In Stockton, California a meth-addled tuberculosis patient has been tossed in lockup after refusing to take the medications that would keep his active pulmonary TB from becoming contagious. 34-year-old Armando Rodriguez apparently missed one of his self-administered treatments because he went on a meth-fueled alcohol binge and, as he told a nurse, he didn't want to hurt his liver. more ›

Over the weekend, a man on the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention's "do not board" list, with a steaming case of tuberculosis, managed to fly from Philadelphia to SFO. Should his fellow passengers be worried? Not so, says US Airways spokesman Morgan Durant. more ›

Get ready to panic, gays. Bars in Bevan Dufty's district are brimming with tuberculosis. Or so alarmist reports tell us. But according to the esteemed Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco health officials have traced "several cases of tuberculosis to patrons of Castro gay bars, with one of the people infected a bartender in the area." Over 140 employees in the homosexually-inclined neighborhood are being asked to test for TB. However, Gay men's health outreach center Magnet is saying that you don't have to worry unless you're a bartender. (Speaking of which, did anybody see that line coming out of Lime the other day? It wasn't a velvet rope line; it was a line of unemployed people looking for a service industry gig. Oy.) TB is most harmful, we're told, to HIV-positive ilk HIV who are "the biggest risk factor for not only contracting TB but for perpetuating and amplifying transmission," according to Dr. Masae Kawamura, director of the health department's tuberculosis control section. more ›

Hey, did you give birth at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco between March 10 to Aug. 10? Well, you might want to get tested for TB. See, Kaiser is in the process of contacting 960 new mothers about possible exposure after a part-time postpartum unit employee, who no longer works for the hospital, tested positive for tuberculosis. (Read more about it here.) For more info on getting tested, call Kaiser at 800-464-4000,or visit kp.org/newscenter. (SFGate) more ›