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.
LOL.......yep. Now they have the border agent working in administration. That ought to keep him out of trouble....NOT.
If Bush would have put the effort and money into homeland security as he did to Iraq, this sort of thing wouldn't have happened.
But he did take away TB-guy’s travel size shampoo
>>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.
I suspect making an executive decision like this is well above the border inspector’s pay grade. What a twit.
There’s no point in having safety nets to catch such travelers if the nets are going to be ignored.
Somebody save us from Homeland Security.
By the time dad (and the patient) found out, the daughter had already had extensive exposure. Remember, this guy has been totally asymptomatic all along. His infection was detected only by accident, when he had a chest X-ray for some unrelated reason, and they noticed a worrisome spot on it. By that time, he would have been carrying the infection around for months (if not years), while having no idea he had it and no reason to limit his contact with other people. That’s why this whole hoopla is so ridiculously overblown. Those people on the airplanes weren’t exposed to anything that hundreds if not thousands of other people hadn’t previously been exposed to while in close proximity to this guy.
No, TB-guy didn't have any shampoo. The airport security dudes had already taken it away from him.
Yeah, now he MAKES the lists of travellers who should be stopped.
I supported Bush from his entry into the primaries in 1999, through all his many foibles including even his first couple of love fests with Kennedy and his attack on the 1st Amendment with McCain —
But, this last attempt of his to betray all of his supporters and destroy the Republican Party, for no good reason I can imagine or he can explain, is too much. I’d sooner vote for Osama bin Laden than vote for him again. At least bin Laden seems to be honest about his intentions.
TB is just not that contagious. If somebody doesn’t have an infection advanced enough to make them cough, they’d be hard-pressed to transmit it even if they were trying. The bacteria can’t survive more than a few seconds outside the body, and you really have to inhale just-coughed droplets from the infected person to get infected yourself, and it’s not like you’d automatically get infected even if you did that. Witness the lack of transmission to his new wife.
It really would make no sense to confine people just because they test positive for TB. It makes sense to confine people if and while they are actively coughing and infected with any strain of TB. This guy, now that they know what kind he’s got, should probably just be confined to his home and instructed to wear a mask when other people are present.
He`s a personal blame the other guy lawyer and they have him under quaratine? Well there goes our border patrol.
Hmmm...he’s a personal injury lawyer. He would be suing a guy like himself. Sometimes there is justice.
International TB incident triggered by man's trip raises questions about governments' response; U.S. House to investigate
By ALISON YOUNG, MIKE MORRIS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/31/07
Good article, answers some of our questions.
Are you saying swapping spit with your new bride is too remote to transmit TB?
I have some questions that hopefully can be answered by some FReepers who’ve followed this more closely.
How and when did he find out he had TB? I think I read that he found out in January, but I could be mistaken.
How and when did his fil find out?
How did he find out it was drug resistant? Did his fil give him medication, and it failed to work? Did he visit a doctor for treatment while on his honeymoon? Was he required to be tested for TB upon entry to one of his stops?
Who are the “federal health officials” who advised him not to board another flight? How did they find out he had TB? If these “federal health officials” are from the CDC, nevermind. I already know they’re refusing to answer the question.
If these “federal health officials” knew, why did they merely advise him not to board another flight? Why didn’t they do something to actually prevent him from boarding another flight? Did they really expect a spoiled brat to voluntarily remain in a foreign country indefinitely, to be quarantined and treated by “doctors” of socialized medicine?
Thank you. That does answer a few questions, creates a few more.
The border patrol was shocked. Why start enforcing the border now? We’ve not done it before???
What makes it so dangerous is the fact it’s almost untreatable. If his disease is not advanced, perhaps they can surgically remove the infected tissue, then treat with whatever drugs would be most effective.
I believe they will keep testing the wife, to make sure she remains okay.
It could happen, but with the level of infection this guy has, it’s unlikely and apparently has not happened (he’s had this infection for at least a few months, and I’m assuming he and his fiancee took up “swapping spit” quite some time before the wedding). Which is why the hysteria over the risk to people who sat near him on a commercial jetliner with a heavily filtered air circulation system is going way overboard.
AIDS has a similar treatability problem, but the untreatability of a disease needs to be balanced with its transmissibility risk when deciding to quarantine people. Just because something is incurable and deadly once you’ve got it, doesn’t mean it’s easy to catch. With TB, it’s fairly easy to catch IF the person has an advanced infection that’s causing coughing — otherwise it’s pretty much the same as AIDS.
Nice talking with you about this, thanks for your input.
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