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Patient gives apology, defense

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 2, 2007

DENVER - An Atlanta lawyer quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to fellow airline passengers in an interview aired Friday, but insisted he was told before he set out for his wedding in Europe that he was no danger to anyone.

He and health officials provided sharply divergent accounts of his 12 days of world travel.

"I've lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn't want anyone to feel that way. It's awful, " Andrew Speaker, speaking through a face mask, told ABC's Good Morning America from his hospital room in Denver.

Speaker said he, his doctors and the CDC knew he had TB that was resistant to front-line drugs before he flew to Europe for his wedding. He said he was advised by Fulton County, Ga., health authorities that he was not contagious or a danger to anyone. Officials told him they would prefer he didn't fly, but no one ordered him not to, he said. He said his father, also a lawyer, taped that meeting.

Steven Katowsky, director of the Fulton County Department of Health, said the county had little power to detain Speaker, but insisted officials could not have made their warning more clear. "We told him that if you travel, you're putting people at risk."

County officials said Speaker did change his travel plans after the meeting. But instead of canceling them, he moved up the departure date, from May 14 to May 12 - too soon to get a letter from the county saying, "it is imperative that you are aware that you are traveling against medical advice."

Katowsky said: "We are talking about a person who both had the intent and the means to escape the jurisdiction."

Health officials have contacted 74 of the 310 U.S. citizens who were on the May 12 Air France flight that Speaker and his fiancee took from Atlanta to Paris, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That count includes all 26 who sat in the five-row area around Speaker - the ones considered in the potential exposure zone. None is exhibiting symptoms, CDC officials said.

On the return trip, a Prague-to-Montreal flight on May 24, the couple were the only Americans in the potential exposure zone.

Speaker, 31, was in Europe when he learned tests showed he had an especially dangerous, drug-resistant TB strain. Dr. Martin Cetron of the CDC said he was told "in no uncertain terms not to take a flight back."

Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified June 2, 2007, 02:08:07]