E-mail a friendJohn Tayman
airdate March 28, 2006
An award-winning editor, writer and automotive expert, John Tayman writes the 'Wheels' column for Business 2.0 magazine and is the editorial creative director of Men's Health. He's also the author of a new non-fiction book, The Colony, about the untold history of Hawaii's Molokai colony - where people affected with leprosy were exiled for several decades. The former deputy editor of Outside, Tayman has also worked as editor-at-large at Men's Journal, senior editor at Life and executive editor of New England Monthly.
John Tayman
Tavis: John Tayman is an award-winning journalist who serves as the editorial creative director for 'Men's Health' magazine. His new book deals with the shocking story of how the U.S. government treated leprosy victims as late as the 1960s. The book is called 'The Colony, The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai.' John Tayman joins us tonight from New York City. John, nice to have you on the program.
John Tayman: Thanks for having me on, Tavis.
Tavis: I wanna come to the book about the colony near the end of our conversation. There was a piece that many of us read in yesterday's 'New York Times' about some controversy relative to this book that I wanna give you a chance to comment on a little bit later. But first, the bird flu. I assume that I am correct, unfortunately, when I say, as I did at the top of the show, that with regard to the bird flu, it's not a matter of if, but when.
Tayman: That's what the experts are saying, Tavis. It's certainly going to reach the United States. That doesn't mean that its appearance necessarily triggers a pandemic, though.
Tavis: How do you tell that to the American people, though, when they read and hear and watch everywhere stories about the bird flu? And it does tend to put the fear of God into you, does it not?
Tayman: It does. It's very scary, and as a matter of fact, that's why the book that I wrote is a bit of a cautionary tale about how to mitigate that fear.
Tavis: What, in essence, is the process for mitigating that fear, particularly where government is concerned, for starters?
Tayman: Well, one thing that they have to be cautious of is not let public panic drive policy. That's what happened 140 years ago, and it resulted in the destruction of almost 9,000 lives. The government was reacting to what they thought at the time was a very scary, very unknown disease, similar to what we're thinking of with avian now, and they reacted in exactly the wrong manner.
Tavis: All right, since you're already there, let me follow you and make the comparison, then, between what we're dealing with now, or at least how we're attempting to deal with the bird flu, and what happened with the leprosy issue some years back.
Tayman: Well, let me talk about what happened in Hawaii. They criminalized the disease, and in so doing, they declared war on the people with the disease, rather than the disease itself. And when governments tend to do that, and they do it time and time again, all it does is drive the disease underground and make it harder to contain.
Tavis: So I guess the question, John, is if we can't depend on government, the entity that is supposed to deal with these public health challenges, if what you're telling me is that I can't rely, I'm hearing two things. I'm hearing you suggest to me that I can't rely on government to deal with this effectively, as they should. But at the same time, you're telling me I shouldn't be scared. You gotta juxtapose those two things for me right quick.
Tayman: (Laugh) Sure, let me reconcile them for you. We hope the government would handle it correctly, and some of the things they're doing now seems to be on that path. They're putting a premium on public education, trying to demystify aspects of this disease. And at the same time, trying to put in place some systems to rely on if a pandemic breaks out.
The bottom line, though is if an avian flu pandemic hits, the people that you're going to turn to, to rely on, are your neighbors and your friends and your family. It's the strength of the community that can actually help blunt a widespread pandemic. If they militarize the response to a pandemic, which is something that the administration brought up last November, what they're going to do is turn healthcare professionals into the perceived enemies. And they'll create chaos that way.
Tavis: You've just made two very important points that I wanna pick apart, if I might. The latter one first, I guess. Militarizing the operation, versus letting health professionals deal with it. It kind of reminds me of this so-called war on drugs. I've always been of the mindset personally, this ain't no place for my commentary, but it is my show, what the heck. (Laugh)
I've always had a problem with the way we deal with the drug crisis, the drug issue, this so-called war on drugs. That is to say, we look at it first as an issue of criminality, and not as the health crisis that it is. So what I'm hearing you suggest to me now is that if we militarize our response to the bird flu when it hits, this avian flu when it hits, and not let the health professionals do their job, then we're going to be in trouble.
Tayman: I think that's probably true. If they try and enforce quarantines, widespread quarantines, and they send out health officials into the communities, people are gonna react to those health officials as persons who can conceivably rip me from my family, from my home, from my workplace, and put me somewhere where I don't want to be, or don't need to be. That's precisely what happened in Hawaii 140 years ago, and it continued into the 1960s.
And what happened is people so feared the appearance of a health official, a doctor or a nurse or an agent, that they murdered many of them. And they ran into the hills, and soldiers were sent for them.
Tavis: When you said the 1960s, I wanna just go back and get that as well. You're suggesting to me in this text that this is the kind of process, the kind of procedure that we engaged in, quarantining people and leading to folks' murders, up until and into the 1960s?
Tayman: Well, the law that criminalized the disease of leprosy in Hawaii stayed on the books until the summer of 1969, remarkably enough. And in fact, that response to a disease didn't stop there. In the early days of the 1980s, in the early days of the AIDS crisis, politicians discussed turning this same leprosy colony into a national AIDS colony.
So as I said at the front of this, governments react this way time and time again. And inevitably what happens is the people who should not be rounded up and shipped away tend to be.
Tavis: The other issue that you raised earlier, John, that I also wanna go back to is this notion of the fact that the persons we are most going to rely on if something like this were to happen are family, friends, neighbors. Tell me what you mean by that.
Tayman: Well, there's a few things to keep in mind. The structures that the government has in place to try and mitigate any chaos, to try and get food, water, services, medical services to the communities is not going to be fully in place if the timetable they're expecting for avian really hits. So what's going to happen is that we're going to rely on our neighbors.
If we get sick and we self-isolate, which is something that is advisable, rather than a forcible isolation, if we decide to take a few days off or a few weeks off from work, or keep the kids at home from school to try and reduce their ability to spread any flu that they might have, or contact with other people that have flu, what's going to happen is that the government is not going to be able to get enough food, water, supplies to everybody who is self-isolating.
You're gonna turn to your neighbors, you're gonna turn to your friends. Now, if they have criminalized the disease, as they sadly did in Hawaii and in other instances, those friends and neighbors are going to essentially become your adversary. It was instructive to me when I was working on the book that the remarkable number of people who turned in suspected persons with leprosy in the early days of this policy.
Friends turned in other friends, family members turned in others. Some for a particular bounty, because they were all so frightened and hysterical over the idea that they might catch this disease. As we now know, leprosy turned out to be one of the least infectious diseases known to man.
Tavis: The point you make now raises, for me, a fascinating question about whether or not, if something like that were to happen where this flu is concerned, there might very well be particular communities, certain people, certain races. I could think of any number of categories of individuals who might be pushed aside, who might be harmed, who might be maimed or otherwise quarantined just because of some extraneous factor. How do we stop that from happening?
Tayman: Well, that's a good question, Tavis. I think you're talking about the societal reaction to, your first instinct is anybody who is different looking than me, they're a threat. Round them up, get them away from me. And that certainly happened in the early days of the leprosy outbreak, and it's happened in other pandemics.
Public education, as we're talking about, is probably the best thing to keep the level of hysteria down, and know that ultimately, the ones you're gonna rely on are your family, your neighbors, your community.
Tavis: Let me, before I close our conversation, come back to the book specifically. 'The Colony, The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai.' There was, I mentioned earlier, since we've been talking about this text and making the comparison between leprosy then and avian flu today, big story in the 'New York Times' yesterday in the arts section, the headline read 'Book on a Dark Chapter of Hawaiian History Draws Fire.'
The pull quote, that is to say the quote they pulled out and highlighted says simply 'a chronicle of a leprosy settlement upsets former patients.' So a little controversy generated by this book in the 'New York Times' yesterday. And to that, John Tayman has to say what?
Tayman: Well, we're talking about the longest and deadliest instance of medical quarantine in this nation's history, and it's a dark and unjust and unfortunate chapter of history. And I certainly understand how the people who were caught up in it, we're talking about almost 9,000 people who were sent away, two thirds of them should never have been sent away.
How a few of the remaining residents are uncomfortable, and don't really like addressing that history again. This is a government that deemed them without value; that marginalized them. And those wounds remain.
Tavis: The new book is 'The Colony, The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai,' written by John Tayman. By the way, I read 'Men's Health' magazine, so thank you. I enjoy reading it every month.
Tayman: Well, thanks for that, Tavis.
Tavis: (Laugh) Nice to have you on the program, John.
Tayman: Thank you for having me on.
Tavis: Up next on this program, Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau. Stay with us.
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