A recent New York Times article reported that Michigan state officials have been charged with involuntary manslaughter for the death of an 85 year old resident of Flint MI. Conviction could lead to a maximum of 20 years in prison. According to the article, the state officials knew about Legionnaires’s disease being associated with the Flint water supply as early as 2014 but did not respond to the problem in a timely fashion, and, more importantly, failed to tell the public about the growing number of Legionnaires’ disease cases. This newspaper article points up a number of issues surrounding Legionnaires’ disease.…
Chad Grant, the CEO of McLaren Flint Hospital, the facility at the center of the Flint Legionnaires’ Outbreak, released an extremely critical report as a response to a state health department order for the hospital to “correct conditions”. Grant accused state officials of “blaming and attacking” McLaren Flint, and treating it as if it were the sole cause of the Flint outbreak in order to deflect attention from themselves. He referred to the accusations as “unwarranted and unjustified”. Grant points to the Flint municipal water system, which changed its source from Lake Huron to the Flint River, as the driving force behind the…