Weird is right. The guy's wife is apparently a duck.
Posted on 05/31/2007 4:28:06 PM PDT by Baladas
ATLANTA - A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the U.S. by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. The inspector has been removed from border duty.
The unidentified inspector explained that he was no doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely "discretionary," officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is still under investigation.
The patient was identified as Andrew Speaker, a 31-year-old personal injury lawyer who returned last week from his wedding and honeymoon trip through Italy, the Greek isles and other spots in Europe. His new father-in-law, Robert C. Cooksey, is a CDC microbiologist whose specialty is TB and other bacteria.
Cooksey would not comment on whether he reported his son-in-law to federal health authorities. Nor did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explain how the case came to their attention. However, Cooksey said that neither he nor his CDC laboratory was the source of his son-in-law's TB.
Speaker is now under quarantine at a hospital in Denver. He is the first infected person to be quarantined by the U.S. government since 1963.
The disclosure that the patient is a lawyer — and specifically a personal injury lawyer — outraged many people on the Internet and elsewhere. Some travelers who flew on the same planes with Speaker angrily accused him of selfishly putting hundreds of people's lives in danger.
"It's still very scary," 21-year-old Laney Wiggins, one of more than two dozen University of South Carolina-Aiken students who are getting skin tests for TB. "That is an outrageous number of people that he was very reckless with their health. It's not fair. It's selfish."
Speaker said in a newspaper interview that he knew he had TB when he flew from Atlanta to Europe in mid-May for his wedding and honeymoon, but that he did not find out until he was already in Rome that it was an extensively drug-resistant strain considered especially dangerous.
Despite warnings from federal health officials not to board another long flight, he flew home for treatment, fearing he wouldn't survive if he didn't reach the U.S., he said. He said he tried to sneak home by way of Canada instead of flying directly into the U.S.
He was quarantined May 25, a day after he was allowed to pass through the border crossing at Champlain, N.Y., along the Canadian border.
The inspector ran Speaker's passport through a computer, and a warning — including instructions to hold the traveler, don a protective mask in dealing with him, and telephone health authorities — popped up, officials said. About a minute later, Speaker was instead cleared to continue on his journey, according to officials familiar with the records.
The Homeland Security Department is investigating.
"The border agent who questioned that person is at present performing administrative duties," said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke, adding those duties do not include checking people at the land border crossing.
Colleen Kelley, president of the union that represents customs and border agents, declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but said "public health issues were not receiving adequate attention and training" within the agency.
On Thursday, a tan and healthy-looking Speaker was flown from Atlanta to Denver, accompanied by his wife and federal marshals, to Denver's National Jewish Medical and Research Center, where doctors planned to isolate him and treat him with oral and intravenous antibiotics.
Dr. Charles Daley, chief of the hospital's infectious-disease division, said he is optimistic Speaker can be cured because he is believed to be in the early stages of the disease.
Dr. Gwen Huitt of National Jewish described Speaker as "a young, healthy individual" who is "doing extremely well."
"By conventional methods that we traditionally use in the public health arena ... he would be considered low infectivity at this point in time," she said. "He is not coughing, he is healthy, he does not have a fever."
Doctors hope also to determine where he contracted the disease, which has been found around the world and exists in pockets in Russia and Asia.
He will be kept in a special unit with a ventilation system to prevent the escape of germs. "He may not leave that room much for several weeks," hospital spokesman William Allstetter said.
Speaker's father-in-law has worked at the CDC for 32 years and is in the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, where he works with TB and other organisms. He has co-authored papers on diabetes, TB and other infectious diseases.
"As part of my job, I am regularly tested for TB. I do not have TB, nor have I ever had TB," he said in a statement. "My son-in-law's TB did not originate from myself or the CDC's labs, which operate under the highest levels of biosecurity."
In a brief telephone interview with the AP, Cooksey said that he gave Speaker "fatherly advice" when he learned the young man had contracted the disease.
"I'm hoping and praying that he's getting the proper treatment, that my daughter is holding up mentally and physically," Cooksey said. "Had I known that my daughter was in any risk, I would not allow her to travel."
According to a biography posted on a Web site connected with Speaker's law firm, the young lawyer attended the U.S. Naval Academy, graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in finance, then attended University of Georgia's law school. He is in private practice with his father, Ted Speaker, an unsuccessful candidate for a judgeship in 2004.
Speaker's father told WSB-TV: "The way he's been shown and spoken about on TV, it's like a terrorist traveling around the world escaping authorities. It's blown out of proportion immensely."
Andrew Speaker recently moved from an upscale condominium complex in anticipation of his wedding, former neighbors said. He also wrote in an application to become a board member of his condo association that he was going to Vietnam for five weeks as part of the Rotary Club to act as an ambassador.
His wife, Sarah, is a third-year law student at Atlanta's Emory University.
"He's a great guy. Gregarious," said Pam Hood, a former neighbor. "He's a wonderful guy. Just a very, very pleasant man."
Health officials in North America and Europe are now trying to track down about 80 passengers who sat near him on his two trans-Atlantic flights, and they want passenger lists from four shorter flights he took while in Europe.
However, other passengers are not considered at high risk of infection because tests indicated the amount of TB bacteria in Speaker was low, said Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the CDC's division of global migration and quarantine.
Health law experts said Speaker could be sued if others contract TB.
"There are a number of cases that say a person who negligently transmits an infectious disease could be held liable," said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University. "So long as he knew it was infectious, and knew about the appropriate behavior but failed to comply, he could be held liable."
Speaker told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he wasn't coughing and that doctors initially did not order him not to fly and only suggested he put off his long-planned wedding. "We headed off to Greece thinking everything's fine," he told the newspaper.
And now new threats from Al Quada.
I agree with you. It’s just crazy now.
Doesn’t help the entire world knows, if they didn’t before, our security system malfunction in the disease catagory. Lovely, just lovely.
Why are we not hearing about the new wife?
I assume he kissed her?
“”Speaker’s father-in-law has worked at the CDC for 32 years and is in the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, where he works with TB and other organisms.””
Would one of those be...anthrax?
“Speaker’s father-in-law has worked at the CDC for 32 years and is in the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, where he works with TB and other organisms”
Anyone that thinks this is just a coincidence has been smoking too much funny smelling stuff.
Well, that pretty much says alot about our Customs Border Protection officers under Chertnoff's command. It actually happens more often than the media reports. CBP, USCIS, BP, and ICE are hampered by absurd restrictions from the top.
The DEPARTMENT of HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS) should be dis-mantled yesterday. The original intent was to bring together all the various "security" agencies. They left out the FBI and CIA, and have accessed billions of dollars for the purpose of searching old ladies with walkers in airports.
However, I will give kudos to the FBI for locating and arresting numerous Islamo-facists in the states over the last years according to numerous media reports. Still, they can do better. Time to discriminate.
Oops, is that a bad word? Sorry to inform the liberal whiners, but everyone, including them, discriminate in all aspects of their lives every day in how they pick their produce, what gas station they use, what beer they drink, which highway they use to work, what TV show to watch, etc. Individuals discriminate - that's life.
Oh gag!
Can you imagine? “Oh Honey, by the way, I know marriage is supposed to be based on trust, but, it just slipped my mind to mention I have an infectious, deadly disease. By the way, would you mind calling your Father? We just might need his expertise!”
I mean, what do you SAY to someone after you’ve just put them and half the world at risk?
What about her? Didn’t she wonder when he wanted to SNEAK back into his own Country?
As I've just said another place
There is no such thing as sanity and rationality with some folks. Everything is Bush’s fault ... he’s the King of America, after all .. supreme power. He orders the legislation, writes it, funds it and holds all the guns.
God bless President George W. Bush, damned .. no matter what he does.
This is incredible: a warning — including instructions to hold the traveler, don a protective mask in dealing with him, and telephone health authorities — popped up, officials said. About a minute later, Speaker was instead cleared to continue on his journey, according to officials familiar with the records.
I read an earlier article that said they were worried at every passport control station they crossed in their journey that they would be stopped. So she obviously knew, too.
Speaker said in a newspaper interview that he knew he had TB when he flew from Atlanta to Europe in mid-May for his wedding and honeymoon, but that he did not find out until he was already in Rome that it was an extensively drug-resistant strain considered especially dangerous.
Despite warnings from federal health officials not to board another long flight, he flew home for treatment, fearing he wouldn't survive if he didn't reach the U.S., he said. He said he tried to sneak home by way of Canada instead of flying directly into the U.S.
Can you beat this? Bozo was afraid he'd die if he didn't get home in time, so he snuck back in anyway he could. Damn the other passengers, full germs ahead!
I wonder if the border guard got some money from the lawyer during the minute he was making a decision.
Is this not considered "assault" in our courts, whether it was "simple" TB or XDR TB?
OMG. I suppose they truly deserve one another. On the other hand, perhaps it’s a love to die for.
It’s difficult for me to phantom the Father-in-law would have anything to do with it. I know I am apt to take the personal responsibility thing too far, but he has worked for the CDC for years. I can’t help but feel he knows what this stuff can and will do. To willfully expose his own daughter to it? Well, I just don’t know. Somehow, I just can’t wrap my mind around that.
Aw! That’s interesting!
Border agents are supposed to let everyone in, aren’t they? Like the greeters at Walmart. If the agent had tried to stop him, the agent could have been thrown in prison. Those are the rules these days. If the libs and RINOs want those rules applied, they must be applied across the board. You don’t get to use profiling to detain some, while letting everyone else in. We either have a border, or we don’t. Can’t have it both ways.
The wife has tested negative for any sort of TB. And presumably she knew as much as her husband did throughout the trip. After all, it seems unlikely that he would have discussed it with her father, with neither he nor his father mentioning it to her.
The whole thing is nuts, imo. The fact he knew he had TB, no matter the flavor, should have been enough to send him for treatment right then and there.
I really don’t understand what’s happening to people. Where did common sense go?
Now he’s exposed alot of people, the world over, to something awful. What about the hotels they stayed in? Restautants they dined in? Tours they took? It will take months to round up all the people exposed to this deadly strain of TB.
From what I’ve read, the only good news is the amount of bacteria in his lungs is on the low side. Cold comfort. imo.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.