| Sizzler |
06-01-2007 01:20 PM |
Quote:
Andrew Speaker, 31, a personal-injury lawyer from Atlanta, arrived at the Canadian border May 24 after disregarding explicit instructions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to remain in Italy - where he was on his honeymoon - for fear of spreading his potentially deadly strain of TB.
Speaker knew he had a severe strain of TB before departing to marry Cooksey's daughter, Sarah, on a Greek island in mid-May. He only found out later, when he was in Rome, that it was the rarest and most lethal of TB strains, resistant to most antibiotics.
Speaker has said his desire to get treated in Denver - where he'd been told he best specialists worked - compelled him to rush back to the U.S. from his honeymoon, taking a secretive, circuitous route to avoid being flagged as a health risk at American airports.
His defiance potentially exposed hundreds of airline passengers and crew to tuberculosis. It also could expose Speaker to lawsuits from those fellow travelers, should they become infected.
"There's a general duty not to put any [others] at undue risk," said Gregory Keating, a law professor at the University of Southern California. "I think he's got a problem."
From Rome, Speaker and his wife flew to Prague and then to Montreal. They rove to the border crossing at Champlain, N.Y. At the checkpoint, both their passports set off warnings when scanned into a computer. The alerts instructed the guard to isolate and detain Speaker, and immediately call health authorities.
But the inspector, who has since been removed from border duties, apparently concluded that the travelers looked healthy. They spent no more than two minutes at the checkpoint before crossing into the U.S., said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke.
The lapse at the border outraged Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who called for a federal investigation.
"Today it was one sick and very irresponsible person who slipped through, but tomorrow could bring much worse," Schumer said. "There is just no excuse for this. God forbid this was someone bent on doing us harm."
As soon as Speaker crossed the border, he moved to comply with federal authorities. On May 25, as he and his wife drove south from Albany, he answered a cellphone call from the CDC, which had been frantically trying to reach him, and agreed to check himself into an isolation unit in a New York City hospital. From there, he was transferred to his hometown of Atlanta, where he was kept in a hospital room under armed guard.
In a meeting May 10, county officials gave Speaker the diagnosis, which the CDC was working to confirm. In turn, he informed doctors of his plans to fly to Europe in a few days for his wedding.
Exactly what was said next remains in dispute.
Speaker has said the authorities told him they'd rather he not fly on a commercial plane, but did not order him to stay home.
"He specifically asked if he was not permitted to go. They said, no, we prefer you not to go, but we're not [telling] you not to go," his father, Ted Speaker, told CNN. Father and son practice law together in Atlanta.
County officials said they expressed more than a preference. "He was advised very strongly not to travel," said Dr. Steven Katkowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness.
The next day, May 11, the county prepared a written medical directive. It can't be enforced like a court order, but the intent was unmistakable. "The letter did not say 'We prefer.' It said, 'You are directed,' " Katkowsky said.
But Speaker never got that letter.
It is unclear where he spent May 11, but he was not at work when county officials arrived with the directive. They mailed a copy to his home, but it was too late.
On May 12, they boarded an Air France jet to fly from Atlanta to Paris, then on to Athens.
On May 18, as they celebrated their marriage on Santorini - an island famed for its sheer red cliffs and black-sand beaches - the CDC confirmed the diagnosis of multi-drug-resistant TB. Other test results on May 22 showed Speaker had a still more severe strain of TB, known as XDR, or extensively drug resistant.
On May 23, a CDC quarantine officer reached Speaker at his Rome hotel with the news. The officer begged Speaker not to move, asking him to turn himself in to Italian health officials while the CDC worked to get him safely back to the U.S., said Dr. Martin Cetron, the CDC's director of global migration and quarantine.
Speaker heard the conversation differently. In a phone call to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday, he explained that he thought he'd languish indefinitely in an Italian hospital. He feared he might die without help from specialists in Denver.
The next day, Speaker and his wife fled.
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From other stories it seems that his original flight was due to depart May 14th. Like so much about what he says, you just have to wonder.
All these concerns about the passengers and people he came in contact with while blithely flitting about, which are more than warranted, but no one seems too worried about his new bride. Hasn't she been in close contact with him for weeks? Just what did she know, and when? With her background growing up with a TB researcher, was she supporting his decisions?!
Already, fellow passengers of his have been tested, are anxiously awaiting results, and being told that they'll need to continue getting tested for as long as a year, all because this guy who was so deathly afraid of Italian hospitals and who wouldn't accept any treatment center other than Denver, galavanted about the globe with no regards to the health and well-being of anyone else. |
