Hepatitis C Carrier Pleads Guilty

By Rachel Stockton

The 21st century’s version of Typhoid Mary pled guilty this week to spreading hepatitis C at the Rose Surgery Center in Colorado Springs this week.

Kristen Diane Parker, a med tech who worked at the surgery center, admitted that she stole syringes filled with fentanyl, injected herself with the powerful drug, then replaced the syringes with saline solution.  16 cases have been definitively linked to Parker through DNA testing, although an additional 11 have purportedly been attributed to her as well.

Parker admitted to being a drug addict as a result of a car accident when she was a teenager.  Initially, Parker denied knowing that she had hepatitis when she got caught stealing drugs from the clinic.  However, Rose claims that they told her that she “appeared to have hepatitis” when she filled out her employment paperwork.  Health care facilities are forbidden to disallow a person employment because they carry hepatitis.

Parker remains in federal custody; her sentencing is scheduled for December 10.  She could be sentenced to 20 years in a federal prison.  Her plea deal requires her to take part in ongoing blood tests, although she cannot be charged with any more counts, should more cases come to light.

One man who became infected after back surgery believes she should get life; Crosby Powell, aged 71, told the press that his physicians told him that interferon, the drug used to treat hepatitis C would likely kill him before the illness would.

In some regards, Parker’s case could be even more scandalous than Typhoid Mary’s; Mary Mallon was a healthy carrier of typhoid who denied that she had the disease.  53 people contracted the illness from her by eating the food she prepared as a cook.  She vehemently denied being a carrier and would not submit to urine and stool testing.  In her defense, it was not well known at that point that a healthy carrier could, indeed, spread the disease.   It is widely speculated that she came became a carrier of the disease in the womb; Mary’s mother contracted the disease while pregnant with her.

A typhoid researcher approached Mary several times, asking her to be tested; when she refused his request, he wrote about her and the cases that he believed could be traced back to her in the Journal of the American Medical Association.   She was finally taken into custody, tested, and determined to be a carrier.  Mary Mallon died in 1938, in quarantine.