He may have posed as a threat to the public, but ultimately, there was no telling when the treatment would have made him non-contagious, if at all. We are looking at the case of a man who was jailed without an offense. Daniels himself felt caged and depressed. He was told that he was an inmate and given a booking number. He felt that he did not have the right to be isolated from his family and claimed that his mental health was deteriorating, and that he was slowly dying (Goodman, 2007). .
Daniels left his residence in Russia and returned to the United States after 15 years, where he was diagnosed. He had allegedly walked into a convenience store without a mask after being instructed otherwise. Daniels was questioned as to why he was not wearing a mask, to which he responded that he had no clue with regard to how TB worked. Country health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up because he was seen as a danger to the public, when he failed to take precautions to evade the transmission of his disease (Associated Press, 2007). According to Dr. Ross Upshur, director of the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, people with drug-resistant tuberculosis should be detained only if they refuse to cooperate. One of his papers published in a medical journal regarding the issue, however, was heavily discredited by Mark Harrington, Executive Director of the Treatment Action Group, who stated that there was a danger that victim could end up being blamed and cautioned him that involuntary detention should be his last resort (Associated Press, 2007). In the United States, TB patients are very rarely put under lock and key. According to Dr. Robert England, in the Phoenix area, there was only one other person detained that year. University of Pennsylvania ethicist, Art Caplan, mentioned that they had faced the same predicament that communities contended with generations ago when dealing with other illnesses like leprosy or smallpox (Associated Press, 2007).