials to provide sex-reassignment surgery to an inmate is being praised by advocates as important recognition that the surgery is a legitimate treatment for gender-identity disorder, even as critics including Sen. Scott Brown call it “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ruled Tuesday in the case of Michelle Kosilek, a transgender inmate serving life in prison for murder. Wolf said the Department of Correction must provide the taxpayer-funded surgery because it is the only way to treat Kosilek’s “serious medical need.”
Kosilek was born male but has received hormone treatments and now lives as a woman in an all-male prison. Kosilek was named Robert when married to Cheryl Kosilek and convicted of murdering her in 1990.
Girl recovers from bubonic plague
DENVER (AP) — The parents of 7-year-old Sierra Jane Downing thought she had the flu when she felt sick days after camping in southwest Colorado.
It wasn’t until she had a seizure that her father knew something was seriously wrong and rushed her to a hospital in their town of Pagosa Springs.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I just reacted,” Sean Downing said. “I thought she died.”
An emergency room doctor who saw Sierra Jane for the seizure and a 107-degree fever late Aug. 24 wasn’t sure what the cause was either and called other hospitals before the girl was flown to Denver.
There, a pediatric doctor at Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children racing to save Sierra Jane’s life got the first inkling that she had bubonic plague.
Dr. Jennifer Snow suspected the disease based on the girl’s symptoms, a history of where she’d been, and an online journal’s article on a teen with similar symptoms.
Dr. Wendi Drummond, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the hospital, agreed and ordered a specific antibiotic for Sierra Jane while tests were run, later confirming their rare diagnosis.
It was the first bubonic plague case Snow and her colleagues had seen.
“I credit them for thinking outside the box,” said Dr. Tracy Butler, medical director of the hospital’s pediatric intensive unit.
The bubonic plague hasn’t been confirmed in a human in Colorado since 2006, when four cases were reported.
Federal health officials say they are aware of two other confirmed and one probable case of plague in the U.S. so far this year — an average year. The other confirmed cases were in New Mexico and Oregon, and the probable case also was in Oregon. None died.
It’s not clear why Colorado hasn’t seen another human case until now, state public health veterinarian Elisabeth Lawaczeck said. Plague is generally transmitted to humans through the bites of infected fleas but also can be transmitted by direct contact with infected animals, including rodents, rabbits and pets.
Officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged that a series of frightening illnesses linked to insects and pests have been surfacing lately across the country, including mosquito-borne West Nile virus outbreaks in Texas and other states, deadly hantavirus cases linked to Yosemite National Park, and some scattered plague cases.
But with some of the illnesses — like plague — this is not an unusually bad year; it’s just getting attention. And the number of cases of each disease is driven by different factors.
“I don’t think there’s a confluence of any particular set of factors” driving the recent illness reports, said Kiersten Kugeler, a CDC epidemiologist in Colorado who tracks plague reports.
In Sierra Jane’s case, by the night of Aug. 25, the girl’s heart rate was high, her blood pressure was low, and a swollen lymph node in her left groin was so painful it hurt to undergo the ultrasound that detected the enlarged node, Snow said.
Doctors say the girl could be discharged from the hospital within a week.
On Wednesday, Sierra Jane flashed a smile with two dimples as she faced reporters in a wheelchair, her pink-toed socks peeking out from the white blanket enveloping her as she held a brown teddy bear.
“She’s just a fighter,” said her mother, Darcy Downing.
Darcy Downing said her daughter may have been infected by insects near a dead squirrel she wanted to bury, even though Darcy had warned her daughter to leave it alone. She remembered catching her daughter near the squirrel with her sweat shirt on the ground. Her daughter later had the shirt tied around her torso, where doctors spotted insect bites.
The bubonic plague wiped out at least one-third of Europe in the 14th century. Today, it can be treated with antibiotics, but it’s important to catch it early.
“If she had stayed home, she could’ve easily died within 24 to 48 hours from the shock of infection,” Snow said.