Probe Sought of TB Border Crossing

Jun 01, 05:00 AM

Current Headlines: By Anita Manning and Patrick O'Driscoll

DENVER -- The mysteries around an Atlanta lawyer who avoided detention while traveling to Europe with a highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis have deepened as authorities try to track down others who may have been exposed.

The patient, Andrew Speaker, 31, is "doing extremely well, in very good spirits," said infectious disease specialist Gwen Huitt, treating him here at National Jewish Medical Research Center.

Speaker's ability to re-enter the United States through Canada to avoid detection despite having his passport flagged has raised the ire of some members of Congress. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called for an investigation of staffing at border crossings. In a statement, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the incident "highlights how vulnerable our security remains ... and raises considerable doubts about the nation's preparedness for pandemic influenza and other biological incidents."

Speaker is a personal-injury lawyer in Atlanta, and, Huitt said, he has traveled abroad extensively in the past six years. Huitt said her new patient may have carried the disease in a "latent, dormant" state for years.

In perhaps the most curious twist, Speaker's father-in-law, Robert Cooksey, is a microbiologist who does research on tuberculosis at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cooksey said, in a statement released by the CDC, that he is tested regularly for TB, has never had it, and could not have been the source of Speaker's infection.

Cooksey said he had no part in Speaker's decisions to travel to Greece to be married, which included a flight from Atlanta to Paris on May 12-13 on Air France, apparently against doctors' orders. CDC officials became aware of Speaker's infection with the highly drug-resistant form of TB on May 22, and told him to remain in his Rome hotel, but instead, he flew to Prague, boarded a plane for Montreal and then drove back to the USA with his new bride.

Huitt said Speaker, infected with extensively drug-resistant TB, is expected to remain in the hospital, in isolation and taking multiple antibiotics for two to six months, at a cost of up to $350,000.

CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said the agency has contacted 50 of the more than 400 passengers on the Air France flight, but called it a "labor-intensive process."

In an interview to air this morning on Good Morning America, Speaker asks forgiveness from passengers he exposed to this strain of TB. But ABC also says he reports having a tape recording of his meeting with health officials that support his claims that it was all right for him to travel.

Manning reported from Wilmington, Del. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.